La Sonnambula (Balanchine)

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La Sonnambula (Balanchine) - Wikipedia

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La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker) is a ballet by the co-founder and ballet master of New York City Ballet, George Balanchine, made to Vittorio Rieti's music using themes from the operas of Vincenzo Bellini including La Sonnambula, Norma, I Puritani and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830–35).

The ballet premiered as The Night Shadow with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on Wednesday, 27 February 1946, at City Center of Music and Drama, New York, with sets and costumes designed by Dorothea Tanning and costumes executed by Karinska. It was first performed by the New York City Ballet on 6 January 1960 at City Center of Music and Drama.

The ballet tells the story of a Coquette, a Poet, and a beautiful Sleepwalker. The original 1946 program describes the story as follows:

Amid the somber walls of a decaying castle a masked ball has just begun. The host, an eccentric nobleman, receives his guests, among them a poet and a dazzling coquette. The poet, seduced by her charms, dances with her as the guests gradually leave the scene, then she too leaves. As the poet turns to follow, he sees a lovely white apparition gliding across the roofs toward him. It comes nearer and he sees that it is a beautiful somnambulist. He loses his heart to her at once, unaware that she is married to the host who keeps her locked away from the world. They dance, and he sees to join her in her realm of dreaming sleep. But they are seen. The coquette, flushed with jealousy, steals out to tell the host....All too soon the marvelous sleep-walker drifts away. The poet would follow her but the guests reenter and their dancing forms a barrier. Finally, he breaks through and disappears but the host follows too and stabs him. As he lies unconscious among the terrified guests the white figure of his love appears once more, gently raises him and together they glide away.

The ballet was renamed La Sonnambula in 1961, and has been revived numerous times.

Original cast

References

Souvenir Program for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo 1946-47 season. New York: General Program Corporation, 1946.
Playbill, New York City Ballet, Friday, 20 June 2008
Repertory Week, New York City Ballet, Spring Season, 2008 repertory, week 8

Reviews

John Martin, "BALANCHINE DANCE IN WORLD PREMIERE; 'Night Shadow' Introduced by Ballet Russe at City Center --Music From Operas", New York Times, 28 February 1946
Allen Hughes, "Ballet: 'La Sonnambula'; City Troupe Adds a Balanchine Dance to Repertory at State Theater", New York Times, 7 January 1965
Alastair Macaulay, Four Distinct Dream Worlds, Sharing the Same Language of Classical Ballet, New York Times, 19 January 2008
Deborah Jowitt, review, Village Voice, 5 February 2008

External links

Entry for La Sonnambula at the Balanchine Trust website

Ballets by George Balanchine

A la Françaix
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Agon
Allegro Brillante
Apollo
Le baiser de la fée
Le Bal
Ballade
Ballo della Regina
Bayou
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Bourrée fantasque
Brahms–Schoenberg Quartet
Bugaku
Chaconne
Le chant du rossignol
Circus Polka
Clarinade
Concertino
Concerto Barocco
Coppélia
Cortège Hongrois
Divertimento Brillante
Divertimento from "Le Baiser De La Fée"
Divertimento No. 15
Don Quixote
Donizetti Variations
Duo Concertant
Élégie
L'enfant et les sortilèges
Episodes
Etude for Piano
The Firebird
The Four Temperaments
Garland Dance
Gounod Symphony
Haieff Divertimento
Harlequinade
Hungarian Gypsy Airs
Ivesiana
Jeu de cartes
Jewels
Kammermusik No. 2
Liebeslieder Walzer
Meditation
Metamorphoses
Metastaseis and Pithoprakta
Monumentum pro Gesualdo
Movements for Piano and Orchestra
Mozartiana
Noah and the Flood
The Nutcracker
Orpheus
Pas de Dix
Pas de Trois (Glinka)
Pas de Trois (Minkus)
Pavane
Prodigal Son
Pulcinella
Ragtime I
Ragtime II
Raymonda Variations
Requiem Canticles
Robert Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze
Scherzo à la Russe
Scotch Symphony
Serenade
The Seven Deadly Sins
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
La Sonnambula
Sonatine
La source
Square Dance
Stars and Stripes
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Stravinsky Violin Concerto
Swan Lake
Sylvia Pas de Deux
Symphonie Concertante
Symphony in C
Symphony in Three Movements
Tango
Tarantella
Theme and Variations
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux
Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2
Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3
Tzigane
Union Jack
La Valse
Valse-Fantaisie
Variations
Variations for Orchestra
Variations Pour une Porte et un Soupir
Vienna Waltzes
Walpurgisnacht Ballet
Western Symphony
Who Cares?
Zenobia

List of ballets by George Balanchine

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