Summary Opening Festival RB 1999 - 2000 Season Opera 1999 - 2000 Season Education / Outreach Ticket prices Public Access Studio Theatres ROH Strategic Plan

New ballet by Siobhan Davies

Short works by international choreographers including Maurice Béjart, William Forsythe, John Neumeier, Glen Tetley and Twyla Tharp

New ballet by Ashley Page

A revised staging of Peter Wright's production

Sponsored (1984) by The British Printing and Communications Corporation plc and Heron International plc

Revival sponsored (1999) by The Friends of Covent Garden

The Royal Ballet’s first season in the reopened Royal Opera House includes a new staging of Ninette de Valois’ production of Coppélia, and works by the choreographers most closely associated with its history, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. It also explores the ballet heritage repertory of Fokine, Nijinsky and Nijinska. The season will also feature new works by Matthew Bourne and Siobhan Davies, both working with the Company for the first time, and Ashley Page and William Tuckett. It includes Peter Wright’s production of The Nutcracker, which Wright plans to revise for 1999, and the return of Jerome Robbins’ work to the repertory. There will be two works set to scores by Francis Poulenc in the centenary year of his birth.

The Royal Ballet will begin its season in December with A Celebration of International Choreography for which the Company will invite choreographers of international repute, including Maurice Béjart, William Forsythe, John Neumeier, Glen Tetley and Twyla Tharp, to contribute short works featuring either Royal Ballet or their own dancers. A ‘Festival’ format will allow varying combinations of these works to be seen during the run of performances of this programme. Two British choreographers, Siobhan Davies, working with the Company for the first time, and Ashley Page, will create new one-act works alongside this international celebration.

Peter Wright will revise his 1984 production of The Nutcracker after an absence from The Royal Ballet’s repertory of six years. His revised staging for Christmas 1999 will incorporate new ideas, expanding the roles of Clara, Drosselmeyer and his nephew, and make some further changes to the choreography. Julia Trevelyan Oman will also revise some elements of her designs for the production.

A major revival of Rituals, set to Bartok’s Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion and designed by Yolanda Sonnabend, will form the centrepiece of a MacMillan Triple Bill in January. Created in 1975, the work was inspired by the Japanese rituals observed during preparations for combat, at wedding ceremonies and after the birth of a child. The programme also sees the return of Gloria, set to Poulenc’s Gloria in D major and designed by Andy Klunder, which the Company last performed in 1993. Inspired by Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, this powerful yet elegiac work mourns the waste of young lives in the trenches during the First World War. The abstract Concerto, set to Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto, Opus 102 with designs by Jurgen Rose will complete the programme.

Ninette de Valois’ production of Coppélia, created in 1954 and last seen in 1970 returns to The Royal Ballet’s repertory in February, after an absence of over two decades, allowing a new generation of dancers to explore the roles of the capricious Swanilda, her young sweetheart, Franz, and the mysterious Doctor Coppelius, and revel in the glorious divertissements and ensemble set-pieces of the work’s final act. This production of the Petipa/Cecchetti classic set to Delibes’ celebrated score, features the original charming and witty designs by Osbert Lancaster.

An Ashton Triple Bill, scheduled for February, will include a new production of Les Rendezvous, created in 1959 and last performed by The Royal Ballet in 1963. Set to music from Auber’s opera L’Enfant prodigue, this plotless work is a suite of light-hearted dances for young people as they meet in a park. The programme will also feature one of Ashton’s greatest masterpieces, Symphonic Variations, set to music by César Franck with designs by Sophie Fedorovitch, and last danced by the Company during the celebratory Ashton season in 1996. A major revival of Marguerite and Armand, last seen in 1973, will complete the evening. Based on Dumas’ story La Dame aux camélias, the ballet is set to music by Liszt with designs by Cecil Beaton. Created in 1963 for a cast led by Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Michael Somes, these performances will be the first by a new cast in the history of the work.

A revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s much-loved Manon, to music by Massenet and with designs by Nicholas Georgiadis opens in March, and is followed in April by a Triple Bill which will include two new works. William Tuckett will realise a long-held ambition to create a ballet based on The Crucible and Matthew Bourne will choreograph his first work for The Royal Ballet to open the programme. The evening will be completed by Jerome Robbins’ delightfully humorous The Concert, set to Chopin with costumes designed by Irene Sharaff, in which a group of concert-goers act out their flights of fancy as they listen to a piano.

The Triple Bill in May explores the heritage repertory of the ballet world and brings the first performances by The Royal Ballet of two works by Nijinsky, L’Après-midi d’un faune and Jeux. Created for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1912 and 1913 respectively, both ballets are set to music by Debussy with designs by Bakst.
Ann Hutchinson-Guest will recreate L’Après-midi d’un faune for the Company while Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer will stage Jeux. This ‘Diaghilev’ programme will be completed by revivals of Nijinska’s enigmatic and ambiguous Les Biches, to music by Poulenc, designs by Marie Laurencin, last seen in 1991, and Fokine’s masterwork, The Firebird, to music by Stravinsky with designs by
Natalia Gontcharova which the Company last danced in 1993.

The Royal Ballet will tour to Europe for five weeks in May/June before returning to the Royal Opera House in July for a Summer Season, which will be presented by
Victor Hochhauser.

Artists dancing with The Royal Ballet during the 1999/2000 season will include principal guest artist Sylvie Guillem, and guest principals Roberto Bolle, Angel Corella and Ethan Stiefel, who appear with the Company for the first time. Viviana Durante, Irek Mukhamedov and Igor Zelensky will also appear throughout the season alongside resident principal artists Carlos Acosta, Leanne Benjamin, Deborah Bull, Darcey Bussell, Jonathan Cope, Bruce Sansom and Miyako Yoshida.

The Opening Mixed Programme is sponsored (1999) by Mr and Mrs Thomas G Lynch as part of a three-year commitment to new work

The Nutcracker is sponsored (1984) by The British Printing and Communications Corporation plc and Heron International plc

Manon is sponsored (1974) by The Linbury Trust

Les Biches is sponsored (1991) by The Friends of Covent Garden