If there is a ballet that belongs to La Scala, it’s Rudolf Nureyev’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, created for the ballet company in 1966 with Carla Fracci and Nureyev in the main roles. It was performed 152 times until 2007, when Tchaikovsky’s score fell silent for eight years until awoken by Alexei Ratmansky when […]
Walter Madau
Lescaut almost steals the show among excellent performances in Manon at La Scala
I wonder how many reviews of Manon start by appraising the portrayal of Lescaut. A very important character of course, but certainly he has less plot points or stage time than Des Grieux and the eponymous heroine. At La Scala, in the cast of 27 October, Lescaut was played, quite brilliantly, by Walter Madau. Madau […]
Heinz Spoerli’s Goldberg Variations are lovingly performed by La Scala’s excellent cast
Legend goes that Bach wrote his Goldberg Variations for the Russian ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony, Count Kaiserling. The Count suffered from insomnia and had Johann Gottlieb Goldberg on hand to play for him during his sleepless nights. Bach wrote these pieces for the nocturnal recitals of the young Goldberg, a German virtuoso […]
Photo album: first look at Heinz Spoerli’s Goldberg Variations at La Scala
“Every time I listen to Bach I feel my heart jumps a beat. His music is for me an inexhaustible source of inspiration and has been since my early twenties, which was even before, in Düsseldorf, when I choreographed a piece to the Goldberg Variations, which many critics considered, at the beginning of the nineties, […]
La Scala’s fired ballerina, and eating-disorder author, Mary Garret on her first year back with the company
In 2016, Mary Garret walked through the artists’ entrance at La Scala, ready to take daily class again with the company that had fired her four years previously. The ballerina Mariafrancesca Garritano, who writes under the name of Garret, wrote a book where she reflected on the nature of stringent diets and the search for […]
Proscaenium’s Gran Gala with the best of Italy’s dancing talent
Gramilano has already written about Cincia Puricelli’s dancing school Proscaenium, which is based in Gallarate, a town near Milan’s Malpensa airport. An ordinary town, and on the surface an ordinary dancing school, yet it is bravely run with ambitious goals. Last year Puricelli’s conceit was to invite Carla Fracci (for her first public masterclass) together […]
Balanchine saves the day – a triple bill at La Scala: La Valse, Symphony in C and Scheherazade
An odd evening at La Scala saw Balanchine’s pure, sparkling choreography for Symphony in C sandwiched between two new contemporary creations on music which has already had phenomenally successful choreographies set to it: Ravel’s La Valse (Nijinska, Lifar, Balanchine, Ashton) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (Fokine). This new La Valse was choreographed by Stefania Ballone and Marco […]
La Scala Ballet returns to Paris with Ratmansky’s Swan Lake
After the success in Milan before the summer, La Scala now takes Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake to Paris for six performances at the Palais des Congrès. The production was coproduced with the Opernhaus in Zurich, where it had its premiere in February of this year. Casting is the same as in Milan, with Nicoletta Manni […]
Martina Arduino in Ratmansky’s Swan Lake – a ballet star is born at La Scala?
If you visit NASA’s website, they define a protostar as the “hot core at the heart of the collapsing cloud that will one day become a star”. 19-year-old Martina Arduino, who graduated from La Scala’s Ballet Academy just a year ago was entrusted last night, as her first ever principal role(s), with the Odette/Odile characters […]
Sarah Lamb makes her début at La Scala with Claudio Coviello in Manon
La Scala sometimes lets down its audience by casting a ‘local’ dancer when the star has cancelled. I apologise if I’m upsetting some of the company, but this is often a deluding experience resulting in frustration and anger from fans who feel cheated. When Natalia Osipova mysteriously pulled out from her two scheduled performances in […]
