The premiere of the ballet “Nijinsky” is presented today by the Varna Opera. It is part of the Puccini Triptych concert performance program and will be performed immediately after the one-act opera Sister Angelica.
The ballet is based on the music from the symphonic poem “The Island of the Dead” by Sergei Rachmaninov, the performance team reports. It recreates the dramatic relationship between the famous Russian dancer Vaclav Nijinsky, his wife Romola Pulsky, and the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who leads the company Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. Choreographed by Mikhail Lavrovsky, the adaptation is the work of the chief ballet master of the Varna Opera, Sergei Bobrov, who performed the role of Diaghilev in his dance career.
The Nijinsky premiere will feature Varna Opera soloists Vittorio Scole in the title role, Agniese Di Dio Maza as Romola, Giovanni Pompei as Diaghilev, Consta Roos and Sam Robert Darwell.
A Russian ballet dancer of Polish origin, born at the end of the 19th century, Vaclav Nijinsky is one of the biggest names in world ballet art, the opera troupe points out. The child of ballet dancers, he received his first dance lessons from his parents. After the father left the family, the mother moved from Kiev to St. Petersburg and enrolled her son in the Imperial Ballet School, where the state took over his maintenance. There they notice his incredibly technical high jumps, which make him the best dancer of the school, although he does not succeed at all in his studies. He quickly became famous for his talent, after graduating from school Nijinsky became a soloist at the Mariinsky Theater. His audacity to go on stage in only a tight leotard caused a scandal and became the reason for his dismissal. Nijinsky met Sergei Diaghilev, who is the impresario of the famous “Russian Ballet”. Impressed by the extraordinary talent of the artist, Diaghilev invited him to his troupe, which presented Russian ballet art in Europe, North and South America, and in “Diagilev’s Paris Seasons” Nijinsky became an absolute favorite of the audience. Nijinsky’s ballet style is avant-garde, ahead of its time, with a completely new plasticity of male dance. His choreographic work is considered the first step towards modern dance art. His bright talent is especially strongly manifested in the productions created especially for him by Mikhail Fokin. The parts forever associated with his name are the main roles in the ballet performances “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring” to the music of Igor Stravinsky, “Scheherazade” to the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, “Chopiniana” (“Sylphides”), “The Ghost on a rose” to the music of Carl Maria von Weber. It is in his performance that they become masterpieces of dance art. At the age of 30, Nijinsky was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was consulted by the great names of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler, but for the next 30 years the ballet dancer was periodically hospitalized in clinics. Diaghilev tries through dance to return him to an active life, but his efforts are in vain. Nijinsky’s wife, with whom he had two children, cared for him until the end of his life in 1950. He was buried in Paris, and on his grave is a statue of Petrushka from the ballet of the same name.
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