Royal Ballet casting for February/March 2025 – Onegin, Light of Passage, Phaedra + Minotaur
Here is a preview of The Royal Ballet casting for next year’s productions of Onegin, Light of Passage, and the double bill with The Royal Opera Phaedra + Minotaur.
Exciting role debuts see Matthew Ball and Cesar Corrales as Onegin; Francesca Hayward and Lauren Cuthbertson will both play Tatiana for the first time; Viola Pantuso and Mayara Magri will be Olga; William Bracewell, Leo Dixon, Giacomo Rovero and Calvin Richardson will interpret Lensky; and Harris Bell, Francisco Serrano and David Donnelly will play Prince Gremin.
LIGHT OF PASSAGE
20 February – 12 March 2025
Choreographer – Crystal Pite
Music – Henryk Mikolaj Górecki
Scenic Designer – Jay Gower Taylor
Costume Designer – Nancy Bryant
Lighting Designer – Tom Visser
Masses of dancers move as a mesmerising whole. Bodies, fluid and yearning, are bathed in shafts of light. A single voice emerges, a lament that distils the magnitude of human suffering. A journey begins…
Crystal Pite, in her distinctive choreographic style, grapples with themes of safe passage, displacement, community and mortality. Set to Gorecki’s affecting Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, this award-winning work is a reminder of the power of human connection in our turbulent times.
In Light of Passage, Crystal Pite reckons with the existential tensions of the human condition, masterfully demonstrating how art can move the soul and provoke thought. In the choreographer’s own words, ‘there is a profound optimism in putting something like this out into the world and connecting to each other through it. When people collaborate to create a work of art and an audience gathers to witness it, there is something very hopeful and powerful about the experience. I want to create conditions in the theatre where we can gather around what we cannot know and grapple with it, together.’
Light of Passage is set to Polish composer Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No.3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). Created in 1976 for a large orchestra and solo soprano, it would become a defining composition of the 20th century. The symphony had its big break in 1989 with a performance by the London Sinfonietta, conductor David Zinman and soprano Dawn Upshaw, which was recorded by Elektra Nonesuch and picked up by Classic FM. Played on rotation on airwaves around the country, it reached no.6 on the UK album charts of 1993. The recording would become the most popular contemporary classical CD ever, selling over a million copies.
Thursday 20 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Friday 28 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Wednesday 5 March 2025 – 7:30pm
Tuesday 11 March 2025 – 7:30pm
Kristen McNally, Marcelino Sambé
Friday 21 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Saturday 1 March 2025 – 1.30pm
Saturday 1 March 2025 – 7:30pm
Wednesday 12 March 2025 – 7:30pm
Ashley Dean, TBC
ONEGIN
22 January – 12 June 2025
Choreography – John Cranko
Music – Kurt-Heinz Stolze after Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Designer – Jürgen Rose
Lighting designer – Steen Bjarke
60 years after its creation, Onegin’s exploration of unrequited affection, impulsive choices and bitter regret still breaks hearts today.
John Cranko became acquainted with Alexander Pushkin’s verse-novel Eugene Onegin when he choreographed the dances for Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name in 1952. He created his own distinctive version of Pushkin’s work in 1965 for the Stuttgart Ballet. Onegin displays all of Cranko’s genius as a narrative choreographer, featuring finely drawn characters who are transformed by the conflicts they face.
Onegin and Tatiana’s relationship is depicted through intense duets, such as the letter-writing scene, when the youthful Tatiana dances a dream pas de deux with her longed-for lover. The role of Tatiana offers a ballerina many challenges – the development of a bookish country girl into a sophisticated woman at the pinnacle of St Petersburg society requires dramatic sensibility and technical finesse. Cranko’s choreography incorporates an eclectic range of dance forms, including folk, modern, ballroom and acrobatic.
While Tchaikovsky is most famous for his music in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, his lesser-known works for piano form the basis of Kurt-Heinz Stolze’s soaring arrangements for Onegin. This includes selections from The Seasons, his opera Cherevichki and the symphonic fantasy Francesca da Rimini.
Roles: Tatiana, Onegin, Olga, Lensky, Gremin
Wednesday 22 January 2025 – 7:30pm
Friday 7 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Thursday 13 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Marianela Nunez, Reece Clarke, Akane Takada, William Bracewell*, Lukas B. Brendsrod
Friday 24 January 2025 – 7:30pm
Saturday 8 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Saturday 15 February 2025 – 1pm
Yasmine Naghdi, Matthew Ball*, Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Leo Dixon*, Harris Bell*
Saturday 25 January 2025 – 7:30pm
Francesca Hayward*, Cesar Corrales*, Viola Pantuso*, Giacomo Rovero*, Francisco Serrano*
Monday 10 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Saturday 15 February 2025 – 7pm
Tuesday 25 February 2025 – 7:30pm
Lauren Cuthbertson*, Ryoichi Hirano, Mayara Magri*, Calvin Richardson*, David Donnelly*
PHAEDRA + MINOTAUR
6 – 11 February 2025
The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet join forces to present two mythic tales.
Impassioned singing meets dreamlike dance in two compelling pieces from The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet inspired by Greek myth.
Following acclaimed performances of their double production at Theatre Ustinov, Bath, frequent collaborators Deborah Warner (Wozzeck, Peter Grimes) and Kim Brandstrup (Metamorphosis – Titian, Rushes – Fragments of a Lost Story) reunite for a rare and highly-anticipated co-presentation between The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet. In an intimate piano arrangement, Benjamin Britten‘s Phaedra is sung with ‘impassioned’ (Guardian) force by Christine Rice, who expertly harnesses Phaedra’s eroticism and despair, while in Minotaur, Brandstrup’s dreamlike choreography lays bare the human vulnerability and desire buried within Ariadne.
PHAEDRA – THE ROYAL OPERA
Music – Benjamin Britten
Librettist – Robert Lowell
Director – Deborah Warner
Consumed with an uncontrollable lust for her stepson, Phaedra determines her only way out is death.
Thursday 6 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Friday 7 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Saturday 8 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Sunday 9 February 2025 – 2.30pm
Monday 10 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Tuesday 11 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Christine Rice, Jonathan Goddard*
MINOTAUR – THE ROYAL BALLET
Sound Designer – Eilon Morris
Choreographer – Kim Brandstrup
Ariadne has betrayed home and country to help her lover slay the Minotaur – only for him to abandon her, while Dionysus watches on from above.
Thursday 6 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Saturday 8 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Monday 10 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Kristen McNally* Jonathan Goddard+*, Tommy Franzén+*
Friday 7 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Sunday 9 February 2025 – 2.30pm
Tuesday 11 February 2025 – 7.15pm
Isabel Lubach* Jonathan Goddard+, Tommy Franzén+
*role debut
+guest artist
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
