From 12th to 16th April at the Teatro Parioli in Rome, Rossini Ouvertures is on stage, a creation by Mauro Astolfi for Spellbound Contemporary Ballet that celebrates the artistic and human figure of composer Gioachino Rossini.
After the interpretation of Vivaldi’s music with Vivaldiana and one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most emblematic works L’Arte della Fuga, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet’s dialogue between contemporary dance and classical music continues.
Produced in 2017 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Rossini’s death, the show was an immediate and extraordinary success. Described as “a magnificently successful work” that “strikes for its distinct theatricality”, over the years it has been performed on three continents with numerous performances, becoming one of the everlasting classics of the Company’s repertoire.
The homage stems from Augusto Benemeglio’s reading of Rossini’s The Thousand Masks, about the composer’s life, a thunderbolt that Astolfi recounts as follows: That “Organised Madness” was profoundly and absolutely enlightening for me. I was sincerely seduced in 24 hours of continuous and repeated listening by the Rossinian world, by this genius so explosive and inebriating but at the same time living walking arm in arm with so many black spots, torn apart by a profound sickness of living that, through a very strong and energetic personality, bordering on bipolarism, created musical works of absolute and eternal grace.
On stage nine dancers translate into movement the intensity, energy, vitality, suggestions and vibrations that Rossini’s music arouses: an ‘extreme’ music, the result of that ‘organised madness’, as defined by Alessandro Baricco, that characterises his entire repertoire.