Prague National Theatre's OTHELLO Ballet Concludes 4/9

The Prague National Theatre's production of the ballet OTHELLO, based on play by William Shakespeare will conclude its run April 9th. The ballet began performances on April 1st.

The brand-new, full-length narrative ballet Othello has been specially created for the National Theatre Ballet by the choreographer and stage director Youri Vàmos. The production is a world premiere performances of the work, conceived to Leoš Janá?ek's music.

Petr Zuska, Artistic Director of the National Theatre Ballet, asked "the last ballet narrator", as the choreographer of Hungarian origin is frequently dubbed, to create a work tailored for the Prague National Theatre Ballet dancers.

"I know that about ninety per cent of the music leans on Janá?ek's Taras Bulba," Zuska reveals. "The conception seems interesting to me: we are in the Czech Republic, in Prague; Othello, written by an Englishman, is being choreographed by a Hungarian working in Germany - to music by a Moravian and to a Russian musical theme, to boot!" Zuska says, adding: "We are thus linking up to the tradition of Shakespeare works in our repertoire, following The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet."

Youri Vàmos started his international soloist and choreography career at Munich's Opera House. Subsequently, already a well-known creator, he headed the ballet company at Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf for 13 years. The 16 grand narrative ballets he has created to date have always managed to fill the auditorium, be it modernised classical works (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty - The Last Daughter of the Czar, Giselle, Coppélia from Montmartre), or adaptations of novels and dramas (Julien Sorel, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream).

Leoš Janá?ek was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvo?ák. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jen?fa, which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of Jen?fa (often called the "Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janá?ek access to the world's great opera stages. Janá?ek's later works are his most celebrated. They include the symphonic poem Sinfonietta, the oratorial Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, string quartets, other chamber works and operas. He is considered to rank with Antonín Dvo?ák and Bed?ich Smetana, as one of the most important Czech composers

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Photo Credit: PicturesFromPrague