MUKHAMEDOV IN FINAL ‘RAYMONDA’

At each of Irek Mukhamedov’s performances during the current Bolshoi Ballet season in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, some audience members have spent intermission time debating exactly what the 27-year-old virtuoso did during his intricate and often unorthodox solos.

On Tuesday, however, the talk centered on what Mukhamedov said during a solo: Midway through his variation in Act I of “Raymonda,” he paused on the forestage to direct words, in Russian, at conductor Alexander Lavrenyuk.

The translation--”Faster, please!”--loses some of the intensity that Mukhamedov brought to the moment. (Company officials said that he had never done anything like it before.) But, then, Mukhamedov’s whole performance Tuesday had a soulful fervor that took the role of Jean de Brienne out of the danseur noble category into the high-Romantic realm belonging to such firebrands as Lermontov, Werther and Heathcliff.

Yes, his elevation remained awesome, his technical control exemplary, his partnering surpassingly tender. However, just as remarkable were those moments when he and Ludmila Semenyaka (in the title role) stood motionless at opposite sides of the stage and filled the space between them with passionate yearning.

Although the other principals and soloists were familiar in this final “Raymonda,” the performance Tuesday proved anything but routine. No, indeed: Scenery for the vision scene descended when it should have ascended, Raymonda’s veil became stuck on her tiara, what looked like a shoe lay center stage after the Saracen divertissement and a soloist in the men’s wedding quartet nearly fell during his sequence of triple air-turns.

The most serious accident came in the second-act passage where two troubadours lift Raymonda and drop her into the arms of Abderakhman. Alas, after catching Semenyaka, Alexander Vetrov sank to the floor with her on top of him. Neither was injured, fortunately--but where is Gediminas Taranda when we really need him?