SPARTACUS by Aram Khačaturjan in the choreography of Jiři Bubeniček! The premiere is set for January 27, 2023 at the Croatian National Theater. Jiří Bubeníček is choreographing at the moment a new full length ballet “SPARTACUS” for the Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb with Stage design by Dario Gessati and Costume design by Nadina Cojocaru.
The premiere is set for January 27, 2023 at the Croatian National Theater. SPARTACUS is a co-production of Croatian National Theater in Zagreb and Rijeka Croatian National Theater.
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Jiří Bubeníček is choreographing at the moment a new full length ballet “SPARTACUS” for the Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb
The work follows the exploits of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt against the Romans, known as the Third Slave or Gladiator War or, according to Plutarch, the Spartacus War, which was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave revolts against the Roman Republic.
This last uprising of Spartacus is the only one that directly threatens the heart of the Republic, but the ballet story takes considerable liberties in conveying the historical record. Khachaturjan composed Spartak in 1954, and in the same year he was awarded the Lenin Prize for that work. The first performance was at the Kirov Theater in Leningrad (now the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg) in 1956, with an unconventional choreography by Leonid Jakobson, which broke all the canons of classical ballet and remained in the repertoire for many years.
Then the work was performed twice in the Ballet of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow; in 1958 in the choreography of Igor Moiseev and in 1968 in the choreography of Yuri Grigorović, and only this production brought the ballet its greatest popularity. In the Zagreb Ballet, Spartak has never been performed as a complete ballet work, and this choreography by Jiří Bubeniček, whose ballet Metropolis we remember from 2018, will be the first complete staging of this ballet work on stage.
