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Are we ever honest enough to be unaffected by lies? This is the question asked by Henrik Ibsen’s drama Ghosts (Gengangere). Oswald Alving returns from a bohemian existence in Paris to small-town Norway. Encountering people who do not communicate, Oswald responds by becoming ironic and distant. He gradually learns more of the secrets that weigh on his family, as well as those inside himself. His mother, Mrs Alving, welcomes her much-missed son home – and slowly understands what, or whom, he has brought home with him. «Ghosts is a psychological thriller in which the characters learn more and more about their own stories,» says director Marit Moum Aune. «It’s about how the unsaid can grow to become insuperable. Immense courage is required to make peace with one’s illusions.» Together with the young, critically acclaimed choreographer Cina Espejord, she retells Ibsen’s play as a ballet. The pair feel the story is suited to dance because both its inner and outer brutality can be pitted against the power of dance. Ibsen’s Ghosts is an evocative production in a modern dance style. Nils Petter Molvær has composed new music, which he performs on-stage together with Jan Bang.

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Are we ever honest enough to be unaffected by lies? This is the question asked by Henrik Ibsen’s drama Ghosts (Gengangere). Oswald Alving returns from a bohemian existence in Paris to small-town Norway. Encountering people who do not communicate, Oswald responds by becoming ironic and distant. He gradually learns more of the secrets that weigh on his family, as well as those inside himself. His mother, Mrs Alving, welcomes her much-missed son home – and slowly understands what, or whom, he has brought home with him. «Ghosts is a psychological thriller in which the characters learn more and more about their own stories,» says director Marit Moum Aune. «It’s about how the unsaid can grow to become insuperable. Immense courage is required to make peace with one’s illusions.» Together with the young, critically acclaimed choreographer Cina Espejord, she retells Ibsen’s play as a ballet. The pair feel the story is suited to dance because both its inner and outer brutality can be pitted against the power of dance. Ibsen’s Ghosts is an evocative production in a modern dance style. Nils Petter Molvær has composed new music, which he performs on-stage together with Jan Bang.

The Norwegian National Ballet's Hedda Gabler is Henrik Ibsen's drama retold in a way you've never seen it before. After the premiere in 2017, both Norwegian and international critics praised director Marit Moum Aune's dance production, set to music by Nils Petter Molv�r. Hedda is furious, on the verge of being consumed with disappointment. After a six-month honeymoon in Europe she has returned home to set up home with her husband, J�rgen - but nothing has turned out the way she intended. And when her former lover Eilert L�vborg enters the picture, she reacts in a way that proves perilous for everyone - including herself. Hedda Gabler is one of world theatre's most well-known characters - an icon created by Henrik Ibsen. Is she cowardly or brave? Spoilt or stuck? Wicked or desperate? Our greatest actors have always found new ways to interpret this psychologically complex role. Now the talented dancers of the Norwegian National Ballet provide their own interpretation, adding another dimension to the drama. While the original play is an intense chamber play in which a lot is left unsaid, Moum Aune paints with a broad brush. Hedda's world opens up as we delve deeper into her relationships and background. We get to see major scenes that are only hinted at in Ibsen's text. The dancers in the eight central roles have all contributed to their own choreography, with each movement crucial in the telling of this intense story. Hedda Gabler is the follow-up to Moum Aune's first success with Ibsen as dance, in which she directed and choreographed Ibsen's Ghosts together with Cina Espejord. Both productions are among the Norwegian National Ballet's greatest successes, and are in high demand around the world. BONUS : Hedda Gabler, The Other Side A 52 min. Documentary behind the scenes of the Norwegian National Opera

Riccardo Chailly pays tribute to Maurice Ravel with a program of waltzes and wild reveries of ecstasy and elegance. He ushers us into Ravel's musical worlds filled with ever-changing colors, scents, and flavors: the pulsating three-quarter time of waltzes that reflect just how much the Great War transformed European culture, the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chlo�, and the relentless rhythms of Bol�ro. Magnifique! Riccardo Chailly, who was born in 1953 in Milan, studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, beginning his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he moved to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; starting in 2015, he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since the summer of 2016 he has held the position of Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

The famous traditional Chinese tale of La Fresque ('The Painting on the Wall') tells of two travellers who take shelter at a small temple, one of whom becomes so enraptured by the image of a beautiful girl in a fresco that he is transported into another dimension. Angelin Preljocaj, one of France's leading contemporary choreographers, explores this mysterious relationship between representation and reality with a spectacular and unforgettable ballet filled with dynamic action, emotive lyricism and powerful responses to the music of Nicolas Godin, one half of the celebrated music duo Air. La Fresque has been admired for it's 'breath-taking scenes' (La Terrasse) and it's 'dark and splendid beauty' (L'Humanit�).

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Recorded during the 2018 Donizetti Festival, Il Castello di Kenilworth was first staged at Naples’ San Carlo in 1829. Drawn from a novel by Sir Walter Scott and adapted by librettist Leone Tottola, this rare opera was unjustly long neglected. This recording features the original version, with the role of Warney entrusted to a tenor (which the composer changed into a baritone in the 1836 revision of the score).Il Castello di Kenilworth is the first of the several successful works to follow that Donizetti based on British history, introducing the character of Queen Elizabeth I, torn by the inner struggle between a monarch’s duty and a woman’s feelings. The fundamental pivot of the drama is the antagonism between the two female characters who both dwell and suffer in their loneliness, in a male-dominated world. The performance received excellent reviews, praising the richness of the costumes, the sobriety of the stage setting, and, mostly, the vocal and acting skills of the whole cast, which features first-rate singers like opera stars Jessica Pratt and Carmela Remigio, who share the stage with talented tenors Stefan Pop and emerging talent Xabier Anduaga “A first-class cast, with an imaginative production team, under the musical direction of Riccardo Frizza, have been assembled, and it is not an exaggeration to say that together they have produced a compelling case for “Il Castello di Kenilworth” to be given further consideration. […] It was musically engaging, full of bel canto charm, with some wonderful melodies, and notwithstanding its formulaic format, was dramatically convincingly. (Alan Neilson – Operawire)

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Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov star as tragic lovers Manon and Des Grieux in this performance of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, a classic of the Royal Ballet repertory. Nicholas Gerogiadis’s period designs set the ballet in the contrasting worlds of Paris Luxury and Louisiana swampland, while the intense emotion of MacMillan’s choreography is complemented by a score drawn from Massenet’s music. The impassioned pas de deux from Manon and Des Grieux drive this tragic story, and make Manon one of MacMillan’s most powerful dramas. “Kenneth MacMillan’s retelling of Abbe Prevost’s cautionary tale of a young man brought low by an amoral young beauty has been a mainstay of the Royal Ballet repertoire since 1974. The current revival is vividly played and danced by some first-rate casts.” (The Financial Times)

'The Passion according to Mark-A Passion after Auschwitz,' premiered in April 2017. The project was commissioned to French composer Micha�l Levinas by the Swiss association "Musique pour un temps pr�sent", as part of the events commemorating the 500th anniversary of Luther's reform. This original oratorio is not only a reinterpretation or a mere revisitation of the Passion, it painfully faces, indeed, the irreconcilable nature of the Passion and the Holocaust. What is the object of this Passion after Auschwitz, which revolves around what can link two musical traditions, two religions that have been separated by barbarism. Which music, which tradition, which language can the composer use in order to express this double silence, both historical and theological, both human and divine? "After the Holocaust, is it possible to compose without crying and trembling?", Micha�l Levinas asks. It is not about anger or compassion. Because of the subtle polyphonies written for the chorus, the voices and the orchestra, and also because of the way the different languages - Old French, Yiddish, Aramaic, German - create meaning out of one another, both the structure and the musical language of this Passion are incredibly intricate. But they are so for a reason: by putting side by side western musical traditions and the tragic component of modern history, Levinas manages to "shake," during the artistic process, the future of the Holy Language and of the Gospel after Auschwitz. What separates therefore the Gospel of Mark from the Jewish prayer for the dead (Kaddish) or from the El male Rahamim, or from the two poems by Paul Celan ending the work, is not so much a question of representation, but more accurately it is a way to make the tragedy resound, without any artifice and without any safety net.

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For the first time ever, a Chinese symphony orchestra is performing at Lucerne Festival. If yet more evidence that classical music has long since become a global language were needed, it would be this appearance by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under music director Long Yu. These musicians from Asia have planned a program of three Russian composers. Aaron Avshalomov, who was born in 1894, served as a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory, where he taught from 1919 on; he was one of the founders of China’s Western musical tradition. His tone poem Hutongs of Peking captures the sounds and voices that once echoed through the narrow alleys of the Chinese capital. Tchaikovsky’s immortal Violin Concerto will be performed by one of the leading virtuosos of our time, Maxim Vengerov. And the orchestra will demonstrate the degree to which a composer under Stalin had to wrestle with his own identity with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Here the composer reacts to the political demand to be popular and monumental – which leads to an absurdly overstated “jubilant” conclusion.

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Weber was at the forefront of the rise of German Romantic opera and sought to dethrone Rossini from his position as the leading operatic composer in Europe. In his breakthrough and most popular opera Der Freischütz (‘The Marksman’) composed in 1821, he succeeded in his aim of establishing a truly German form. Turning to the folklore and folk songs of his native land he took a story of a marksman who makes a pact with the Devil, vesting it with powerful intensity – not least in the famous Wolf’s Glen scene – and an astonishing control of orchestral color and atmosphere.

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REVIEW:

Goodness, but Der Freischütz is a problematic opera for today! You can’t ignore it because it’s instrumental in the development of German musical Romanticism; several scholars would even call it its progenitor. Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner and Strauss would have been unthinkable without it, and even Beethoven, who was no friend of Weber’s, was impressed. However, it poses an all but insoluble problem in staging it for modern audiences. Its setting is so grounded in the Romantic German Forest that any attempts to remove it from there or to update its setting invariably fall flat or seem reductive (or simply indulgent). However, staging it in its original setting risks seeming like a parody of blood-and-soil National Socialism. This dilemma means that, more often than not, it’s one of those works where you’re far better to retreat into the pictures of your own mind’s eye, and happily we have lots of good CD recordings to help us do that, most notably those from Keilberth, Kleiber, Harnoncourt and Davis.

This 2017 La Scala production is a game-changer, however, and it does the best job I’ve yet seen of putting the opera on stage in a way that is neither daft nor wilfully obstructive. Matthias Hartmann goes for a mixture of the specific and the abstract. There are plenty of trees to put us in the forest, but well-placed strips of lighting suggest the church, the hut and the mountainscape behind. The costumes are a quirky mix of national dresses – ranging from Scotland to the Balkans – but, more importantly, Hartmann also gets into the work’s dark psychological possibilities, wondering whether Max’s obsession with the magic bullets is a mirror for his wider insecurities. He doesn’t shun the supernatural, however: various devils appear to direct Kaspar’s actions, and occasionally we see demonic creatures that might have been lifted out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Importantly, this eclecticism works. It poses many questions and gives every facet of the opera its due without getting trapped in any of them, and that alone makes this the opera’s most successful outing on film to date.

The musical performances are excellent too. Who would have thought that the La Scala orchestra would be so good at this cornerstone of the German repertoire? Their playing of the overture is one of the best you’ll hear, with dark, suggestive strings at the opening, a heart-stopping quartet of horns, and a crackling sense of drama in the main Allegro. Myung-Whun Chung is a natural with the whole score, too, shaping the unfolding drama with an unfailingly right sense of where it is going and how it is going to get there.

The singers are top-notch. Julia Kleiter is radiant, luxuriously beautiful in her two big arias without a hint of simpering, and Eva Liebau’s Ännchen is a delightfully light-hearted contrast. Both are fully comfortable in the tessitura and are a joy to listen to as well as to watch. Michael König has a tiny touch of abrasion in his Heldentenor voice, but I could forgive him for his heroic tone, and Stephen Milling does a wonderful deus ex machina as the Hermit. Best of all, though, is Günther Groissböck, whose Kaspar sets the stage alight, almost literally so in the Wolf’s Glen scene. He’s a powerhouse to watch, and he uses his big bass voice with agility and athleticism to bring the part to life.

I approached this with a good degree of scepticism, but I found it completely compelling and was totally won over. To my great surprise, it solves the problems of staging Der Freischütz for our time. With its compelling production and its brilliant musicianship, it is now a clear first choice for Der Freischütz on film, and it’s by some margin the best opera film I’ve seen in 2019 so far.

– MusicWeb International (Simon Thompson)

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Nicola Vaccaj belonged to the Neapolitan school: a pupil of Paisiello and contemporary of Rossini, whose fame somehow obscured his own, he was well known and appreciated at his time, to the point that an extract from the last Act of his Giulietta e Romeo was chosen to substitute the same aria in Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi for an 1832 performance and this shift has remained common practice until the end of the 19th century. Therefore it’s hard to believe that Vaccaj’s most notable success was neglected for such a long time as it “is an opera that could easily hold its own among the better-known works in the bel canto canon. It has taut plot, with a strong libretto, written by Romani, and is full of well-constructed ensemble pieces”(Alan Neilson – Operawire) Within a traditional, 16th century setting, director Cecilia Ligorio choses to convey a sense of doom and tragedy which the entire work is imbued with, from the choice of costumes and settings to the stage lighting. “It really was a well-paced, and visually pleasing production that successfully captured the love and hatred which drives the narrative forward.”(Alan Neilson – Operawire)

For the first time ever, a Chinese symphony orchestra is performing at Lucerne Festival. If yet more evidence that classical music has long since become a global language were needed, it would be this appearance by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under music director Long Yu. These musicians from Asia have planned a program of three Russian composers. Aaron Avshalomov, who was born in 1894, served as a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory, where he taught from 1919 on; he was one of the founders of China's Western musical tradition. His tone poem Hutongs of Peking captures the sounds and voices that once echoed through the narrow alleys of the Chinese capital. Tchaikovsky's immortal Violin Concerto will be performed by one of the leading virtuosos of our time, Maxim Vengerov. And the orchestra will demonstrate the degree to which a composer under Stalin had to wrestle with his own identity with Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Here the composer reacts to the political demand to be popular and monumental - which leads to an absurdly overstated "jubilant" conclusion.

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Acclaimed dancer-choreographer Akram Khan ‘speaks tremendously of tremendous things’ (Financial Times) and this new Giselle reimagines the classic narrative ballet for the 21st Century. Giselle had become a former garment factory migrant worker, Albrecht, a member of the wealthy factory-owning class. An abandoned ‘ghost factory’ haunted by the memory of female migrant workers, many of them victims of industrial accidents, replaces the traditional glade of Act II. There, Giselle’s desire to break the cycle of violence will lead her to reconciliation with Albrecht and his release from the retributive justice of the Wilis. “Giselle has been transformed for the ENB by Akram Khan into the ballet event of the year. Staggeringly beautiful and utterly devastating, it is an electrifying triumph which any dance or theatre fan must not miss.” (The Daily Express)

Fantastic storylines abound in opera, but these grand musical settings of much-loved fairytales embrace the imaginary, giving free rein to dreams. The Royal Opera's acclaimed Hansel and Gretel combines the directors' characteristic wit and knack for dark comedy with the story's enduring charm. Glyndebourne's recounting of the quick-witted fox's escape into nature balances the opera's whimsy and mysticism. Opera North's enchanting staging of Jonathan Dove's 21st opera is a wittily inventive feast for the eyes and ears, shining new light on Collodi's original tale, by turns magical and dark. "What an inspired and exciting opera this is. Gorgeous characters, a busy story rich in incident and an exhilarating mix of music. Delight follows delight." (The Stage - The Adventures of Pinocchio) "Not only was the production a great one to attend as a first opera, but the [video] is perhaps as good an introduction to opera as one could hope for, a success on almost every front." (Musicweb International - Hansel und Gretel) "Lucy Crowe's glowingly sung Vixen... Tom Pye's Hockneyish designs are evocative of a world of childish wonder, with animal costumes which cleverly suggest human characteristic." (The Daily Telegraph - The Cunning Little Vixen)

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The festive series of concerts to celebrate the inauguration of Andris Nelsons and the 275th anniversary of the Gewandhausorchester concluded with a riveting performance of two of music history’s great symphonic works. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is one of only two that Mozart wrote in a minor key, which only adds to its singular reception in his canon of symphonies. Tchaikovsky was an admirer of Mozart’s music and paired the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, which he himself conducted, with dances from Mozart’s “Idomeneo”. The “Pathétique” would become his legacy as Tchaikovsky died only a few days after its premiere. Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With these positions, and in leading a pioneering alliance between two such esteemed institutions, Grammy Award-winning Nelsons is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today.

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The festive series of concerts to celebrate the inauguration of Andris Nelsons and the 275th anniversary of the Gewandhausorchester concluded with a riveting performance of two of music history’s great symphonic works. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is one of only two that Mozart wrote in a minor key, which only adds to its singular reception in his canon of symphonies. Tchaikovsky was an admirer of Mozart’s music and paired the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, which he himself conducted, with dances from Mozart’s “Idomeneo”. The “Pathétique” would become his legacy as Tchaikovsky died only a few days after its premiere. Andris Nelsons is Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and is Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With these positions, and in leading a pioneering alliance between two such esteemed institutions, Grammy Award-winning Nelsons is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned and innovative conductors on the international scene today.

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L’Étoile did much to establish Chabrier as a major force on the Parisian stage and his contemporary Henri Duparc praised him specifically for creating a French comic genre, both funny and musical – described as something of a French Die Meistersinger. The fanciful story is set in an imaginary kingdom and all, naturally, ends well. However, despite the slight plot line L’Étoile is something of a pivotal work, a unique example of French 19th-century light opera, orchestrated with great sophistication and flooded with gossamer wit. This production, featuring Stephane d’Oustrac, Christophe Mortagne, and Helene Guilmette, is a co-production of the Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam and Francois Roussillon et Associes.

“Something wicked this way comes…” Returning home from battle, the victorious Macbeth meets three witches on the heath. Driven by their disturbing prophecies, he sets out on the path to murder. This contemporary production of Shakespeare’s darkest psychological thriller marks both Christopher Eccleston’s RSC debut and the return of Niamh Cusack to the Company. This recording was produced live from Stratford-Upon-Avon. "Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack make a gripping central couple." (The Stage 5 Stars) "Urgent and wonderfully sinister." (Evening Standard 4 Stars)

For the first time in modern times, Festival della Valle d'Itria stages the Neapolitan version of Handel's Rinaldo, a pastiche with a Mediterranean allure which Leonardo Leo assembled in 1718 and which was considered lost until a few years ago. The story behind this most rare opera is captivating: the score of Handel's masterpiece was illegally brought to Naples by the castrato singer Nicol� Grimaldi, who first interpreted Rinaldo in London. Once in Italy, the work was rehashed by Leo as well as other local composers, who adapted it to the taste of the local Neapolitan public, adding some intermezzos and amusing characters. Director Giorgio Sangati turns this work into a "ba-rock" opera set in the 1980's, where the struggle between Christians and Turks becomes a battle between pop-rock singers (the Christians) and dark-metal ones (the Turks). These two factions represent two opposite perspectives on love and life. Conductor Fabio Luisi is at the head of the baroque Ensemble La Scintilla, a group of specialists in the baroque repertoire. Excellent reviews for the vocal cast who endured an almost 4 hour performance, special mentions to Carmela Remigio (Armida) who was defined "vocally majestic and most convincing in her acting skills", whereas Teresa Iervolino (Rinaldo) impressed the critics for her vocal and acting skills en travesti and her ability "to convey all the melancholic shades of Handel's music" (Luca Ciammarughi, classicaviva. Com).

I puritani is one of Bellini's most creative and influential masterpieces, a bel canto opera stamped with vocal and orchestral writing of intoxicating beauty and dramatic intensity. Set in England in the Civil War shortly before Oliver Cromwell's triumph, it involves romantic and political intrigues that drew from Bellini music of melodic raptness and melancholic depth. It also inspired him to compose some of his most breathtakingly virtuosic passages, notably Elvira's Mad Scene, that call for the utmost in theatrical power. This production includes all the music performed at the work's Paris premiere.

Ivan Repusic, who made his debut as Principal Conductor of the Munchner Rundfunkorchester in the autumn of 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi's "Luisa Miller", now presents a further and lesser-known masterpiece by the famous Italian opera composer. The concert performance of Verdi's early stage work "I due Foscari" was recorded on November 25, 2018 at the Munich Prinzregententheater. Outstanding performers provide an authentic atmosphere and vocal magnificence, and no less a person than the multiple-award-winning Italian baritone Leo Nucci was successfully engaged for the role of the Doge of Venice. This highlight of the Munich music scene from late last year is now available from BR-KLASSIK as a double album. Verdi's early masterpiece "I due Foscari" was the first of the operas he wrote for the Teatro Argentina in Rome. He had already worked on the material (Lord Byron's drama "The Two Foscari"), and, after a first subject had been rejected by the Roman censors, Verdi returned to it and had the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave. Although the opera's premiere on November 3, 1844 was only moderately successful and Verdi would even distance himself from it later on, the work was still frequently performed up to the 1870s. It was rediscovered during the early 1950s and has since become a fixed part of the international opera repertoire. The concert performance (sung in the Italian original) in Munich's Prinzregententheater received great acclaim from audience and critics alike, again justifying the Munchner Rundfunkorchester's strategy of successfully reviving underrated music-theatrical works by means of standard-setting performances. Ivan Repusic conducts a genuine theatrical Verdi here: vital, robust, fiery and extremely lively.

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Founded in Tel-Aviv in 1964, the Batsheva Dance Company has been headed since 1990 by Ohad Naharin: an incredible dancer with musical training, who has a true passion for movement. Through his “Gaga” technique, a choreographic vocabulary that explores the sensations and the availability of the bodies, he made his mark on the dance world and offered the company its finest hours. In 2015, Tomer Heymann’s documentary “Mr. Gaga” paid tribute to the Naharin phenomenon, its influence on the contemporary dance scene and in pop culture. This diptych aims to broaden the Batsheva videography by, as a showcase of Naharin’s aesthetics and demanding technique, featuring two of the most emblematic works in the company’s current repertoire, both filmed in Paris: Naharin’s Virus and Last Work. A collective creation, Naharin’s Virus is, in a way, a dialogue between Naharin’s choreographic style and the Batsheva dancers’. Its starting point is the text Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) by the Austrian playwright Peter Handke. An aesthetic manifesto, it is also a political piece: it is worth noting, for instance, that it features traditional music written by a Palestinian composer… A carefully negotiated balance between frenzy and meditation, a frail and unstable whole saturated with an enigmatic opacity and symbolism, Last Work is also a politically committed, ethically-charged piece reflecting on war, peace, oppression and coercion. While dance is stretched up to its limits, Naharin’s choreographic gesture calls for a new outlook on our contemporary world, its violence, its possibilities, its future.

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This special collection from The Royal Ballet includes nine of Frederick Ashton’s most loved short ballets, which showcase the range of his style. The pure classical perfection of Symphonic Variations is contrasted with the light-hearted exuberance of Voices of Spring. Both are complemented by the passion and drama of Marguerite and Armand and the romance and comedy of The Two Pigeons and The Dream. The collection is completed by Rhapsody, La Valse, Monotones and Méditation from Thaïs, four of the most iconic abstract works created by The Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer. "...a bill which revealed the variety of the Royal’s founder choreographer from the perfumed sway of La Valse, to the lyrical loveliness of the Thais pas de deux, and the audacious joy of Voices of Spring. Monotones I and II, on the other hand, show his geometric modernism and his ability to conjure a kind of mysterious beauty by the simplest of means... the performances throughout the evening made the choreography look as fresh and important as ever." (The Daily Telegraph) "Frederick Ashton's 1962 ballet is swooningly romantic and unashamedly old fashioned. The Parisian artist's garret setting might be a cliche but the action is alive with invention. What begins as a comic ballet glides imperceptibly into a more serious realm as the two immature lovers come to terms with erotic distraction and locate the adult within themselves. Ashton's birdlike steps, with flapping elbows and nodding heads are sharp and funny at first as the dancers shake a tail feather across the stage before softening and stretching into gestures of greater poignancy." (The Stage - The two Pigeons 5 Stars)

This special collection from The Royal Ballet includes nine of Frederick Ashton's most loved short ballets, which showcase the range of his style. The pure classical perfection of Symphonic Variations is contrasted with the light-hearted exuberance of Voices of Spring. Both are complemented by the passion and drama of Marguerite and Armand and the romance and comedy of The Two Pigeons and The Dream. The collection is completed by Rhapsody, La Valse, Monotones and M�ditation from Tha�s, four of the most iconic abstract works created by The Royal Ballet's founding choreographer. "... a bill which revealed the variety of the Royal's founder choreographer from the perfumed sway of La Valse, to the lyrical loveliness of the Thais pas de deux, and the audacious joy of Voices of Spring. Monotones I and II, on the other hand, show his geometric modernism and his ability to conjure a kind of mysterious beauty by the simplest of means... The performances throughout the evening made the choreography look as fresh and important as ever." (The Daily Telegraph) "Frederick Ashton's 1962 ballet is swooningly romantic and unashamedly old fashioned. The Parisian artist's garret setting might be a cliche but the action is alive with invention. What begins as a comic ballet glides imperceptibly into a more serious realm as the two immature lovers come to terms with erotic distraction and locate the adult within themselves. Ashton's birdlike steps, with flapping elbows and nodding heads are sharp and funny at first as the dancers shake a tail feather across the stage before softening and stretching into gestures of greater poignancy." (The Stage - The two Pigeons 5 Stars)

Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour was Rameau’s first exploration of the world of Egyptian mythology. Its libretto called for magic, gods and extraordinary natural effects to which he responded with one of his most comprehensively brilliant scores, blending a gallant and pastoral inspiration of extreme refinement with powerful vocal and orchestral writing. In his use of a fluid and continuous flow of music, in the theatrical deployment of choruses, and in the blurring of the distinction between recitatives and airs, Rameau entered a new and pioneering stage of development. The score heard in this performance is the authoritative version.