The Rudolf Nureyev Foundation website explains: “Siegfried experiences an obsessive feeling of guilt as he is refusing what his mother is lovingly offering him: the power (having come of age, he is going to reign) and the freedom to choose himself a fiancée (as he is of an age to get married).

He dreams that a bird of prey captures a young girl who transforms into a swan that he carries away into the sky. The ballet begins with a prologue in which the prince sits in an armchair. Seigfried became the centre of the story while the dual role of Odette/Odile were figments of the prince’s imagination. His 1984 interpretation took that role further. In 1964 he staged a Swan Lake in Vienna where he played the role of Prince Siegfried. The centrepiece of the Brisbane season will be Nureyev’s Swan Lake that premiered in 1984 at the Palais Garnier in Paris.Īt the time Nureyev was the Paris Opera Ballet’s artistic director. Last September the Ab duet was performed at a fund raising gala at the Paris Opera Ballet by two company dancers. The Paris Opera Ballet’s next residence at QPAC will begin with a gala starting with the company’s famous defile, danced to the score of Hector Berlioz’s La Marche des Troyens, followed by classical and contemporary pas de deux, among them Serge Lifar’s Variations, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux and a duet from Ab, a work recently choreographed by the artistic director the Sydney Dance Company, Rafael Bonachela.

In between the two Sydney tours the company performed La Bayadere at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in 2009. In 2013 the Paris Opera Ballet returned to the Capitol Theatre for a season of Giselle. The Paris Opera Ballet’s previous tours to Australia included a gala at the Sydney Opera House and a season of Nureyev’s Swan Lake and Balanchine’s Jewels at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney in 2007. The Paris Opera Ballet will return to Australia in July next year at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane.įollowing a gala on 1 July, the company will perform Nureyev’s Swan Lake from 4-12 July, followed by a triple bill from 16 -19 July. The Paris Opera Ballet brings Nureyev’s Swan Lake and works by Forsythe, Robbins and Pite to Australia

Paris opera house 2013