The Ballet School Of Roma Opera

The ballet school was founded early in 1928, when the refurbished Teatro Costanzi reopened as the Teatro Reale dell’Opera, with the dual task of preparing young pupils and building up a full-fledged ballet company. The ballet company and the school initially formed a single body named the “Corpo di Ballo della Scuola del Teatro dell’Opera”. Its first directors, Ileana Leonidoff and Dimitri Rostaff, were responsible for female and male pupils respectively. Their place was taken three years later by Nicola Guerra, the last great exponent of the nineteenth-century Italian ballet tradition. The reins were then taken over by the Russian Boris Romanoff in 1934 and the Corpo di Ballo dell’Opera, which had already reached 47 members in 1935, developed stilI further in artistic terms due to the presence of Ettore Carosi, an internationally renowned premier danseur. The corps was noted for the particular bravura of its male members and trained dancers who went on to occupy leading roles in theaters throughout Italy. The ballet school and company were separated in 1938, the former being taken over by the sisters Teresa and Placida Battaggi and the latter by Aurelio Milloss, the leading figure in Italian ballet at the time. Attilia Radice, one of Enrico Cecchetti’s last pupils, was appointed “prima ballerina assoluta”. From the postwar period on, the Balletto dell’Opera di Roma has been able to count on truly illustrious maestros and directors including Milloss himself, Anton Dolin, Erik Bruhn, Zarko Prebil, Andre Prokovski, Maya Plissetskaya, Pierre Lacotte, Vladimir Vassiliev, Elisabetta Terabust, Giuseppe Carbone, and Amedeo Amodio. Carla Fracci has been director of the corps de ballet since 15 November 2000. The Company’s repertoire include the greatest traditional ballets and works by the most distinguished older and modern choreographers from Italy and elsewhere, including Petipa, Balanchine, Fokine, Ashton, Petit Massine, Cranko, Manzotti, Bournonville, Bigonzetti, Cannito, North, Monteverde, Amodio, Gades, Limòn, Nureyev, Chalmer, Bouy and Nijinsky. The most famous artists have worked on the scenes and costumes and countless guest stars of world ballet have trodden the boards of the old Costanzi Theater alongside the local talent. This constitutes the long and noble lineage of a company of seventy members that, despite various ups and downs, still retains great potential. Over the last few months, the Company has won great success with Filumena Marturano, a ballet by Beppe Menegatti based on the play of the same name by Eduardo De Fz1ippo, and the new productions Lungo viaggio nella notte di Natale, with the participation of Vladimir Vassiliev, and Requiem per Edith Stein. In March the Company achieved a box-office success and great critical acclaim also at the international level with the production Nijinsky.