Incomparable Verdi

Call me biased, but I believe that my illustrious compatriot Giuseppe Verdi composed ballet music like no one else. It is a pity he never felt like penning a full ballet score, and limited himself to composing balletic interludes for his glorious operas. As demonstrated by the work of eminent scholars, he possessed the unique ability to mentally choreograph a ballet. His approach to ballet music thus started with a detailed visualisation of the action, which fed into the unique innovative fluidity of his balletic compositions.

Take, for instance, the complex Peregrina ballet, composed for the Paris Opéra staging of Don Carlos. The demands of creating a work that would suit the hierarchy of the corps de ballet — i.e., two ‘sparkling’ solos for the prima ballerina, a shorter solo for the soloist, a joyous number for a couple of demi-solistes, a nicely intricate ensemble dance for the sujets and quadrilles, etc. — are met fully, but always with a good dose of underlying humour and a good deal of rules and groundbreaking ideas. It was almost inevitable that such inventiveness would attract, magnet-like, the choreographic ingeniousness of George Balanchine, who was to 20th-century ballet what Verdi was to 19th-century opera.

Ballo della Regina is Balanchine’s reading of Verdi’s interlude for Don Carlos and one of the works in which his creed, ‘dance for dance’s sake’, comes fully across. In Balanchine’s hands, Verdi’s music provides the inspiration for a choreography that is both evocative of a bygone ballet epoch and a refreshingly modern interpretation of the same. As such, it is a most welcome addition to the repertoire of the Royal Ballet.

On the opening night, Marianela Nuñez and Sergei Polunin led a refreshingly fizzy performance.