The Red Poppy or The Red Flower is a ballet in three acts with a score written by Reinhold Glière and libretto by Mikhail Kurilko. This ballet was created in 1927 as the first Soviet ballet with a modern revolutionary theme. Possibly the most famous dance from this ballet is the Sailors Dance, sometimes referred to as the Russian Sailors Dance (although it is described as Dance of the Sailors from the Soviet Ship in the score and libretto). It is this musical selection for which Glière is perhaps best known.
The ballet takes place at a seaport in 1920s-era Republican China. Ships carrying sailors from many lands, including the Soviet Union, are docked in a Chinese seaport. The Captain of the Soviet Ship notices a group of half-starved, overworked coolies being brutally driven to work even harder by their cruel harbourmaster. One night while dancing for the sailors aboard the ship, the beautiful Taï-Choa notices the Soviet Captain trying to rescue the poor Coolies from the Harbourmaster. Impressed by the captain's act of kindness she gives him a red poppy as a symbol of her love. When Taï-Choa's fiancé, the adventurer Li-Chan-Fou learns of this, he is jealous and orders her to kill the captain. She refuses, and is later killed when a riot breaks out on the dock — thus sacrificing her life for the captain. As she dies, she gives another red poppy flower to a young Chinese girl as a sign of love and freedom.
Reinhold Moritzevich Glière (January 1875 - June 1956), was a Russian Imperial and Soviet composer of German and Polish descent. He entered the Kiev school of music in 1891, where he was taught the violin. In 1894 Glière entered the Moscow Conservatory where he studied counterpoint, composition and the violin. He graduated in 1900, having composed a one-act opera Earth and Heaven (after Lord Byron) and received a gold medal in composition. After the Great War and the Russian Revolution, Glière never visited Western Europe, as many other Russian composers did. He gave concerts in Siberia and other remote areas of Russia instead. He was working in Uzbekistan as a musical development helper at the end of the 1930s. Notwithstanding this political engagement after the October Revolution, in the late 1920’s Glière kept out of the ideological ditch war between the Association for Contemporary Music (ASM) and the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) preferring to concentrate primarily on composing monumental operas, ballets, and cantatas. He died in Moscow on 23 June 1956.
