Kurst Vacheq
Kurst Vacheq is the composer of the celebrated ballet Raven Field. He had previously written a handful of minor works, but it is his unquestioned masterpiece. The ballet was commissioned by Ivana Boritis and it undoubtedly benefited from her patronage as came to be recognised as a Borcan national treasure.
The composer was born in southeastern Borca. His mother was a immigrant from Kartakass. It is probable that she was also half-Vistani although this was consistedly denied by her and subsequently by her son. She was a gift muscian, entirely disinclined to perform publicly. His father was a former military officier who had lost an arm in a skirmish on the Gundarak frontier and subsequently supported his family by ghost writing offical histories for many of land's aristocratic families. Kurst received his education entirely from his parents until the age of twelve when it was arranged for him to enter the household of a minor aristocratic family in Levkarest where he would receive formal training in music. He proved to a talented pianoist and gifted composer. He supported himself for years ghost writing chamber music for the house composers of Borca's leading artistocratic families. All the while he dedicated his every spare moment to the composition of ballets. He was unable, however, to find buyers for his work, let alone backers willing to bring the works to stage under his own name. At first this was a fault of the works themselves, which displayed flashes of genius but on the whole were far gripping. As the works improved, Kurst came to recognise that the world of ballet in his native land was even more incestious, pretentious, and bigoted than that of chamber music. Neither had he been bred of proper Borcan stock, nor had he been raised in the service of Borcan aristocrats, nor finally had he learnt his craft from its recognised and accepted masters.
Vacheq poured his growing anger into his writing and eventually he took his best work to date to the Ballet National du Dementlieu] where it received a genuine hearing and a great deal of very constructive criticism before being ultimately rejected by the artistic director of the time. A subsequent work suffered the same fate. The work that followed proved to be the inspiration for a very differnt ballet penned by the artistic director with contributions from Vacheq. Vacheq's next work, The Poisoned Chalace, was accepted, albeit in a somewhat stripped down form. It was well received by the public. It flaws were, however, attacked mercilessly by the critics. A Borcan noblewoman living in Dementlieu found these criticism so unjust that she was moved to write Ivana Boritsi about the brilliant Borcan artist who was being mistreated at the hands of the brutish Dementlieuse. The ruler of Borca wrote Vechaq and after meeting with him in person to discuss his next project agreed to stage at Misericordia.
craft at the feet of those who had been.
He was neither born into an aristocratic family, nor born a full-bloodied Borcan, nor finally
grew to realise that small world of ballet in Borca was one
the son of Borcan farmers. He was a volitile man although hid the fact well from public scrunity.His father was an
The work was scheduled to be staged in Port-a-Lucine by the Ballet National du Dementlieu, but financial difficulties intervened. When it finally reached the Dementlieuse stage 11 year later Vacheq was dead. By all Borcan accounts, the Dementlieuse artistic director, Claude Lemieux, in making significant "improvements" to the ballet, succeeded only in wholly desecrating it. An arguable over-reaction to desecration on the part of visitng Borcan aristocrats, who walked out en masse in the middle of the second act, and an unarguable over-reaction on the part of the BOrcan ambassador, who blamed an assault and robbery by ruffian while returning home from the ballet on Lemieux and a conspiracy by orchestrated by certain members of the government, rallied the Dementlieuse to a spirited defense of Lemieux and of his variation on Vacheq's original. Dementlieuse claims that Lemieux had brilliant salvaged Vacheq's originally muddled work were particularly aggreious. And not content to distort reality in Dementlieu, a tour of Darkon was proposed. On that tour Lemieux and the national ballet vanished without a trace. Their disappearance remains a mystery. Some whispher they died at the hand of Vacheq himself, wrathfully returned from the grave. The mystery supporting his own death lends at least a trace of credience to the possibility. Rumours that he succumb to embrace of Ivana Boristi are not especially credible for . . .
