The famous La Scala Ballet from Milan is coming to Australia. Karen van Ulzen finds out what's in store.
OF the great historical opera houses of Europe, La Scala is among the greatest. Although ballet is often defined as beginning with Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), in fact it can be argued that Italy is its true birth place. Dance spectacles were being performed in Italian courts from the early 15th century.
Italian teachers were seminal in the development of ballet: the great dance technician, Carlo Blasis, gave us The Code of Terpsichore, and his pupil, Giovanni Lepri, handed down the tradition to Enrico Cecchetti, whose method is still taught today. The Imperial Ballet School, founded in 1813, became one of the finest in the world.
The history of ballet sparkles with numerous Italian stars, including three of the famous Romantic ballerinas: Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi and Fanny Cerrito. Early Russian ballet was in awe of Italian “virtuoso” technique – let us not forget that the Italian Pierina Legnani is hailed as the first to dance 32 fouettes on pointe.
There was much cross-pollination however between Italy and the other main centres for ballet, Russia and France, with dancers, teachers and choreographers moving between the main theatres. For a time, it was an Italian, Carlotta Zambelli, a pupil of Cecchetti, who directed the Paris Opera Ballet School.
Today, the cross-cultural tradition continues in the elegant form of La Scala’s present artistic director, Frédéric Olivieri. His grandparents and great grandparents are Italian, but he was born and trained in Nice (which, as he points out, was once part of Italy).
He won a scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School at the Prix de Lausanne in 1977, and began his professional career with the Paris Opera Ballet. He became one of the founders of the Ballet de Monte Carlo (with Pierre Lacotte and Ghislaine Thesmar), before being moving to the Hamburg Ballet in Germany to become a principal dancer in 1993.
After hanging up his shoes he moved back to Italy to become artistic direcor of Maggio Danze Communale in Florence, a large company which unfortunately is no longer. He has had a long connection with La Scala – he was director of La Scala Ballet from 2002 to 2007 and has taken the role again since October 2016. Since 2003 he has been director of the Dance Department of Teatro alla Scala Academy and in October 2006 he also became director of the historic La Scala Ballet School. So it is very much Olivieri’s hand that will be evident, from the training through to the repertoire, in Brisbane.
So what will we see? . . .
Find out by reading the rest of this article in the October/November issue of Dance Australia, out now! Buy Dance Australia from your favourite retailer, purchase an online copy here or subscribe here.
Pictured top: La Scala's Nicoletta Manni in Don Quixote. Photo: Brescia Amisano.