DIAGHILEV FESTIVAL OF BALLET: PROGRAMME ONE Tickets and Dates

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DIAGHILEV FESTIVAL OF BALLET: PROGRAMME ONE

Booking Period 11 - 12 July 2014

The billions of people watching the Sochi Winter Olympics opening and closing ceremonies saw tributes to Russia's icons of literature, music, opera and ballet. This summer at the London Coliseum Les Saisons Russes du XX1 siècle stages a season of legendary works that honour three of the greatest, namely Sergei Diaghilev, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Part of the Russian Season at the London Coliseum, Diaghilev Festival is a collection of Ballets including:

Petrushka premiered in Paris in June 1911. Igor Stravinsky wrote the music and co-wrote the story with Alexandre Benois. A tale of three puppets, Petrushka, the Moor, and the Ballerina - brought to life during a St Petersburg Fair. Petrushka loves the Ballerina and is angry and hurt when she rejects him for the Moor. The Moor kills Petrushka with his scimitar. At nightfall the ghost of Petrushka rises above the puppet theatre only to collapse and die for a second time.

Chopiniana
In 1909 Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky conquered Paris in the Romantic one-act ballet then entitled Les Sylphides. Consisting of four scenes to the music of a polonaise, nocturne, mazurka and tarantella by Frederic Chopin, orchestrated by A.Glazunov, the ballet has no plot, but conveys the mood of reverie and melancholy between dream and reality of a young poet in the world of the Sylphides.

Polovtsian Dances
The Polovtsian Dances, a ballet excerpt from Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor, was one of the highlights of the first Ballets Russes Paris season making its 1909 premiere at Theatre du Chatelet. A one-act ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine, slave-girls and warriors perform the celebratory dances of Khan Konchak's nomadic tribe.