The Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival hit the high note yesterday with the world’s one of the most beautiful ballets, the Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, staged at the Emirates Palace by the Bolshoi Ballet and Orchestra.
A repeat performance of the Swan Lake will take place today.
Hoda Khamis Kanoo, founder of the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, the organiser of the festival, told Khaleej Times that Bolshoi and the Swan Lake are a match made in heaven.
“The Swan Lake is the Russian version of Romeo and Juliet,” she added. The tragic story is that of a beautiful girl bewitched to take the shape of a swan and only true love can undo the spell. A prince who sees the beautiful swan in moonlight falls in love with her and proposes to her, but the day he is supposed to choose his future wife during a palace ball, an evil man tricks him into choosing his daughter, made to resemble the beautiful swan.
The original story and its tragic ending was slightly changed by various theatre productions, but on this occasion, Bolshoi kept close to the original version, with the exception of the evil man who was changed with Fate and the finale, which ends on the morning after, on the shore of the lake, rather than the swan and the prince being drowned as a result of their unbearable grief.
What also makes the Swan Lake remarkable is the music, as Tchaikovsky has never written a ballet score before. The music and dance movements he had in mind were so revolutionary at the time, in the late 1800s that Moscow’s state ballet and orchestra, the Bolshoi, had great difficulty in performing in the first stages of the Swan Lake.
The present production has come far from the early beginnings, receiving outstanding reviews from western critics. The choice of Bolshoi Ballet and the Swan Lake, which will be followed by Bolshoi Orchestra, on March 29, with an opera gala, highlights not only a great taste for classical music in Abu Dhabi, but also how seriously the city officials take arts and culture.
“This is a renaissance period in Abu Dhabi, which is becoming the heart of the Arab world, witnessing all these artistic and cultural events,” stressed Kanoo.
She also pointed out that the increasing success of the annual classical music festival will not stop here. “We want the festival to be a destination for people, to mark it on their calendars and to come specially to Abu Dhabi to celebrate this wonderful music with us,” added Kanoo.
A repeat performance of the Swan Lake will take place today.
Hoda Khamis Kanoo, founder of the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, the organiser of the festival, told Khaleej Times that Bolshoi and the Swan Lake are a match made in heaven.
“The Swan Lake is the Russian version of Romeo and Juliet,” she added. The tragic story is that of a beautiful girl bewitched to take the shape of a swan and only true love can undo the spell. A prince who sees the beautiful swan in moonlight falls in love with her and proposes to her, but the day he is supposed to choose his future wife during a palace ball, an evil man tricks him into choosing his daughter, made to resemble the beautiful swan.
The original story and its tragic ending was slightly changed by various theatre productions, but on this occasion, Bolshoi kept close to the original version, with the exception of the evil man who was changed with Fate and the finale, which ends on the morning after, on the shore of the lake, rather than the swan and the prince being drowned as a result of their unbearable grief.
What also makes the Swan Lake remarkable is the music, as Tchaikovsky has never written a ballet score before. The music and dance movements he had in mind were so revolutionary at the time, in the late 1800s that Moscow’s state ballet and orchestra, the Bolshoi, had great difficulty in performing in the first stages of the Swan Lake.
The present production has come far from the early beginnings, receiving outstanding reviews from western critics. The choice of Bolshoi Ballet and the Swan Lake, which will be followed by Bolshoi Orchestra, on March 29, with an opera gala, highlights not only a great taste for classical music in Abu Dhabi, but also how seriously the city officials take arts and culture.
“This is a renaissance period in Abu Dhabi, which is becoming the heart of the Arab world, witnessing all these artistic and cultural events,” stressed Kanoo.
She also pointed out that the increasing success of the annual classical music festival will not stop here. “We want the festival to be a destination for people, to mark it on their calendars and to come specially to Abu Dhabi to celebrate this wonderful music with us,” added Kanoo.
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