1.
Frederick Ashton
–
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton OM CH CBE was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film, determined to be a dancer, despite the opposition of his conventional middle-class family, Ashton was accepted as a pupil by Léonide Massine and then by Marie Rambert. In 1926 Rambert encouraged him to try his hand at choreography, Ashton was chief choreographer to Ninette de Valois, from 1935 until her retirement in 1963, in the company known successively as the Vic-Wells Ballet, the Sadlers Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet. He succeeded de Valois as director of the company, serving until his own retirement in 1970, Ashton is widely credited with the creation of a specifically English genre of ballet. Among his best-known works are Façade, Symphonic Variations, Cinderella, La fille mal gardée, Monotones I and II, Enigma Variations, Ashton was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fourth of the five children of George Ashton and his second wife, Georgiana, née Fulcher. George Ashton was manager of the Central and South American Cable Company, in 1907 the family moved to Lima, Peru, where Ashton attended a Dominican school. When they returned to Guayaquil in 1914, he attended a school for children of the English colony, one of his formative influences was serving as altar boy to the Roman Catholic Archbishop, which inspired in him a love of ritual. Another, still more potent, influence was being taken to see Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 and he was immediately determined that he would become a dancer. Dancing was not a career acceptable to a conventional English family at that time, Ashton later recalled, My father was horrified. You can imagine the middle-class attitude and my mother would say, He wants to go on the stage. She could not bring herself to say into the ballet, Ashtons father sent him to England in 1919 to Dover College, where he was miserable. Homosexual, and with a distinctly Spanish accent that his classmates laughed at and he was not academically inclined, and his father decided that on leaving the school in 1921 Ashton should join a commercial company. He worked for a firm in the City of London. In January 1924 George Ashton committed suicide and his widow was left financially dependent on her elder sons, who ran a successful business in Guayaquil. She moved to London to be with Ashton and his younger sister, despite family disapproval Ashton pursued his ambition to dance professionally. He auditioned for Léonide Massine, at the late age of twenty he was accepted as a pupil. After Massine left London, Ashton was taken on as a student by Marie Rambert and she encouraged him to try choreographing. His first attempt was in 1926 for a revue staged by Nigel Playfair, the Observer commented on an engaging little ballet called A Tragedy of Fashion, or The Scarlet Scissors which Mr. Eugene Goossens has set most suitably to music
2.
Robert Helpmann
–
Sir Robert Helpmann CBE was an Australian dancer, actor, theatre director and choreographer. He was born Robert Murray Helpman in Mount Gambier, South Australia, Helpmann was educated at Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, but left school at 14. From childhood, Helpmann had a desire to be a dancer. This was an unusual ambition in provincial Australia of the 1920s, in a 1974 interview, Helpmann recalled that he was taught the moves and dances of a girl because his dance teacher had no prior experience teaching boys. In the Margot Fonteyn biography, Helpmann is described as being dark-haired, pale, in 1926 he joined the touring dance company of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. The introduction came via his father, who was on a trip to Melbourne. Following the wartime return of the Sadlers Wells Ballet from the newly occupied Netherlands, Helpmann took a role in Ninette de Valois new ballet of 1940. The highpoint of Helpmanns career as a dancer was the Sadlers Wells Ballet tour of the United States in 1949, with Fonteyn and Helpmann dancing the leading roles in The Sleeping Beauty. The production caused a sensation, which made the names of both the Royal Ballet and its two principals, public and press referred to them affectionately as Bobby and Margot. Although Helpmann was past his best as a dancer, the tour opened doors for him in the United States as an actor and director, in the 1940s, as he passed his peak as a dancer, Helpmann turned to production and to acting. He produced his own ballets — Comus, Hamlet, The Birds, Miracle in the Gorbals, Caravan, Adam Zero and Elektra. Helpmann also appeared in films, including the two Powell and Pressburger ballet films The Red Shoes, for which he was the choreographer. In 1942 he played the Dutch Quisling in the Powell/Pressburger film One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, after his return to Australia as co-director of The Australian Ballet, he continued to appear in films. Notable productions included one of his most recognized screen roles, the evil and his performance in the film was later rated by Empire magazine as among the 100 most frightening ever filmed. Another family film he starred in was Alices Adventures in Wonderland, and for The Australian Ballet he co-directed with Rudolf Nureyev the ballet-film Don Quixote, in which he also played the title role. He also starred in the cult 1978 horror film Patrick, in which he broke his back in a scene where he lifted the title character, since he was gay and flamboyant, his arrival in what was at that time a very conservative country caused some consternation. Australians were proud of his fame, but not sure what to make of him personally. He did not endear himself with the comment, I dont despair about the scene in Australia because there isnt one here to despair about
3.
Sergei Prokofiev
–
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and conductor. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Prokofievs greatest interest, however, was opera, and he composed works in that genre, including The Gambler. Prokofievs one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and subsequently performed over the decade in Europe. During that time he married a Spanish singer, Carolina Codina, in the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofievs ballets and operas to be staged in America and western Europe. He enjoyed some success there – notably with Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, the Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred him to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace. Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka, a rural estate in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev, was an agronomist, Prokofievs mother, Maria, came from a family of former serfs who had been owned by the Sheremetev family, under whose patronage serf-children were taught theatre and arts from an early age. She was described by Reinhold Glière as a woman with beautiful. Who knew how to create an atmosphere of warmth and simplicity about her, after their wedding in the summer of 1877, the Prokofievs had moved to a small estate in the Smolensk governorate. Eventually Sergei Alexeyevich found employment as a engineer, employed by one of his former fellow-students, Dmitri Sontsov. By seven, he had learned to play chess. At the age of nine, he was composing his first opera, The Giant, as well as an overture, unable to arrange that, Tanayev instead arranged for composer and pianist Reinhold Glière to spend the summer of 1902 in Sontsovka teaching Prokofiev. The first series of lessons culminated, at the 11-year-old Prokofievs insistence, the following summer, Glière revisited Sontsovka to give further tuition. By 1904, his mother had decided instead on Saint Petersburg, glazunov was so impressed that he urged Prokofievs mother to have her son apply for admission to the Conservatory. He passed the tests and enrolled that year. Several years younger than most of his class, Prokofiev was viewed as eccentric and arrogant and he also shared classes with the composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky, the latter becoming a relatively close and lifelong friend. As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev developed a reputation as a rebel, while getting praise for his original compositions
4.
Charles Perrault
–
Charles Perrault was a French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new genre, the fairy tale. The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Cendrillon, Le Chat Botté, La Belle au bois Dormant, some of Perraults versions of old stories have influenced the German versions published by the Brothers Grimm more than 100 years later. The stories continue to be printed and have adapted to opera, ballet, theatre. Perrault was a figure in the 17th-century French literary scene, and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients. Perrault was born in Paris to a bourgeois family, the seventh child of Pierre Perrault. He attended very good schools and studied law before embarking on a career in government service and he took part in the creation of the Academy of Sciences as well as the restoration of the Academy of Painting. In 1654, he moved in with his brother Pierre, who had purchased a post as the tax collector of the city of Paris. When the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres was founded in 1663, Perrault was appointed its secretary and served under Jean Baptiste Colbert, Jean Chapelain, Amable de Bourzeys, and Jacques Cassagne were also appointed. His design was chosen over designs by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and François Mansart, in 1668, Perrault wrote La Peinture to honor the kings first painter, Charles Le Brun. He also wrote Courses de tetes et de bague, written to commemorate the 1662 celebrations staged by Louis for his mistress, Louise-Françoise de La Baume le Blanc, Perrault was elected to the Académie française in 1671. He married Marie Guichon, age 19, in 1672, she died in 1678, in 1669 Perrault advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains each representing one of the fables of Aesop in the labyrinth of Versailles in the gardens of Versailles. The work was carried out between 1672 and 1677, water jets spurting from the animals mouths were conceived to give the impression of speech between the creatures. There was a plaque with a caption and a written by the poet Isaac de Benserade next to each fountain. Perrault produced the guidebook for the labyrinth, Labyrinte de Versailles, printed at the press, Paris, in 1677. Philippe Quinault, a family friend of the Perraults, quickly gained a reputation as the librettist for the new musical genre known as opera. He was on the side of the Moderns and wrote Le Siècle de Louis le Grand, Le Siècle de Louis le Grand was written in celebration of Louis XIVs recovery from a life-threatening operation. Perrault argued that because of Louiss enlightened rule, the present age was superior in respect to ancient times
5.
The Royal Ballet
–
The Royal Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, UK. The company employs approximately 100 dancers and has built facilities within the Royal Opera House. The official associate school of the company is the Royal Ballet School, and it also has a company, the Birmingham Royal Ballet. The Prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet is the late Dame Margot Fonteyn, in 1926, the Irish-born dancer Ninette de Valois founded the Academy of Choreographic Art, a dance school for girls. Her intention was to form a repertory company and school, leading her to collaborate with the English theatrical producer. Baylis owned the Old Vic and Sadlers Wells theatres and in 1925 she engaged de Valois to stage performances at both venues. Sadlers Wells reopened in 1931 and the Vic-Wells Ballet and Vic-Wells Ballet School were established in premises at the theatre and these would become the predecessors of todays Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet School. Prior to her return to Britain, Ninette de Valois had been a member of the Ballets Russes, one of the most renowned, the company disbanded in 1929 following the death of its founder Serge Diaghilev. The Founder Musical Director was the conductor and composer Constant Lambert who had considerable artistic as well as influence over the early years of the company. After losing the link with the Old Vic theatre, in 1939 the company was renamed Sadlers Wells Ballet, the company relocated to the opera house the same year in 1946, with their first production at the venue being The Sleeping Beauty. Following the relocation of the company, the moved to its own premises in 1947. A sister company was established to continue performances at Sadlers Wells, called the Sadlers Wells Theatre Ballet, in 1955, the sister company temporarily lost its link with Sadlers Wells and returned to the Royal Opera House as a touring unit of the main company. In 1956, a Royal Charter was granted for companies and the school, they were subsequently renamed the Royal Ballet, Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet. The Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet returned to Sadlers Wells Theatre in 1970, in 1987, however, the company was invited to become the resident ballet company at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Birmingham Royal Ballet retains close relationships with both the Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet School, although it now has its own ballet school. In 1964 the Royal Ballet established Ballet for All under the direction of Peter Brinson, between 1964 and 1979 Ballet for All toured throughout the country, presenting around 150 performances per annum and reaching around 70,000 people each year. In 1976 the Royal Opera House established its schools matinee programme, to stage these ballets with her newly formed company, de Valois employed Nicholas Sergeyev, a former régisseur of the Imperial. He staged productions of Petipas The Sleeping Beauty, Petipa and Ivanovs Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, Petipa and Cecchettis production of Coppélia, and Petipas Giselle
6.
Royal Opera House
–
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is referred to as simply Covent Garden. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented, a year later, Handels first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, the main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London, and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high, the main auditorium is a Grade I listed building. The letters patent remained in the possession of the patentees heirs until the 19th century, in 1728, John Rich, actor-manager of the Dukes Company at Lincolns Inn Fields Theatre, commissioned The Beggars Opera from John Gay. In addition, a Royal Charter had created a fruit and vegetable market in the area, at its opening on 7 December 1732, Rich was carried by his actors in processional triumph into the theatre for its opening production of William Congreves The Way of the World. Despite the frequent interchangeability between the Covent Garden and Drury Lane companies, competition was intense, often presenting the plays at the same time. Rich introduced pantomime to the repertoire, himself performing and a tradition of seasonal pantomime continued at the modern theatre, in 1734, Covent Garden presented its first ballet, Pygmalion. Marie Sallé discarded tradition and her corset and danced in diaphanous robes, george Frideric Handel was named musical director of the company, at Lincolns Inn Fields, in 1719, but his first season of opera, at Covent Garden, was not presented until 1734. His first opera was Il pastor fido followed by Ariodante, the première of Alcina, there was a royal performance of Messiah in 1743, which was a success and began a tradition of Lenten oratorio performances. From 1735 until his death in 1759 he gave regular seasons there and he bequeathed his organ to John Rich, and it was placed in a prominent position on the stage, but was among many valuable items lost in a fire that destroyed the theatre on 20 September 1808. In 1792 the architect Henry Holland rebuilt the auditorium, within the shell of the building but deeper and wider than the old auditorium. Rebuilding began in December 1808, and the second Theatre Royal, the Old Price Riots lasted over two months, and the management was finally forced to accede to the audiences demands. During this time, entertainments were varied, opera and ballet were presented, kemble engaged a variety of acts, including the child performer Master Betty, the great clown Joseph Grimaldi made his name at Covent Garden
