La Scala ballet season 2013-14

Posted on June 3, 2013

The Ballet of La Scala, Milan has announced its plans for the 2013–14 season. It will open on December 17 with an evening of works by Alexei Ratmansky, including Concerto DSCH, Russian Seasons and a new work. Performers will include Svetlana Zakharova, Roberto Bolle and Massimo Murru.

The ballet and the opera companies join forces in January, when two ballets will be performed alongside Mascagni’s one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana. The ballet company dance a revival of Fokine’s Le Spectre de la rose and a new production of Roland Petit’s La Rose malade. Inspired by William Blake’s poem, and originally made for Maya Plisetskaya, the ballet is danced to the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, with costumes by Yves Saint-Laurent. Leonid Sarafanov and Ivan Vasiliev will both make guest appearances in Le Spectre de la rose, while Maria Eichwald will guest in La Rose malade.

A run of Balanchine’s Jewels starts in March, with guest artists including Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in Rubies and Polina Semionova and Friedeman Vogel in Diamonds. Semionova, Zakharova and David Hallberg will appear in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Swan Lake.

In May, the company stage a Roland Petit Double Bill of Le Jeune homme et la Mort, with both Vasiliev and Bolle dancing the hero during the run, and Pink Floyd Ballet.

The season ends with revivals of Nureyev’s Don Quixote (including performances by Zakharova, Osipova, Vasiliev, Sarafanov and Denis Matvienko) and MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, with casts including Zakharova, Bolle and Murru and guest artists Marianela Nuñez, Osipova and Vasiliev. See the website of La Scala for details.

Picture: Svetlana Zakharova and Eris Nezha in Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH. Photograph: Rudy Amisona, courtesy of Teatro alla Scala.

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.