The second edition of the Carla Fracci gala arrives at La Scala

After the resounding success of the first edition of Gala Fracci – a tribute by La Scala to Carla Fracci – now, two years after her death (she died on 27 May 2021) comes the second edition of what will be an annual gala in her honour, an idea by the La Scala company's director, Manuel Legris.

This year the resident company will be joined by Italian guests – Alessandra Ferri, Roberto Bolle, Jacopo Tissi and Davide Dato. Dato is a principal dancer with the Vienna Staaatsballet, and he will be making his debut on La Scala's stage. Kevin Rhodes will conduct the theatre's orchestra.

The programme offers works that trace the history of ballet and intersect with the repertoire of Carla Fracci, an extraordinary artist, who has left her mark as an interpreter of romantic ballet, of the great 19th-century repertoire but also of more modern, 20th-century choreographic ideas, working with Maurice Béjart and Roland Petit among others.

Fracci graduated from La Scala's ballet school a few months before her 18^th birthday in 1954, and the following year she was chosen to perform Le Spectre de la rose in the annual ‘passo d'addio' where the other students performed a small number as an ensemble. Fracci danced with the established star Mario Pistoni. It was performed after a performance of Luchino Visconti's famous production of La sonnambula, with Leonard Bernstein conducting Maria Callas in the lead role. A lucky break also saw the young Fracci replace Violette Verdy in Cinderella at the end of the same year.

Michail Fokin's Le Spectre de la rose will open the gala with Jacopo Tissi and Letizia Masini. Also performed during the evening (with a little Ballets Russes flavour) will be L'Après-midi d'un Faune by Fracci's frequent partner, dancer and choreographer Amedeo Amodio with Agnese Di Clemente and Domenico Di Cristo, and an excerpt from John Neumeier's Le Pavillon d'Armide, performed by Davide Dato.

The dreamy pas de deux from the second act of Neumeier's La Dame aux camélias will see Nicoletta Manni in the role of Marguerite Gautier and Roberto Bolle as Armand Duval, and a pas de deux from Petit's Le Loup – a 1953 creation that was seen for the first time in Italy at La Scala in 1963 – will be danced by Martina Arduino and Marco Agostino.  

Manuel Legris has dedicated his Verdi Suite to Fracci and it will be seen again with Alice Mariani, Maria Celeste Losa, Claudio Coviello, Federico Fresi, Mattia Semperboni, Caterina Bianchi, Gabriele Corrado and the corps de ballet. Fracci played Giuseppina Strepponi, Verdi's wife, in an international television series about the composer, who was played by Ronald Pickup – the English actor died three months before Fracci. The popular pas de deux from After the Rain by Christoper Wheeldon will be performed at the theatre for the first time with Alessandra Ferri and Roberto Bolle.

The pas de deux from the second act of Le Papillon – the only ballet choreographed by Maria Taglioni – in Pierre Lacotte's reconstruction for the Paris Opera in 1976 will be danced by Linda Giubelli and Nicola Del Freo, as a tribute to the French choreographer who died in April.

The great repertoire ballets will be represented by Nureyev's Swan Lake (excerpts from Act III, with Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko, and Christian Fagetti as Rothbart, the Spanish dance and the mazurka) and with the Pas classique hongrois (in the role of Raymonda will be Martina Arduino in the role of Jean de Brienne, Navrin Turnbull) from the third act of Petipa's Raymonda, in Sergej Vikharev's reconstruction, which was first performed at La Scala in 2011.

7 June 2023 at 8 pm

Fracci Gala

Tickets from € 10 to € 180
www.teatroallascala.org

First part

LE SPECTRE DE LA ROSE
Choreography Michail Fokin
Music Carl Maria von Weber
Letizia Masini Jacopo Tissi

LE LOUP
Choreography Roland Petit
Music Henry Dutilleux
Takahiro Yoshikawa, piano
Pas de deux
Martina Arduino Marco Agostino

LE PAPILLON
Choreography Pierre Lacotte from Maria Taglioni
Music Jacques Offenbach
Grand pas de deux
Linda Giubelli Nicola Del Freo

LA DAME AUX CAMÉLIAS
Choreography John Neumeier
Music Frédéric Chopin
Takahiro Yoshikawa, piano
From Act II: pas de deux
Nicoletta Manni Roberto Bolle

VERDI SUITE
Choreography Manuel Legris
Music Giuseppe Verdi
Alice Mariani, Maria Celeste Losa, Claudio Coviello, Federico Fresi, Mattia Semperboni Caterina Bianchi, Gabriele Corrado and the Corps de Ballet of the Teatro alla Scala

Part Two

L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE
Choreography Amedeo Amodio
Music Claude Debussy
Agnese Di Clemente Domenico Di Cristo

LE PAVILLON D'ARMIDE
Choreography, scenes and costumes John Neumeier
Music Nikolai Čerepnin
Davide Dato

SWAN LAKE
Choreography Rudolf Nureyev from Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov
Music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
From Act III
Nicoletta Manni Timofej Andrijashenko Christian Fagetti Francesca Podini Gabriele Corrado Alessandra Vassallo Gioacchino Starace and the Corps de Ballet of the Teatro alla Scala

AFTER THE RAIN
Choreography Christopher Wheeldon
Music Arvo Pärt
Takahiro Yoshikawa, piano
Pas de deux
Alessandra Ferri Roberto Bolle

RAYMONDA
Choreography Marius Petipa (1898)
Choreography reconstruction and staging Sergej Vikharev
Music Aleksandr Glazunov
Takahiro Yoshikawa, piano
From Act III : Pas classique hongrois
Martina Arduino Navrin Turnbull Gaia Andreanò and the Corps de Ballet of the Teatro alla Scala

Gramilano( Editor )

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.