La Scala's ballet company has announced its 2022-2023 season with even more performances than the 2019-2020 had planned. This is a positive move for Italian dance which has seen audience numbers dwindle in recent years, but more due to unwise planning and pricing than a lack of passion on the behalf of the public. The opera season on the other hand, will have slightly fewer performances during the coming season.
Seven programmes, comprised of mixed-bills and full-length repertoire pieces, include two new creations for the company, seven works new to the company, and the second edition of the annual Gala Fracci.
“2023 will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Rudolf Nureyev,” says the ballet director, Manuel Legris. “We will remember him by bringing back to our stage, in the well-known La Scala productions, two of his most beloved ballets. So the new season opens his Nutcracker, last staged in 2006, and in September his Swan Lake will be performed, which hasn't been seen since 2014. Both will let us fondly remember Ezio Frigerio who designed the sets.” Frigerio died in February of this year.
THE NUTCRACKER
From 17 December 2022 to 11 January 2023
Choreography and staging: Rudolf Nureyev
Conductor: Valery Ovsyanikov
Sets and costumes: Nicholas Georgiadis
Guest artist: Jacopo Tissi (31 Dec. and 4, 7 Jan.)
DAWSON / DUATO / KRATZ / KYLIÁN
From 3 to 9 February 2023
Anima Animus
Teatro alla Scala New Production
David Dawson, choreography
Ezio Bosso, music
John Otto, sets
Yumiko Takeshima, costumes
James F. Ingalls, lights
Remaso
Teatro alla Scala New Production
Nacho Duato, choreography, sets and costumes
Enrique Granados, music
Brad Fields, lights
Takahiro Yoshikawa, piano
Roberto Bolle, Étoile
Solitude Sometimes
Teatro alla Scala New Production – World premiere
Philippe Kratz, choreography
Thom Yorke e Radiohead, music
Carlo Cerri e Philippe Kratz, sets
Francesco Casarotto, costumes
Carlo Cerri, lights
Carlo Cerri, Alessandro Grisendi e Marco Noviello, video designer
Bella Figura
Wiener Staatsballett production, 2011
Premiere 12 October 1995, Nederlands Dans Theater, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague
Jiří Kylián, choreography
Lukas Foss, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Alessandro Marcello, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Torelli, music
Jiří Kylián, sets
Joke Visser, costumes
Kees Tjebbes, lights
Joost Biegelaar, lights and sets supervisor
Four names of great originality bring together different generations and creative universes in a richly suggestive performance. Catharsis and rebirth in a world premiere by Philippe Kratz, who plunges into Egyptian mythology to their ascend towards the light. Rich in contrasts, with music by Ezio Bosso, Anima Animus by David Dawson, here in its Italian debut, combines virtuosity, emotions, physicality, and humanity. A celebration of beauty, which emerges from even the most bizarre and unexpected movement, Bella Figura returns in homage to the mastery of Jiří Kylián; and Nacho Duato is back too, this time with Roberto Bolle in a male trio who have never performed at La Scala, in Remanso, set to Enrique Granados' Valses poéticos and inspired by the universe of Federico García Lorca.
LE CORSAIRE
From 28 February to 17 March 2023
Dramaturgy and libretto by Manuel Legris and Jean-François Vazelle
(from Lord Byron, Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Joseph Mazilier)
Choreography: Manuel Legris
(from Marius Petipa and others)
Conductor: Valery Ovsyanikov
Music: Adolphe Adam and others
(selection Manuel Legris, arrangement Igor Zapravdin, orchestration Thomas Heinisch and Gábor Kerény)
Sets and costumes Luisa Spinatelli
The version of Le Corsaire by Manuel Legris arrives at La Scala, his first revival of a nineteenth century classic, fully highlighting the intent and innovativeness of his choreographic approach and his musical and dramaturgic quest. With its clear and accessible plot, notable attention to musicality and relations among characters, the sumptuous and evocative décor and costumes by Luisa Spinatelli, it will be an occasion recombining the energy virtuosity, the lyricism and romanticism of one of the 19th century's most adventurous and thrilling ballets d'action with the talents of the La Scala dancers.
WILLIAM FORSYTHE EVENING
From 10 to 30 May 2023
Blake Works I
Teatro alla Scala New Production
Premiere 4 July 2016, Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, Palais Garnier
William Forsythe, choreography and sets
James Blake, music
Dorothee Merg e William Forsythe, costumes
Tanja Rühl, lights
Blake Works V
Teatro alla Scala New Production
World Premiere
William Forsythe, choreography, sets and costumes
James Blake, music
Tanja Rühl, lights on original drawings by Brandon Stirling Baker
A grand return to La Scala, and with an unprecedented one, for William Forsythe: the starting point and the new arrival in the exploration into the musical fabric of James Blake are brought together for the first time. It began with Blake Works I at the Opéra of Paris and, by way of the digital stage, arrives at La Scala with the world premiere of Blake Works V, a new chapter in The Barre Project. A work in continual evolution, the Barre series began in 2021 at the height of the pandemic with a dance filmed and streamed; the performances at La Scala will present an unpublished, unique version, with new choreographic sections conceived specially for the diverse and formidable talents in the Company.
GALA FRACCI
7 June 2023
Principals, Soloists and Artists of Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company, Guest artists
Conductor Kevin Rhodes
After the extraordinary and thrilling success of the first edition, La Scala and its artists renew the tribute to Carla Fracci, who was and remains a cardinal figure in the history of dance, a key figure for Teatro alla Scala and for all of Italian culture. Hers is a story of talent, persistence, and hard work that has inspired and continues to inspire generations of young people, and not only those in the world of ballet. To celebrate this legendary étoile, the Ballet Director Manuel Legris has chosen to organize a gala in her name, as a regular date every season, to draw in and celebrate the world of international dance and ballet.
ROMEO AND JULIET
From 24 June to 7 July 2023
Choreography: Kenneth MacMillan
Conductor: Timur Zangiev
Sets: Mauro Carosi
Costumes: Odette Nicoletti
Lights: Marco Filibeck
Guest Artist Jacopo Tissi (28 June and 1 July)
A story of unending love, a classic of choreography set to Prokofiev's immortal music, rich in powerful emotions, deeply theatrical and engaging. One of the most beautiful and thrilling versions, Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, a part of the La Scala repertoire for many years, has witnessed a parade of unforgettable, impassioned performers who have put their bodies and souls into Shakespeare's tale of the Veronese lovers. MacMillan focuses beautifully on the human story, imbuing it with lyricism and psychological tension, moments of humour and the dynamics and emotions of ballet d'action so well expressed in the arrangement. It returns to the stage after a seven-year hiatus with the scenery created for La Scala in 2010 by Mauro Carosi and Odette Nicoletti.
SWAN LAKE
From 15 to 27 September 2023
Choreography: Rudolf Nureyev (from Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov)
Conductor: Koen Kessels
Staging Rudolf Nureyev
Sets Ezio Frigerio
Costumes Franca Squarciapino
Guest artist Jacopo Tissi (15, 19, 23 Sept.)
The most moving Tchaikovsky, the best-loved ballet; after nine years, Rudolf Nureyev's version of this masterpiece returns to Piermarini stage. When ‘his' Swan Lake debuted at La Scala in 1990, Nureyev reserved the key, equivocal, specular roles of Wolfgang/Rothbart for himself. But for the Prince he created challenging variations, putting him at the nexus of all the dramaturgical threads. The precious, historical scenes and costumes by Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino modulate lights and colours in a Monet-esque reinterpretation of the romantic music, representing Tchaikovsky's shining white swans on the peaceful yet troubled waters' garden of Giverny.
ASPECTS OF NIJINSKY
From 5 to 25 November 2023
Conductor Simon Hewett
Petruška
Burlesque in four acts and one prologue
Teatro alla Scala New Production
John Neumeier, choreography, sets and costumes
Backdrops from drawings by Vaslav Nijinsky
Igor Stravinsky, music
L'Après-midi d'un faune
Teatro alla Scala New Production
John Neumeier, choreography, sets and costumes
Claude Debussy, music
Le Pavillon d'Armide
Ballet by John Neumeier (based on Aleksandr Benois)
Teatro alla Scala New Production
John Neumeier, choreography, sets and costumes
Nikolai Tcherepnin, music
Étoile Roberto Bolle
Hailed personality, at the same time fragile and sensitive; in the spotlight or in the shadows of his intimate torments, Vaslav Nijinsky remains today the object of absolute fascination. John Neumeier has explored this exceptional figure – the dancer, the choreographer, the human, the visionary – his complexity and facets in many of his ballets, driven by a deep artistic, historical but, above all human interest. For the first time at La Scala, his original reading of Le Pavillon d'Armide, L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, and a new version of Petruška for la Scala, three masterpieces symbolic of the creative ferment of the Ballets Russes and of the brightest star of this revolutionary avant-garde.
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.
So Manuel Legris – worshipper at the “Temple of Nureyev” – dumped the wonderful reconstruction by Ratmansky of “Swan Lake” and Balanchine`s “The Nutcracker” , and replaced it with Nureyevs garbage ….Sad .