Opera Tickets Italy

Rome's opera house, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, stages a programme of three modern ballets, each choreographed by highly respected names, John Neumeier, Jacopo Godani and Benjamin Millepied. Featuring the orchestra and corps de ballet of the theatre's own company, Neumeier / Godani / Millepied offers a bill that fans of contemporary dance and classical ballet styles will enjoy with a trio of works that provide passion, elegance and entertainment throughout.

The programme commences with a rendition of Spring and Fall by John Neumeier. The American dancer and choreographer set this ballet to Serenade for Strings in E Major, Opus 22, composed by Antonín Dvořák. It was first presented in a shorter format on 28 April 1991 at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany. Neumeier continued to work on it, however, and the completed version went on to receive its premiere on 10 October 1994 in Switzerland, at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. Neumeier is well-known for his many narrative ballets, including adaptations of Shakespeare plays. Spring and Fall is something different, a subtle reflection of the passing seasons, the movements inherent in ballet and the leaps and falls that all humans go through in their lives.

The Italian contemporary dance and ballet choreographer Jacopo Godani developed the ensuing work, Echoes from a Restless Soul, for the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company. It premiered on 16 November 2016 at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt, set to two of three piano movements by Maurice Ravel, Le Gibet and Ondine. Both are drawn from Ravel's 1908 work, Gaspard de la Nuit, which itself was based upon a trio of earlier French poems by Aloysius Bertrand. Ravel made use of some then-innovative piano techniques to express Bertrand's words while adhering to a classical form. Godani's choreography is similar insofar as it makes widespread use of formal dance structures, such as the pas de deux, in new ways to generate distinctive on-stage atmospheres. The aesthetic nature of movement is enhanced with pointe shoes, effortlessly blending a classical approach with contemporary touches.

The ballet triple bill is completed by Benjamin Millepied's I Feel the Earth Move which is arranged in three movements. The first of these makes use of music drawn from Philip Glass's opera, Einstein on the Beach. Millepied's first movement, Tremor, reimagines Trial/Prison from Act Three of the opera as dance. The ensuing movement, A Vision, is set to Liquid Days: Part I, music that Glass composed in collaboration with the Talking Heads singer, David Byrne. The ballet's final movement also features music by Glass, Changing Opinion, which has lyrics by Paul Simon. The world premiere of I Feel the Earth Move took place at New York City's David H. Koch Theater on 25 October 2017.

This ballet extravaganza at Rome's Teatro Costanzi, as the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma is often known, provides three delightful examples of some of the most poignant and imaginative modern choreography being performed today.