lady of the camellias
The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper
lady of the camellias
Ballet by John Neumeier in one prologue & three acts after the novel La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils For Marcia Music Frédéric Chopin Choreography & Direction John Neumeier Musical Direction Markus Lehtinen Stage & Costume Design Jürgen Rose Light Design Ralf Merkel Staging Kevin Haigen, Janusz Mazon, Ivan Urban Piano Michał Białk / Anika Vavić Igor Zapravdin Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera WORLD PREMIERE 4 NOVEMBER 1978 – STUTTGART BALLET – WÜRTTEMBERGISCHES STAATSTHEATER PREMIERE VIENNA STATE BALLET 24 MARCH 2024 – VIENNA STATE OPERA
JOHN NEUMEIER
“Dance is the living embodiment of emotions.”
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HANDLUNG
it is about human beings
ANGELA REINHARDT
He was once Germany’s youngest ballet director and now he is bidding farewell as the longest-serving director of all time. The American John Neumeier has spent the vast majority of his 85 years in Hamburg and run Hamburg Ballet for over half a century – longer than any choreographer has run a major company, including his famous colleagues Marius Petipa and George Balanchine. Even those who do not know his 170 works have to admire what he has achieved with his company – including a school, a ballet centre, the National Youth Ballet, a foundation and a ballet museum to come. An empire on this scale might arouse suspicion among those associated with the independent sector and the avantgarde, along with Neumeier retaining pointe shoes and story ballets. However, anyone who leaves aside their place in dance history and just watches his works will surely be able to recall at least one image that went straight to their hearts: the way the weeping clown Petrushka marches off to the World War with the soldiers in Nijinsky, the way all the angels hover in mid-air at the end of Dritte Sinfonie von Gustav Mahler, the way King Ludwig drowns in his blue canopy in Illusions – like Swan Lake or the way that an incredulous hope appears on the face of the Lady of the Camellias and love drags a lost woman out of her sickness and into death.
IT IS ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS
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John Neumeier is the great storyteller among contemporary choreographers. He has not only tirelessly supported literary ballet as a genre, he has perfected it and enriched it with so many themes, ideas, techniques and subtle details. He has created wonderful roles for several generations of dancers and enabled many of them to surpass themselves. In a dance world that has concentrated more and more on pure movement, John Neumeier with his extensive education, his metaphysical background and his adherence to the great human themes like creativity, love, illusion and death, has remained one of the few philosophers among choreographers. Although at times his vocabulary is far removed from that of classical ballet, although he often works with contemporary music, Neumeier remains true to his own original style and leaves exploring new forms of movement to his colleagues. He will leave behind him a huge and splendidly documented legacy of pieces, many of which have become part of ballet’s international heritage and are danced from Paris to San Francisco, and from Moscow to Sydney. When he took up his post in Hamburg in 1973, John Neumeier was not exactly given a warm welcome. The newspapers carried headlines of “Scandal!” and the audience was outraged: the acclaimed new Ballet Director recruited by Artistic Director August Everding had fired a great many dancers. Pictures from that time show an angry young man with wild, shoulder-length hair: Neumeier was not always the elegant grand seigneur, at ease with himself: back then the mood was seething. The young American had come to the house on the Alster via Stuttgart, where for a few key years he had been one part of John Cranko’s “ballet miracle”, and four short years as Director of Frankfurt Ballet, propelled by the spirit of radical change that Cranko’s success had sent cascading through the ballet companies of all German-speaking countries at that time. With his first ballet workshop Neumeier quickly established a direct connection with the Hamburg public, which has since turned into a heartfelt love. His grandfather was originally from Germany, hence the surname. John Neumeier was born in Milwaukee on Lake Michigan, the son of a ship’s captain. He learnt to paint, draw and dance and would later study literature and theatre studies. The widely divergent influences that helped to form the later dancemaker included film musicals of the 1950s along with a theatre-obsessed Jesuit and the modern dance rebel Sybil Shearer. Neumeier came to Europe on a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London, where he discovered the English and Danish ballet traditions. He was recruited for Stuttgart in London in 1963 by Cranko’s young prima ballerina Marcia Haydée. Less than twenty years after the war had ended, he moved to what had been enemy territory, to a rather conventional Swabian town where foreign dance artists were met with an astonishingly open audience and a creative atmosphere. Neumeier had choreographed his own pieces while still at dance school, and in Stuttgart he was immediately included in the annual Noverre matinees for Young Choreographers. Neumeier would forgo a career as a soloist to become a choreographer – at least that is how Marcia Haydée remembered the fine young dancer. Hamburg audiences will remember him as Romeo and Christ in the St. Matthew Passion, and until a few years ago he was still appearing on stage in his own Bernstein Dances. 11
IT IS ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS
Figurines by Jürgen Rose for Lady of the Camellias
Andrés Garcia Torres (Eugène), Ketevan Papava (Marguerite Gautier), Duccio Tariello (Édouard), Giorgio Fourés (Arthur)
Ketevan Papava (Marguerite Gautier), Hyo-Jung Kang (Manon Lescaut), Men’s Ensemble
Ketevan Papava (Marguerite Gautier), Eno Peci (Monsieur Duval)
Timoor Afshar (Armand Duval), Elena Bottaro (Olympia)
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