Frederick Ashton’s lost “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952)

In 1952, Frederick Ashton returned to New York City Ballet, choreographing his second ballet on that company, “Picnic at Tintagel”, to music by Arnold Bax and designs by Cecil Beaton (who was busy in that period designing ballets for both Ashton and George Balanchine). “Picnic” was a time-travelling ballet in which Edwardian visitors to an Arthurian location in Cornwall found themselves becoming the characters of romantic but adulterous love from Arthurian legend: Tristram, Iseult, King Mark. Remarkably, Ashton singled out the seventeen-year-old Jacques d’Amboise (bearded by Beaton) to make him Tristram, partnering him with Diana Adams as Iseult, and giving him the first important created lead role of his career, two years before Balanchine first did so.

D’Amboise always recalled Balanchine’s atrocious jealousy of Ashton at this time, the more so because Ashton was using Adams (then a newcomer to New York City Ballet) precisely when Balanchine’s fascination with her was rising. Balanchine would spy at the keyhole, peer through windows, and, worse, tamper with the rehearsal schedule to make things impossible for Ashton. Finally, and in great indignation, Ashton - who admired Balanchine more than any other choreographer of the day - had to remind Balanchine that, when Balanchine had come to Covent Garden, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet had given him not only the best dancers in the company but the best spaces too, without ever spoiling his rehearsal conditions.

This was successful in making Balanchine behave, for a while. But once the ballet had opened, successfully - so d’Amboise remembered - Balanchine began whittling it away with cast-changes, so that it soon became an echo of itself and quickly lost its place in the repertory. D’Amboise loved Balanchine above all choreographers - but he always attributed this quick erosion of Ashton’s ballet to Balanchine. Whenever he visited London with his wife, Carolyn George, he would always take “Freddie” Ashton out to lunch. Fifty-four years later, he sought me out to tell me, lovingly, of Freddie Ashton and George.

Today, thanks to an Instagram post by the remarkable New York City Ballet researcher @mgenevieve , I have discovered studio photographs of New York City Ballet taken c.1950-1954 by Fred (Frederick) Melton, now in the collection of the New York Public Library. Among their revelations are these pictures of the duets for d’Amboise and Adams as Tristram and Yseult in the sexually adulterous pas de deux of “Picnic at Tintagel”. 1950-1953 was a period when Ashton made great developments in depicting of poetically sexual and sexually poetic duets (“Illuminations”, “Daphnis and Chloë”, “Tiresias”). It’s evident that “Picnic” was in this vein. The long legs of Adams and d’Amboise become theatrical dynamite in juxtaposition; their handsome upper bodies likewise.

Tuesday 6 July

1: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952)

2: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952)

3: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

4: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

5: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

6: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

7: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

8: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).

9: Photograph by Fred (Frederick) Melville of Diana Gould and Jacques d’Amboise in Frederick Ashton’s “Picnic at Tintagel” (New York City Ballet, 1952).