CARMEN-SUITE BOLERO

А beautiful and exquisite spectacle, with which the talented artists from the ballet of the National Opera and Ballet will charge their audience with a lot of love and beauty!

CARMEN-SUITE

The ballet of the Sofia Opera presents the famous work “Carmen-Suite”, written by the composer Rodion Schedrin – a marvellous interpretation of Georges Bizet’s music of genius.

The ballet “Carmen-Suite” was created specially for the great Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, choreographer and stage director is Alberto Alonso, and its premiere was at the Bolshoi Theatre in April 1967. More than forty years ago, this spectacle was shown also on the Sofia stage, at the guest-performance of the National Ballet of Cuba. In the role of Carmen incorporated herself another great ballerina – Alicia Alonso.

What is the story of this ballet work?

One evening the National Ballet of Cuba was on a guest-performance in Moscow. When she saw the performance of “El salar” by Alberto Alonso, Maya Plisetskaya understood right away that this was the choreographer, able to stage “Carmen” in a different, untraditional way, escaping from the mawkish pseudo Spanish style of the ballet classic.

She found herself behind the curtain, eager to meet the Maestro. She saw Alberto and turned directly to him with the words: “Would you like to make “Carmen”? For me.” He exclaimed: “How did you read my thoughts? This is my dream!” About Maya Plisetskaya Alberto Alonso said that she was the 100 percent Carmen – a real personification of rebelliousness and irreconcilability. Maya Plisetskaya herself in not one or two interviews shared that for her it was the role of her life; something more – in it she input a political message: the character is a symbol of the free personality, leading a fatal fight with the authorities of that time. Not less difficult than the fight with the Soviet culture bearers was the search of music. After the refusal by Shostakovich and Khachaturian, the composer Rodion Schedrin (Maya Plisetskaya‘с husband) created the orchestration, inspired by the rehearsals.

This way Mérimée‘s moving plot and the depth of feelings in Bizet’s opera acquired a philosophical touch in the ballet-suite. “Carmen” is an amazing quintessence of passionate emotions and strong characters, expressed through the content of the short novel and the music by the composers.

BOLERO
Maurice Ravel

The composer wrote the music in 1928 and it became his most popular work.

The rhythm is accelerated gradually and is set by the snare drum, which repeats one and the same rhythmic figure of 24 beats, 169 times or a total of 4056 beats.

It is this rhythmicity that provokes a number of choreographers to "read" this music in most various ways. Let us mention the wonderful choreography by Maurice Béjart for the staging of BOLERO with Maya Plisetskaya.

The Italian Fredy Franzutti made his choreographic score for the Sofia Opera Ballet Ensemble during the current anti-epidemic period. His basic concept is that the ballet dancers do not touch at any time during the dance. Here it is, the complicated pandemic situation has provoked the choreographer to look for unexpected movement solutions and this new stage message will provoke the interest of the spectators.