Ballet Company
Picture: George Balanchine rehearses the Ballet Imperial with Olga Amati and Giulio Peruguni - 1952
After the debut in 1942 of his paradigmatic The Miraculous Mandarin (with music by Béla Bartók, sets and costumes by Enrico Prampolini), it was Aurelio Milloss, engaged by Arturo Toscanini, who re-launched the Scala Ballet after World War II. Milly Clerici, Edda Martignoni, Wanda Sciaccaluga, Elide Bonagiunta, and above all Olga Amati, Luciana Novaro, Ugo Dell’Ara, Giulio Perugini, Mario Pistoni, Walter Venditti and Amedeo Amodio, established their reputations under his guidance, in numerous choreographies - among which were La Follia d'Orlando, Marsia, La rivolta di Sisifo – alongside works by Massine, who returned to La Scala in 1948 restaging his Sacre du printemps. Massine exerted a considerable influence on the development of the Ballet Company for more than ten years (Gaîté parisienne, Capriccio, Le tricorne, Laudes evangeli), and during that period began also the collaboration with the New York City Ballet and George Balanchine.
Picture: Aurelio Milloss and Giulio Perugini rehearse Moses - 1952
Balanchine’s collaboration with the Scala (Ballet impérial, Le Baiser de la fée, Palais de cristal, Concerto barocco, The Four Temperaments and Orfeo), from 1952 to 1964, witnessed a wonderful efflorescence of ballet there, thanks to a galaxy of dancers like Vera Colombo, Fiorella Cova, Gilda Majocchi and Elettra Morini. But the Scala ballet company’s success grew especially with Carla Fracci, who started her career in Alfredo Rodriguez’s Cinderella in 1956 and went on, two years later, to dance in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet, a work specially designed for the Scala company at the Teatro Verde on the Island of San Giorgio in Venice. Fracci was partnered by Rudolf Nureyev, who, from his arrival at La Scala in 1965, entrusted to the Theatre nearly all his classics: Sleeping Beauty (1966), Nutcracker (1969), Paquita (1970), Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet (1980) and Swan Lake (1990). Nureyev kept up a very special connection with the company, which from 1971 was directed by John Field and richly endowed with traditional talents, such as Liliana Cosi, who also danced with Nureyev at various intervals, and with modern ones such as Luciana Savignano and Paolo Bortoluzzi. For forty years many works were created for Carla Fracci: from La strada by Rota-Pistoni (1966) to Medea (1987) by John Butler, to Roland Petit’s Chéri (1997), together with the works created by Maurice Béjart, and staged for his favourite ballerina Savignano, such as La luna and then Bolero in 1975. At the Scala, Béjart also presented The Firebird, Le marteau sans maître, Bakhti, as well as Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (1986) and Dyonisos (1988), often mixing the Scala ballet company with his own Ballet du XXème Siècle, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1973) onwards.
Picture: Claire Sombert and Jean Babilée at the national debut of Le jeune homme et la mort
In 1955 with Le jeune homme et la mort began, though really taking off from 1963, the long and productive collaboration between the Scala Ballet and Roland Petit (Le loup, La chambre, Les demoiselles de la nuit and, in more recent years, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Proust, ou Les intermittences du coeur, L’ange bleu, Tout Satie, Carmen and Notre-Dame de Paris). Meanwhile the Scala’s own choreographic talents, such as Mario Pistoni, Amedeo Amodio and Ugo Dell’Ara, continued to enhance the theatre’s reputation. Dell’Ara choreographed the new Excelsior (1967), directed by Filippo Crivelli, with a musical adaptation by Fiorenzo Carpi, which was revived at the Scala in 1978, again in 1999 and has been on tour since 2002.In the 70s and 80s, étoiles and principal dancers such as Anna Razzi, Oriella Dorella, Renata Calderini, Angelo Moretto, Paolo Podini, Bruno Vescovo as well as Maurizio Bellezza, Davide Bombana and Marco Pierin, were frequent performers at the Scala. Those were the years of a new opening towards Europe and America, with Jiří Kylián (Symphony in D, La cathédrale engloutie), Jerome Robbins (Après-midi d’un faune, Les noces), Birgit Cullberg (Miss Julie), Louis Falco (Eagle’s Nest) and Joseph Russillo (La leggenda di Giuseppe, Lieb und Leid).
