Mariafrancesca Garritano, a soloist with the La Scala Ballet Company, wrote a book in 2010 exposing the eating-disorders which afflict one in five dancers, she claimed. “La verità, vi prego, sulla danza!” (The Truth, Please, About Ballet) made international waves, and when The Observer newspaper picked up the story just before the glamorous opening of La Scala’s season […]
The Observer
Compare and contrast: The Sunday Times vs The Observer
While the opinions expressed by theatre critics are always different, the five or six reviews that I read on major productions of plays, operas and ballets nevertheless head in the same general direction. How delightful it was, therefore, to read Debra Craine in The Sunday Times and Luke Jennings in The Observer on the Moscow […]
Sacked Italian ballerina is just an attention seeker, or a victim?
Mariafrancesca Garritano (aka Mary Garret) who denounced anorexia in the La Scala school and company, and was sacked by the Milanese theatre two days ago, hasn’t been backed up by all her colleagues. Eleonora Abbagnato, who is also 33 like Garritano, told La Repubblica newspaper, Nothing of what she says is true. I have worked with […]
A ballerina speaks out: Mariafrancesca Garritano, La Scala soloist, talks frankly about the eating-disorders which plague the company
Sant’Ambrogio (Saint Ambrose) is Milan’s patron saint, and on his Saint’s Day, 7th December, Milan’s opera house La Scala opens its new season. However, one of the ballet soloists has chosen the eve of this glittering occasion to speak with The Observer about problems in the company. Mariafrancesca Garritano is 33, and has been at […]
When critics are artists: Luke Jennings on Les Patineurs
In one of the most elegant, poetic and precise pieces of criticism I’ve read this year The Observer’s Luke Jennings sums up the essence of Ashton’s ‘Les Patineurs’ in a single paragraph: ‘Les Patineurs’, Frederick Ashton’s 1938 skating ballet, knows exactly when to call it a day. It ends with one of the most unforgettable images […]