Wayne McGregor – Yugen
Christopher Wheeldon – Corybantic Games
Liam Scarlett – first revival of The Age of Anxiety
Thursday 15 March – Monday 9 April with a Live Cinema Screening Tuesday 27 March.
Leonard Bernstein achieved popular and critical acclaim across musical genres. To celebrate the centenary of his birth and as part of the global ‘Leonard Bernstein at 100' celebrations, The Royal Ballet presents a mixed programme featuring all three Company choreographers, Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon and Liam Scarlett, united in a programme of world premieres and recent work.
Renowned for his creative collaborations, Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor's new ballet, Yugen, features designs by artist- ceramist Edmund de Waal, lighting by long-term collaborator Lucy Carter and costumes by fashion designer Shirin Guild. Set to Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, the ballet is a company-wide piece featuring Principals, Soloists and Artists of The Company. Yugen is a co-production with Dutch National Ballet.
Chichester Psalms was commissioned in 1965 for the Southern Cathedral Festival at Chichester Cathedral. The piece blends Biblical Hebrew verse and Christian choral tradition, a musical depiction of the composer's hopes for brotherhood and peace.
The mixed programme also includes Corybantic Games, a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon with costumes by fashion designer Erdem Moralıoğlu, set design by Jean-Marc Puissant and lighting design by Peter Mumford. It is set to Bernstein's Serenade, after Plato: Symposium, a violin concerto written in 1954, which draws inspiration from Plato's Symposium, a dialogue between a group of notable men in praise of love.
The programme includes the first revival of Liam Scarlett's The Age of Anxiety which premiered in 2014. John Macfarlane's set designs and Jennifer Tipton's lighting recreate an evocative Manhattan of the 1940s, where four strangers meet in a bar beginning an evening of unexpected events. The ballet is set to Bernstein's Symphony no.2, The Age of Anxiety, inspired by W.H. Auden's epic poem of the same name, written in response to the disillusionment that followed the Second World War.
15, 17, 23, 27 March and 3, 6, 9 April at 7.30pm
27 March – Live Cinema Relay as part of ROH Live Cinema Season #ROHbernstein
Box Office +44 (0)20 7304 4000 Tickets £4 – £70 | roh.org.uk
Leonard Bernstein at 100
Leonard Bernstein at 100 is the world-wide celebration of the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, the composer, conductor, educator, musician, cultural ambassador, and humanitarian, officially beginning on August 25, 2017, Bernstein's 99th birthday, and continuing through August 25, 2019., leonardbernstein.com/at100
Leonard Bernstein
American composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein (1918–90) was one of the most famous and successful figures in US classical music. He had a brilliant understanding of writing for dance, and with Jerome Robbins created several of the 20th century's greatest music theatre works, including West Side Story.
Bernstein was born in Massachusetts to Russian immigrant parents. At Harvard he met the composer Aaron Copland, who would become a lifelong friend and influence. He met Serge Koussevitzky in 1940 at Tanglewood and became his assistant in 1942, later taking over at Tanglewood in 1951. In 1944 the combined acclaim of his First Symphony, the ballet Fancy Free and the musical On the Town secured his international fame. Over the next decade he continued a diverse conducting and composing career, conducting regularly with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and becoming the first American to conduct at La Scala, Milan. His compositions from this period include the theatre works Trouble in Tahiti, Candide and West Side Story and the film score On the Waterfront. In 1954 he made his first television appearance and went on to become a pioneering figure in the use of television for education. In 1958 he was appointed music director of New York Philharmonic Orchestra, retiring in 1969 to become conductor laureate of the orchestra. Though his compositions became more sporadic towards the end of his life (significant late works including Mass), he continued to conduct until his death, establishing a particularly strong relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Through his innovative pedagogy, championing of concert repertory including Mahler, and his own compositions, Bernstein played a key role in making classical music a central part of 20th-century American cultural life.
YUGEN
Choreography – Wayne McGregor
Music – Leonard Bernstein
Set designer – Edmund de Waal
Costume designer – Shirin Guild
Lighting designer – Lucy Carter
Conductor – Koen Kessels/Tom Seligman
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Members of the Royal Opera House Chorus and Extra Chorus
A co-production between The Royal Ballet and Dutch National Ballet
THE AGE OF ANXIETY
Choreography – Liam Scarlett
Music – Leonard Bernstein
Designer – John Macfarlane
Lighting – Jennifer Tipton
Conductor – Barry Wordsworth
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
CORYBANTIC GAMES
Choreography – Christopher Wheeldon
Music – Leonard Bernstein
Set designer – Jean-Marc Puissant
Costume designer – Erdem Moralıoğlu
Lighting designer – Peter Mumford
Conductor – Koen Kessels/Tom Seligman
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
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.
