I was just returning in my car from a business appointment and was listening to Anna Netreblo's CD Sempre Libera which has arias from Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti and Puccini.

And as I listened to several of these arias I saw ballet in my mind's eye. Of course, some opera includes dance and La Traviata comes to mind... and of course, ballet that I am familiar with is choreographed to orchestral music.

Arias are part of a libretto, a storyline and of course this would certainly be reflected in the choreography and staging.

So my rather naive questions are...

Have an choreographers done choreography to opera... such as the lovely arias on Netrebko's CD? To my ear they sounded like they could be wonderful ballet.

If this has been done can you point me to this... and if it hasn't been attempted do you know the reason why? If not, is there some sort on invisible barrier to the practice of ballet choreography of opera arias?

As a side note to this idea... As much as I enjoy opera and some of the amazing productions such as the Met Opera's Zeferelli La Traviata etc... ballet is so elegant and visually much more "musical" to look at. Stunning as Ms Netrebko may be watching her sing, it does not compare to a pas de deux of a Vishneva and Malakhov for example. I must say that some opera productions are stunning visually.

I imagine a diffculty here would be that dramatic time, ballet time and opera time are very different. (Sorry if my terms are clumsy.) "Dramatic time" is faster than "ballet time," which in turn is much faster than "opera time." Think of how long it would take for Pushkin's Tatiana to recite her farewell to Onegin. Then compare that hypothetical length with the length of the final pas de deux in Cranko's ballet and the final duet of Tchaikovsky's opera, which is quite long indeed.

When Cranko was choreographing his ballet he used Tchaikovsky, but not a note from the opera. Likewise, MacMillan used Massenet for Manon, but again nothing from his opera. There have been several stagings of Lady of the Camellias, but the two versions I've seen used Chopin rather than Verdi's Traviata.

Ultimately I think certain plots lend themselves more to some dramatic forms than others. I'll probably sound like a Philistine, but I think that Romeo & Juliet works better as a ballet than as a play. To my mind, the sight of two dancers pitching themselves recklessly at each other through space captures the exhilarating essence of young love much more effectively than even Shakespeare's poetry. (And definitely more effectively than Gounod's opera, which, to my ears, doesn't even sound like Shakespeare.) I think Othello works best as an opera. A tenor striving with all his might to be heard over a blaring orchestra while singing "Si pel ciel marmoreo giuro" captures the essence of jealous fury perfectly. (Besides "Sangue! Sangue! Sangue!" sounds so much better than "O, blood, blood, blood!") As for the ruthless politicking of Macbeth, I think it's best left to dramatic actors.

Certainly, I've seen choreography to operatic arias of the Baroque period, but these ballets never attempted to put across the content of the original libretto.

I was not thinking of a ballet choreographed to entire or even edited opera score/libretto. But some opera when I am not aware of the libretto is music with voice and the words are often barely intelligible to those who speak the language anyway.

I have seen ballet done to contemporary music so obviously some choreographers choose the music without a libretto... So to restate the question... has any choreographer selected and aria and done a dance "around" or to it? Not story ballet... non story ballet (don't know the lexicon).

For opera lovers on Ballet Talk... have you ever thought about a dance to an aria? I am getting the impression that this has not been done...

others will answer this more fully than i, but speaking from what i know best, ruth page was one choreographer whose "specialty" was operas into ballets, using the music of the opera for the ballet score (adapted somewhat in some cases). she did:

Camille (La Traviata)
Revenge (Il Trovatore)
Carmen (Carmen, 3 different versions, one of which, entitled Guns and Castanets, featured Don Jose as a loyalist soldier and Escamillo as an aviator)
Mephistophela (Faust)
Die Fledermaus (Die Fledermaus, or Doctor Bat)
The Merry Widow (OK, so that's an operetta) as The Merry Widow and previously as Vilia.
La Favorita (La Favorita)
The Barber of Seville (Susanna and the Barber)

Not sure whether the list is exhaustive.

Two years ago Margie Gillis choreographed a plotless piece for Alberta Ballet called Rivers Without Bridges set to operatic arias by Handel. I'm sure there are many other examples.

As for more literal interpretations, there was that production of Orpheus and Eurydice that Balanchine did at the Met back in 1936 which was very controversial because he consigned the singers to the orchestra pit. Decades later Mark Morris did the same thing with Dido and Aeneas and no one batted an eye.

Thanks Pmeja... How were they? Well received? Are there any videos of these works? Seems like when it's done.. they do an entire opera and not selected arias... Is this true?

Some were pretty well received and some had more exposure than others. One is available (or was) on video, and that is the Merry Widow, with a cast of dancers mostly from the New York City Ballet, and starring Patricia McBride and Peter Martins, Rebecca Wright and George de la Pena. There aer a lot of films, and if you are in New York, you can go to the Library at Lincoln Center to see them. Some are complete, some are not. Miss Page was pretty good about having her ballets filmed, so there 's a lot there to see.

Was The Merry Widow the Roland Hynd version done by ABT and PNB?

Roland Petit choreographed La Chauve-souris (Die Fledermaus), and La Scala Ballet performed it this season.

There are more ballets to song cycles, like Robert Joffrey's Remembrances to Richard Wagner's Traume, where the dancing reflects the theme of the song. Tudor's Dark Elegies was set to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

the merry widow with mcbride and martins is the ruth page version. i think the ronald hynd one was out there on video too at one point, though. miss page's fledermaus was also done on television, though it wasn't released that i know of, with galina and valery panov, richard cragun, marianna tcherkassky and danilo radojevic.

(Which I would have known if I had read your first post carefully. )

The Australian Ballet and National Ballet of Canada productions have been filmed.

Of course, when choreographers undertake ballets like Carmen, Fledermaus and Merry Widow, they nearly always have the scores reorchestrated to remove the vocal parts.

SanderO, as regards your question whether choreographers ever do a work to an opera aria alone and not to the whole opera, it certainly has been done by the South African Ballet Theatre. I can't remember what work it was - I think something by Puccini. Using opera arias for classical ballet solos is also quite a popular practice in our local ballet competitions (usually teachers chose an orchestrated version of the aria, but not always). As regards using an opera score as a whole for a ballet, Cape Town City Ballet performs La traviata (Verdi), Carmen (Bizet), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus - Strauss) and The Merry Widow (Lehar) to the original opera scores (without the singing, of course).

Hasn't Roland Petit used part of Tchaikovsky's opera score for his ballet of Pique Dame, recently staged for the Bolshoi?

Doh, Kent Stowell used the pastorale from Pique Dame, complete with female vocals, in the first act of his Nutcracker. He choreographed a masque for two men and one woman, in which the dancers hold Nutcracker, Mouse King, and Pirlipat masks on sticks, and the woman dances in ballet slippers. They recreate the story told at the beginning of the ballet by three children dressed as these characters, a story familiar from Mark Morris' The Hard Nut: the mouse bites Princess Pirlipat, and she turns from a beautiful princess to an ugly one.

I think it's just about the loveliest thing about the production.


I believe he used Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.

John Cranko's Lady and the Fool has a score which was arranged by Charles McKerras consisting of extracts from early Verdi operas. At that time these were not very well known and seldom performed. Now, it's a different matter.
And of course the same team used Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas for Pineapple Poll.

I remember seeing a not entirely successful ballet solo to Maria Callas' recording of "Casta Diva", the great aria from Norma, but no longer remember who danced it or even what theater I saw it in. Perhaps someone here remembers the event better.

There are certainly ballets galore set to ballet music from opera: Balanchine's Ballo della Regina from Verdi's Don Carlos (the French version); Donizetti Variations (from Dom Sebastien); Sonnambula to Bellini music from La Sonnambula & other of his operas (wonderfully stitched together by Rieti for the ballet); Robbins' Four Seasons from Verdi's Les Vepres Sicilienne - the French version of I Vespri Siciliani - along with some I Lombardi & something else which escapes me for the moment.

For Ballo, Balanchine loosely used the theme of the ballet in the opera. A ball is given by King Phillip to honor his bride, Elisabetta (Isabella, actually but that's off subject). A ballet is part of the entertainment. It is about undersea creatures who find a great pearl - La Pelegrina - which Phillip then presents to Elisabetta. Centuries later Richard Burton presented La Pelegrina to another Elizabeth.

This one? (4th paragraph or so down):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...752C0A9669C8B63

It's a pity that La Peregrina is almost never performed in context. Don Carlos is a very long opera even with the ballet removed, but it would be nice to see it in its original grand opera form. The opera would still be shorter than Meistersinger! I'm pretty sure that the La Scala video of Vespri siciliani, while performed in Italian, does include the Four Seasons ballet. Like Robbins, Kenneth MacMillan also choreographed a separate ballet to this music. In general I wish more choreographers would follow Balanchine's lead and rescue ballet music discarded from operas.

I wish so too. Most of the Grand Operas written for Paris in the mid 19th century had ballets; it was a required element, as it were. Even Wagner had to write a ballet for Tanhauser for it's Parisian permiere.

I remember seeing on a video a ballet of dead nuns from Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable. Wild stuff.


I have to disagree though on adding say Verdi's ballets back into his French operas. For me they are just too long. I've really cut back my opera going because I get to antsy at these 4 hour evenings, particularly at the Met where the intermissions are interminable. Also in that era, attendence was much more casual. The audience would feel free to come late, leave early and wander in and out during the performances. They weren't the (somewhat) more disciplined things they are today.

And let's not talk about the length of Meistersinger!!!!

I'd rather see the ballet music lifted out and used on it's own.

Nope but this sounds a lot more interesting than the one I saw.

I remember it being en pointe, the ballerina in white flowy costume.

I also remember closing my eyes and just listening to Maria.

I've always said that I'd only consider seeing that opera live if I could listen to the overture then leave to go shopping, have dinner, maybe visit a museum, and come back 5 hours later for the prize song and final chorus. :grinning-smiley-001: Unfortunately, opera houses frown on that casual attendance thing these days.

In Gotterdammerung, I always want to hear the Norns, leave for drinks, come back for Brunnhilde/Waltraute's scene, leave for appetizers, come back for Hagen's Watch and Hagen/Alberich's scene, leave for dinner, and come back for the death of Siegfried through the end.

I'm not sure those scenes would make a terribly coherent libretto, though.

This thread is veering... but I just came from Zuaberflote and the whole Met production is visually stunning and there is some ballet/point by the birds in Act II. The Met preoductionn of the Magic Flute may not be to everyone's liking but it is amazing to see... no reason to leave for tea.

I have found most of the Met productions visually very powerful though not all the music in every opera is riviting the way a ballet seems to usually be.

But coming back to the original question of this thread... I was really not seeking entire operas that were done as ballets... but some lyrical arias... almost the way ABT did some of Sinatra songs.. short pieces...

At just over an hour in length (as has been advertised) not much time, let alone reason, for tea.

I happened to be crossing Lincoln Center Plaza one day as a photographer was posing cast members on the Met's balcony. I can vouch for "stunning," even without the sets and with natural midday light.

SanderO, as I said, I have seen the South African Ballet Theatre (formerly PACT) perform a work to an opera aria as a self-standing piece, and I also just remembered that when the Royal Danish Ballet gave a combined guest performance with SABT(I think in 2004) they put on an experimental one-act ballet. It was The Little Matchgirl and contained a solo to an opera aria. Neither event was that great a success, however, and I can't remember either the dancers or what aria it was.

I think one of the main problems with using opera arias for ballet is that the dancer simply can't hold that arabesque for as long as the singer holds his high C. As a result the choreographer has to choreograph very much "through the music" rather than "to the music" and IMO it takes a very good choreographer to do that successfully without creating what I call a "run on" piece, with too little phrasing, rest and climax. In short, I think ballet works to opera arias will become too "busy" because the dancers simply cannot sustain motion for as long as the singer can sustain his voice, with the result that the dancer has to perform four different steps in the time that the singer holds a single note. Not to mention it being extremely exhausting for the dancers.

I think this is an extremely important factor to consider. Ballet is frequently an anaerobic activity, not unlike sprinting, which is why the average classical variation rarely exceeds a minute and a half. (Shorter for very fast variations, perhaps a bit longer for adagio variations during which a dancer can actually breathe.) After that the body simply runs out of oxygen. But some arias can go on for 20 minutes. Arias are written with breaks for the singer during which the orchestra plays by itself. It would be difficult to pull off something similar in dance.

I imagine one would have to perhaps use a soloist and small corps or something like that.

A 20 minute aria, yikes!

You're right,about the stamina for a dancer and a singer being timed differently. But a way around it would be , in say a 20 minute piece, to have the dancers used in a relay fashion. Dancer one starts, dances for a few minutes, dancer two, or a grouping of dancers, takes over, and so forth.

I just saw something like this last month in Dark Elegies. Each of the Mahler songs was asigned to a group of dancers, but within the song the dancing was divided up a bit.

I am neither dancer or choreographer but I sense that some above are interpreting this question too literally.

Why does a choreographed aria have to be for a single dancer or a pas de deux? It could be like a mini ballet even... I would think it depends on the length of the aria... and most that I am familiar with are not 20 minutes long... In fact, they may be too short to develop something interesting for dance. (I am reminded of a Polina Seminova video I have seen of a "pop song" which was only a few minutes..)

On another "note" there was a John Rockwell review in the NY Times this morning of Richard Move's MoveOpolis which includes dance choreographed to Verdi ... I presumed his opera music. Move's work maybe far from ballet, but at least some choreographer has picked up this opera music as music for dance idea... among the ones mentioned above.

Of course not. But there are far more 20-minute arias out there than 20-minute ballet solos. You were asking about ballets choreographed to operatic arias, and thus far we haven't been able to come up with many, so there must be a reason for this. The fact that the average aria is longer than the average variation is an important factor to consider. The fact that song cycles and liturgical works are used far more frequently than vocal operatic music may reflect your point about individual arias not being able to sustain a ballet from either a thematic or musical point of view. It's also possible that choreographers don't believe they can add anything to an aria by setting movement to it, just as Balanchine never choreographed to Beethoven: "Now you could dance Mozart, but Beethoven you can't, unless it's walking. The sound produces [a] certain type of enjoyment, and if anybody moves, you will just disturb and you don't add anything." Of course he also said, "Verdi: from beginning to the end you can dance his opera," yet he only choreographed to music Verdi wrote specifically for ballet. It may simply be that arias and dance aren't that compatible. Perhaps arias don't have sufficient rhythmic consistency or drive to be "danceable."

I'm not trying to be contentious, but what arias are 20-minutes long? The longest ones I can think of are the Immolation Scene in Gotterdammerung and the final scene of Salome. Most opera arias on excerpts disks clock in at 4-6 minutes. Balanchine choreographed two versions of Variations for Orchestra as a solo for Suzanne Farrell, and that is not a short piece, nor is the opening of Tzigane, also a solo for Farrell, and there was also Pavane. None of them are aerobic virtuoso allegro pieces, but they are sustained.

There are also several ballets made from song cycles. A ballet that uses opera arias does not have to be a series of long solos; an extended adagio could match some of the long phrases. There could be room for solos, corps, pas de deux, pas de trois, pas de quatre, etc. depending on the music that was put together.

Actually, allegro variations are anaerobic while slower variations are aerobic, so they can be sustained for a longer period of time. We mammals are aerobic, which is why aerobic fitness can be extended to the point where human beings can complete an Ironman race. But there is relatively little that can be done to improve anaerobic fitness. There is no way that the speeds of a 100m dash, produced in anaerobic conditions, can be sustained over 400m, let alone 800m. If a dance is slow enough for a dancer to be able to breathe properly, he or she could keep going for 20 minutes, though most choreographers don't seem to think it's worth the effort. (And, fortunately, most operatic composers didn't think so either. I mean, does anyone actually enjoy Erwartung?) But if the variation demands more oxygen than a body is capable of taking in at that level of exertion, the muscles will eventually grind to a halt. This is why the dance of the cygnets will never get any easier. (And, incidentally, why ballet class is a lousy way to lose weight.)

Gosh, it's been years since I've had cause to regurgitate those old anatomy lectures!


Song cycles are a completely different ball of wax. They have a musical and thematic unity. But precisely because audiences are expected to sit still for extended periods of time without the benefit of scene changes and intermissions, cycles have all sorts of variety built it. Each section also tends to be more sustained in a particular tempo and mood, which lends itself more readily to choreographic treatment than arias, which can include fairly radical fluctuations in tempo and dynamics. I suppose most choreographers don't think that stitching together disparate arias into some sort of coherent whole is worth the effort if a beautifully crafted song cycle already exists.

While it is possible to create something similar through a variety of different arias and art songs, you are right that song cycles already have coherency, both in text and music, built in.

There are a number of arias that I would love to see woven into a ballet, but I think one of the other reasons vocals are rarely used is that it is always expensive to add singers, especially since they generally need to rehearse end to end.

There was a piece in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/arts/music/15dica.html which reviewa a work which seems to be along the lines of what my original query was about.

The article mentions Puccini's first opera Le Villi, was conceived of first as an opera ballo. What exactly is an opera ballo?

If this piece, which did not get a stirling review in the Times, is still on, I might try to see it.

Do and BTers have any knowledge of or comments about this work?

Oh, ye of way too much faith. Most choreographers don't think twice about disparate arias, because they don't think about structure. Beginnings, middles and ends are so 19th century.

I think Midgette is misusing the term "opera ballo". which refers to grand opera including at least one major ballet set piece. Think Meyerbeer, Verdi's French operas and those translated into French for the Paris Opera.

Le Villi is a hybrid of opera & dance (ballare: It. for dance). It's a wonderful piece for a first opera but not a wonderful opera.

The last performance at Di Capo was Sunday afternoon.

I'll post later on the Nilas Martins thread but will say a male Myrtha can work to the right music.

I'm not trying to be contentious either (or rather, no more than usual), but some of the musical information offered above seems to me questionable. Like Helene, I can think of few 20-minute arias, but that could well be because an aria is often equivalent to a soliloquy in a play; it expresses a character's reactions to the action but doesn't as a rule advance the action. (Exceptions everywhere, of course: Eboli's O don fatale from Don Carlo comes immediately to mind.) Song cycles are indeed often unified in theme and some aspects of musical treatment, but they are not necessarily plotted works with clear beginnings, middles, and ends; again an exception would be Schumann's Frauen-Liebe und Leben.

Nor do I necessarily accept the explanation that "the dancers simply cannot sustain motion for as long as the singer can sustain his voice, with the result that the dancer has to perform four different steps in the time that the singer holds a single note." Many arias are of course slow with long sustained vocal lines, but by no means all, and even while the singer is holding a high note there can be a lot of subsidiary activity in the orchestra.

My surmise for why opera arias are not usually set to ballet is different, and comes simply to the fact that both the ballerina and the diva create powerful holds on audience members. When a great dancer is doing the Rose Adagio or second movement of Symphony in C, she holds the spectators' attentions undividedly. Likewise when a great soprano is singing Un bel di or Casta diva. There can be no competition or distractions; both aria and dance are too powerful emotionally to hold the stage simultaneously.

I did read that last year Nilas Martins did something with a set of Puccini arias. Did anyone see it?

Oh - and by the way, I love Erwartung. Not to mention Meistersinger and Götterdämmerung, all four hours of each of them. You guys don't know what you're missing.

Klavier's point about two artists competing for focus is an interesting one. When the idea stuck me originally, I definitely envisioned the opera being subordinate to the ballet... much the way the score for the orchestra supports dance... why not have opera or vocal music since the voice is another instrument. Divas wouldn't like second billing I suppose...

OK, maybe my example was a bit one-sided - certainly not all arias are slow and sustained, but the fact still remains that few arias exist that are a comfortable pace to dance to.



Which is probably why it is a popular practice to cut out the voice entirely and use orchestrated versions for ballet.

Great instrumentalists are also extremely compelling, but choreographers don't hesitate to set ballets to all manner of concerti. Of course, at the ballet you're unlikely to hear a great violinist or pianist. The same would probably apply to sopranos.

Modern dance choreographers seem less reluctant to use operatic arias. I've already mentioned Margie Gillis' Rivers Without Bridges for Alberta Ballet and Mark Morris' Dido and Aeneas. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker certainly isn't shy about using operatic music.

Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Ottone, Ottone
Mozart / Concert Arias, un moto di gioia (okay, not exactly operatic)
April me

I don't know about "all manner of concerti." There are a few - Stravinsky Violin, Prokofiev Violin 1, Tchaikovsky 2 (which I'll see for the first time later this week), the Mozart Symphonie Concertante, the three Mozarts used by Mark Morris come to mind. Are there many others, given the rich concerto repertoire? Nonetheless, there's a qualitative difference in my mind between even the instrumental soloist and the expressive power of the human voice. And I emphasize that my "theory" about operatic arias is nothing but speculation.

I saw Morris's Dido on a double bill with his version of Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts recently, and while I thought the latter was appealingly done, the Purcell struck me as just odd, and not very satisfying.

Wouldn't one -- most likely the dance -- appear to be merely illustrative of the other?

Any examples of what has been done along these lines -- or what might work?

Then I've been very lucky in my ballet-going experience. While there are few famous violinists, pianists, or singers who perform with ballet companies outside of gala presentations in major cities -- Jane Eaglen, now a Seattle local, singing Wagner for Joffrey's Remembrances for PNB, Elmar Olivera for the first season of Barber Violin Concerto -- I've heard much world-class if not world-famous singing and playing at the ballet: Jerry Zimmerman's wonderful Chopin for NYCB, Dianne Chilgren's amazing work for PNB, Susan Erickson's lovely soprano in the Queen of Spades excerpt in Nutcracker and in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and National Ballet of Canada Concert Master Fujiko Imajishi's (Four Seasons and NYCB's Figeroa's (first violin in Concerto Barocco) masterful solo playing among them.

Off the top of my head I can think of ballets set to Ravel's Piano Concerto, Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, the Barber Violin Concerto, Bruch's Violin Concerto, Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 9 and Concerto for Flute and Harp, Gershwin's Piano Concerto, Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, Martinu's Double Concerto for Piano, Two String Orchestras and Timpani, Bach's Double Violin Concerto, Brandenburg Concertos and several of his piano concertos, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto no. 2, Adams' Violin Concerto and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto no. 5. Allegro Brillante is set to Tchaikovsky's incomplete Third Piano Concerto, and Chopin's piano concertos form the basis of the score to John Neumeier's The Lady of the Camellias, though they're not necessarily played in order. [Correction: the complete Second Piano Concerto is used as the score to the first act, and the second movement of the First Piano Concerto is used in Act 3.] I'm sure there are others I've forgotten and many more I haven't seen.

And although I agree that there is a difference between the voice and other instruments, this hasn't stopped choreographers from using song cycles and vocal liturgical works. Neumeier has choreographed Bach's Magnificat and St. Matthew Passion, Handel's Messiah and the Mozart Requiem. Other ballets set to vocal religious music are MacMillan's Gloria and Requiem, Kylián's Symphony of Psalms and Soldiers' Mass, and Uwe Scholz's The Great Mass. In recent years Alberta Ballet, my local company, has performed Jean Grand-Maître's Celestial Themes, set to Tallis' Spem in alium, Edmund Stripe's Unquiet Light, set to some of the longer sections of Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and Emily Molnar's Portrait of A Suspended Grace, set to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. Many of these works are heavy on choral music, but song cycles are used also. Think of Tudor's Dark Elegies, Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer and Seven Deadly Sins, MacMillan's Song of the Earth, Béjart's Song of a Wayfarer, Rudi van Danzig's Four Last Songs and Neumeier's Winterreise. I don't know whether anyone's ever attempted to choreograph a ballet to the complete Des Knaben Wunderhorn, but William Forsythe set a pas de deux to "Urlicht." Glen Tetley choreographed a couple of ballets to vocal works for the National Ballet of Canada: Alice, to David Del Tredici's Child Alice, Part One: In Memory of a Summer Day, and Tagore, to Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony. Alexei Ratmansky's Russian Seasons would be another recent example. Among other vocal works, Stravinsky's Les Noces and Orff's Carmina Burana have been tackled more than once.

So while I do understand Leigh Witchel's point about structure or lack thereof in contemporary choreography, previous generations of choreographers apparently did like to rely on the structure provided by symphonies, concertos, song cycles and liturgical works.


Perhaps you have been lucky, or perhaps I have been unlucky. I can't think of a performance of Swan Lake during which the playing of the "White Swan" pas de deux hasn't made me cringe. In my North American exprience, the sounds coming out of the pit are usually inferior to the quality of the dancing on stage. This probably wouldn't be the case at the Paris Opera or Vienna State Opera.

I must add ABT's brilliant pianist, Barbara Bilach to Helene's list. Also the artist who played the violin solo for the Kirov's new-old Sleeping Beauty. I still hear it -- what? five? six? -- years later. And didn't Flicka von Stade sing the premiere of Martins' Songs of the Auvergne?

SanderO, I may have found a piece that fits your bill. I was watching L'Amour, la danse on television, a show that strings together excerpts from many of Maurice Béjart's ballets. Among them was a dance for about 12 women to "Casta diva." Since it was identified in the credits simply as "Casta diva," I don't know whether it's part of a longer ballet or a freestanding piece. Given the nature of the performance and the venue, all the music was canned, so diva egos didn't factor into the equation.

And in case we're still counting concertos, we can add Béjart's Concerto 21 to the list, set to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 with an approach that is anything but neoclassical.

the sounds coming out of the pit are usually inferior to the quality of the dancing on stage. This probably wouldn't be the case at the Paris Opera or Vienna State Opera.

I don't know about Paris, but I've seen a really trashy ballet in Vienna which was made quite bearable because of the playing by the Vienna Philharmonic.