Balletto di Milano to dedicate Estonian tour to the memory of conductor Eri Klas
Italian ballet company Balletto di Milano will perform Viva Verdi in Estonia in early November, dedicated to the memory of Estonian conductor Eri Klas. Shows are set for Tallinn and Jõhvi.
The Milan-based ballet company Balletto di Milano will perform in Estonia in early November with a new programme. The production, Viva Verdi, is dedicated to the memory of Estonian conductor Eri Klas, for whom the music of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi held a special place. The Tallinn and Jõhvi performances are part of a tour of the Baltic states and Finland.
From opera dances to a stand-alone show
Verdi never composed separate, self-contained ballets, but his operas contain ballabili (Italian for "suitable for dancing") — dance episodes within the opera's action. They matter most in works that he wrote for the Paris Opera or reworked for French audiences, since the grand opéra tradition required a ballet scene. The idea for Viva Verdi grew out of these fragments.
Choreographer Agnese Omodei Salè looks for a physical equivalent of the opera's emotional tension in her choreography. The programme includes the Triumphal March scene from "Aida", preludes to "Attila", "The Robbers" and "La traviata", and ballet episodes from "Macbeth", "Otello" and "The Sicilian Vespers". The show closes with the finale of "Nabucco".
The company
The company's artistic director, Carlo Pesta, is a graduate of the La Scala academy. A former ballet soloist, he shared the stage with Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev.
Balletto di Milano gives more than a hundred performances per season, both in Italy and abroad, and has earned a reputation as an "ambassador of Italian dance". In recent years it has appeared in France, Germany, Spain, the United States, China and dozens of other countries, including Estonia, where it first performed in 2014. Its repertoire includes "Romeo and Juliet", "The Nutcracker", "Carmen", "Notre-Dame de Paris" and "Anna Karenina".
When and where
Viva Verdi will be shown on 2 November at 7 p.m. at the Estonian National Opera in Tallinn and on 3 November at 7 p.m. at the Jõhvi Concert Hall. Viva Verdi 2026 is a joint project of Balletto di Milano and the Italian Ministry of Culture, supported by the Italian embassy in Estonia.
