Maki Asami's
La Dame aux Camélias

  • 2009/2010 Season
  • Maki Asami's La Dame aux Camélias
  • OPERA HOUSE

For the season finale, we present the ballet scheduled for invitational performances at the Bolshoi Theatre

The New National Theatre Ballet got its start when the theatre opened in 1997. To commemorate the theatre's first 10 years, the NNT Ballet developed a new production of La Dame aux Camélias. The ballet is an adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, a tragic love story set in 1840s Paris. For her choreography, Maki Asami was honored in the 7th Asahi Performing Arts Awards.
Maki had reworked the choreography for previous NNTT productions of La Bayadère, Raymonda and Swan Lake, whereas La Dame aux Camélias is an all-original work. The score is based not on Verdi's opera La Traviata (adapted from the same novel), but is based wholly on the music of Berlioz, who lived at the time in which Dumas's novel is set. With its novel musical approach, the ballet has played to rave reviews in Japan and abroad. At the invitation of Russia's Ministry of Culture, the NNT Ballet is scheduled to perform La Dame aux Camélias at the Bolshoi Theatre in September 2009. This touching, dramatic work can only be seen at the NNTT, where it will close out the 2009/2010 season.

SYNOPSIS

There was a beautiful woman with whom the novelist Dumas was deeply, mutually in love but never married. La Dame Aux Camélias is her story. -Marguerite is a flower of Parisian society. Her beauty holds every man in thrall to it; men for whom money is no object vie for her affections. Yet her life is changed completely when she meets the young and idealistic poet Armand at a soiree. Vowing to devote her life to true love, Marguerite is ready to give up everything to make a life together with Armand, but is persuaded by Armand's father to abandon the young man. Her tuberculosis takes a turn for the worse, and she is nearing death when Armand appears, learns the truth, and begs her forgiveness. But it is too late...