Swan Lake
Mariinsky Ballet
The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden
7, 8, 10, and 11 August at 7.30pm
8 August at 2pm
Swan Lake has been treasured and honoured in St. Petersburg ever since Marius Petipa and his assistant Lev Ivanov created the first performances there in the 1890s. Generations of ballerinas of St. Petersburg 's ballet school and company have aspired to the double role of Odette, the Swan princess, and Odile, the evil enchantress. Producers with the Mariinsky Ballet have edited and sought to reveal the mysterious inner world of this masterpiece, with its romantic fervours and the brilliance of its court dances.
Konstantin Sergeyev, one of the great dancers of the Mariinsky's Soviet years, and a celebrated choreographer and producer, created his definitive version of Swan Lake in 1950 for the Mariinsky troupe, and it remains a superlative realisation of the score and of the traditional and magnificent choreography by Petipa and Ivanov.
Today's interpreters, the outstanding ballerinas whom we shall see this season – Uliana Lopatkina, Viktoria Tereshkina, Anastasia Kolegova and Alina Somova – are heirs in direct line to those ballerinas of the last century. This continuity of understanding and dance-genius is one of the great strengths of the Mariinsky Ballet, and we can see how glorious it remains in this season's performances in London .
