Ballet in three acts
by John Cranko

based on the poem by Aleksandr Puškin
 

Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company and Orchestra 

Teatro alla Scala Production 

NOTES ON THE PERFORMANCES

A bored young aristocrat, as a joke, spurns the maiden he later recognises as the true love of his life; but by then it is too late. After an absence of five years, John Cranko’s Onegin, a perfect example of modern “drama in dance”, returns to La Scala. Inspired by the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin and reinterpreted with mastery and sensitivity by John Cranko, this great tale of ill-fated love is narrated through pas de deux with extraordinary expressive power, precision-sculpted characters and a splendid showcase of company numbers.
The score of the ballet, orchestrated by Cranko’s trusted collaborator Kurt-Heinz Stolze, is entirely based on Tchaikovsky’s music, but contains not a single note from his opera Eugene Onegin. The arrangement and the orchestration of the pieces were conceived in relation to their dramatic expressiveness, in line with the conception of the ballet as a complete theatrical performance, where the ability to reinvent a written story and narrate it purely in dance terms reveals the wonderful freedom in Cranko’s dramatic and choreographic development.