Just over a month ago the Royal Ballet announced that principal dancer Mara Galeazzi will be leaving the company:
Mara Galeazzi will retire from The Royal Ballet in July 2013, at the end of the current season. Mara, who had her first child last April, will move to Oman to be with her husband. She will focus on new projects, teaching dance and her work for her charity foundation Dancing for The Children which raises funds for sick children in Africa.
said the press release.
Her last performance at the Royal Opera House with the Royal Ballet will be on 13 June in Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling with her pals from the 2009 DVD: Edward Watson as Crown Prince Rudolf and Sarah Lamb as Countess Larisch; her final performance with the company will be in Monaco where she will perform the title role in Manon on 29 June.
But the tears won't finish that evening, for on 23 July in the evocative setting of Verona's Teatro Romano, Galeazzi will say her last arrivederci to the ballet stage after a star gala with Royal Ballet colleagues. Lauren Cuthbertson, Sarah Lamb, Marianela Nuñez, Gary Avis, Steven McRae, Thiago Soares and Edward Watson, along with Mara Galeazzi herself, will dance selections from the classical and contemporary repertoire that makes the Royal Ballet one of the powerhouse companies in the dance world.
Tickets for the gala are already available, and with a top price of €33 I'd say that it must be the dance bargain of the year!
Photo: Mara Galeazzi and Edward Watson in Mayerling © Johan Persson; below, Verona's Teatro Romano.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
