Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
The closing scene of the ballet, Swan Lake, carries a real-life poignancy that can be hard to capture in 19th-century story ballets. In the ghostly light of a full moon against a lake, lovers Siegfried and Odette clash with evil sorcerer Von Rothbart in a fight to the death, as Tchaikovsky’s dramatic music builds to … Read more
Today the ballet world has lost one of its greatest of greats; Maya Plisetskaya has died at the age of 89 in Munich. One of the Bolshoi’s most famous and iconic prima ballerinas, she served to define Soviet Ballet for a generation, before advancing into choreographing and directing, while still performing onstage into her sixties. Somewhat prophetically, I learned … Read more