The splendour of an enchanted lake and a dream of love realised: with its own particular ending Vladimir Bourmeister's version of Swan Lake, which entered the La Scala repertoire in 2004 and is now being shown for the first time on the Piermarini stage, will open the ballet season. In following the original musical sequence of Tchaikovsky's score, Bourmeister has brought some very significant changes in respect to the order favoured in other versions. There are also some interesting dramaturgic variations, from the prologue to the traditional Soviet “happy ending”, in which Siegfried and Odette live on after surviving the terrible waves of the lake.