One of the oldest ballets in the world is returning to the Ural Opera. In 1832, La sylphide was staged in Paris by Filippo Taglioni. His daughter Maria performed the title role and after the premiere woke up as the main ballerina of the planet. The sylph drove mad not only the hero of the play, the Scotsman James, but also many viewers. Among them was the Danish choreographer August Bournonville. He decided to move the ballet to his native Copenhagen, but the musical score turned out to be too expensive for the Royal Theatre. Then Bournonville ordered new music and composed his La sylphide. Taglioni's performance died, and the Danes carefully preserved the version of Bournonville and opened it to the world in the middle of the twentieth century.
The authors of the current production have chosen a radically conservative path — La sylphide, as it could be seen in the century before last. The performance based on the choreography of Bournonville is resumed by Elena Pankova, formerly a leading soloist of the Mariinsky Theater, prima ballerina of the Bavarian Ballet and the English National Ballet, now a teacher-tutor of the Yekaterinburg troupe. Her assistants also danced at the Mariinsky Theatre, where the Danish La sylphide turns more than forty years old — former ballet dancer Daria Pavlenko and Ural Ballet teacher Alexei Semenov.
Artists Alona Pikalova and Elena Trubetskova focused on the performance of the Royal Danish Ballet, but "filled it with details, reworked each fragment so that the design was unique and associated only with this production." The interior of the first act is assembled according to historical patterns, and even the fireplace into which the Sylph flies has a pedigree. The Magic Forest of the second act is a fantasy based on the paintings by William Turner and John Constable, contemporaries of La sylphide.
The best work of a costume designer. Musical Theatre
/ Elena Trubetskova