La Bayadère at the Rome Opera

This revival of Petipa’s classic at the Rome Opera pares down the ballet to its essentials trading opulent spectacle for austere elegance. Discipline dominates, passion flickers only intermittently, and the spectral beauty of the Kingdom of the Shades emerges as the production’s fleeting wonder

by Alessandro BIZZOTTO

 At the Rome Opera, La Bayadère returns through a sharply modern lens: familiar, stripped to its essentials, and occasionally austere. Petipa’s 1877 classic, born of 19th-century Europe’s fascination with the Orient, has always thrived on extremes: blazing passion, jealous rage, and the supernatural spectacle of the Kingdom of the Shades.

The production by Benjamin Pech (a former principal of the Paris Opera Ballet now in Rome as assistant ballet master to the artistic director) at the Rome Opera House preserves the skeleton of Petipa’s masterpiece while paring down its visual opulence. The sets are daring yet at times overly minimalistic – copper discs, gauzy drapes – while its costumes reduce tradition to sculptural silhouettes.