Balletomanes traveling to Italy this summer should not miss a performance at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Besides being the home of a legendary opera house, La Scala boasts a government-supported academy of ballet. Its active corps de ballet is complete with soloists and world-renown prima ballerinas. The 1993 season offers a tribute to Tchaikovsky, opening with an extravagant production of The Nutcracker. Giuseppe Carbone, artistic director of La Scala Ballet for the last two years, chose to stage the late Rudolph Nureyev's adaptation of the hundred-year-old ballet, preferring it for its more psychological treatment of E.T.A. Hoffman's classic Christmas story. In this version, Clara becomes the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the tyrannical one-eyed Drosselmeyer is metamorphosed into the Prince-Cavalier. Clara, the child, becomes a young woman awakening to love. It is she who dances the love pas de deux that climaxes the ballet.
Isabel Seabra, one of the youngest prima ballerinas of the company, danced an enchanting Clara. She portrayed a young and vibrant child who bobs excitedly at her Christmas and later pouts dejectedly over her broken doll. But when she journeys through the Land of Snow and Kingdom of Sweets, Seabra is transformed into a radiant and elegant princess to dance triumphantly beside her prince. Maximiliano Guerra, a frequent guest dancer at La Scala, portrayed a menacing Drosselmeyer and enchanting prince.
The successful production was due, above all, to Nicholas Georgiadis' magical set design. The Nutcracker proved to be a spectacle in which inventiveness and narration were well blended in a pleasant abundance of theatrical effects. Georgiadis fills the stage with surrealistic masks, sensational costumes, and visionary backgrounds that stand out against an enchanted light. His scenography reveals the richness of the fairy tale, in the fullest sense of the word.
It proved to be a romantic spring, too. La Scala Ballet performed John Cranko's powerful dance drama Onegin. Set to various works by Tchaikovsky, Cranko's 1965 choreography is based on Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin's great verse-novel. Onegin offers the poignant drama of a man blighted by his own haughty and ill-controlled temperament. In the first act, Onegin scornfully rejects the ardent love of a dreamy and romantic young girl, Tatiana. Instead, he provokes his best friend Lensky by flirting with his fiancée, Olga. The scene ends tragically when Lensky challenges his arrogant friend to a duel and is killed. Onegin roams aimlessly for years, attempting to escape his own futility. He realizes the enormity of his mistakes when years later he encounters Tatiana, now a beautiful, elegant woman married to a wealthy prince. He declares his love
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