Manuel Legris

The Sleeping Beauty remains, as Rudolf Nureyev often called it, the 'ballet of ballets'. It is the most accomplished and the most brilliant, as well as one of the most spectacular of the 19th century, and the most representative of the 'noble' style of classical dancing. Performed by Opera National de Paris in 2000.

The version of Le Corsaire by Manuel Legris arrives at La Scala, his first revival of a nineteenth century classic, fully highlighting the intent and innovativeness of his choreographic approach and his musical and dramaturgic quest. With its clear and accessible plot, notable attention to musicality and relations among characters, the sumptuous and evocative décor and costumes by Luisa Spinatelli, it will be an occasion recombining the energy virtuosity, the lyricism and romanticism of one of the 19th century’s most adventurous and thrilling ballets d’action with the talents of the La Scala dancers.

Since its 1856 premiere at the Paris Opera, Le Corsaire has been regarded as one of the most impressive narrative ballets of the 19th century. The work became particularly popular in the versions by Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa and, of course, through the spectacular “Le Corsaire pas de deux,” made world-famous by Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. For this first performance of the ballet in full at the storied Wiener Staatsoper in 2016, Wiener Staatsballett director Manuel Legris—after a 23-year tenure as an étoile dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet!—choreographed a new version based largely on the rich French and Russian performance traditions. Action, music, choreography, scenery and costumes are carefully combined into a new overall picture which focuses on the high points of the colorful events surrounding the leading couple of Conrad and Medora, sublimely danced by Robert Gabdullin and Maria Yakovleva!

ETOILES: DANCERS OF THE PARIS OPERA BALLET celebrates the legacy one of the best ballet companies in the world by weaving together rehearsals, tour snapshots and performances of classical ballets such as Swan Lake and La Sylphide, as well as contemporary works such as Maurice Bejart's Ninth Symphony, Jiri Kylian's Doux Mensonge (Sweet Lies) and Pierre Darde's Orison. Celebrated filmmaker Nils Tavernier endeavors to understand the psychology of dance by talking candidly with some of the biggest stars in dance today. The film also features interviews with the dancers who explain how and why they endure the emotional and physical hardships of their profession in their intense drive to be on stage.

Fauns, dryads and shepherds: such is the bucolic world inhabited by Sylvia, the nymph of Diana, goddess of the hunt. Compelled to remain chaste, will she have to renounce her love for Aminta, just as Diana had to sacrifice her passion for Endymion? Originally conceived by Louis Mérante, Sylvia was the first ballet to be performed at the newly-opened Palais Garnier in 1876, but it is the version by Manuel Legris that is making its repertoire debut.

Rudolf Nureyev's choreography for Don Quixote with Aurélie Dupont and Manuel Legris

Experience Rudolf Nureyev's sumptuous landmark 1995 production of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at the Opéra Bastille, starring Monique Loudières as Juliet, Manuel Legris as Romeo, Charles Jude as Tybalt, and Lionel Delanoë as Mercutio.

Ballet en deux actes et treize tableaux du chorég. This is a live recording of a performance at Paris Garnier in 2007. Petit's earlier production for the Ballet de Marseille used more realistic stage sets, but the current Paris version has minimal stage sets. Also, the costumes were redesigned. Roland Petit created a ballet based on "In Search of Lost Time" for the Ballet de Marseille in the 1970s. Petit's intention was not to make a faithful adaptation of the novel, but to capture its flavour and convey, through a number of selected scenes, the narrator's incessant fluctuations between happiness and torment. The highlights are the series of poetical pas de deux.