Il Lago dei Cigni ovvero il Canto

A masterpiece of 19th-century and a ballet celebrated all over the world, Swan Lake tells the cruel and unhappy tale of two lovers, Siegfried and Odette, who pay for their passion with their lives.

An acclaimed contemporary choreographer, Fabrizio Monteverde reinvents the most famous of the classical repertoire ballets and brings it to the stage of the Teatro Olimpico with a new production: Il Lago dei cigni, ovvero il Canto is a painful journey of illusions and memory in which an old and ill actor retraces the thousand roles of his long career.

A group of "old" weary dancers of an imaginary decayed company, amidst a thousand fatigues, cling to their last Lake in a desperate attempt to postpone its ending: a Lake without end, of gestures and bonds reiterated in the heartbreaking hope of surviving the epilogue of an interminable repetition.

The protagonist Odette/Odile is torn between good and evil - swan and princess, compassionate and cruel, faithful lover and mocking rival - and is condemned to a perpetual metamorphosis. A metaphor for art that knows no finish line, Odette/Odile has to embark on a tormented journey of love, betrayal, imprisonment, and liberation to find herself.

The new production by the Balletto di Roma, in collaboration with the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, sees the talented Carola Puddu in the role of the Black Swan and Roberta De Simone in that of the White Swan, dancing together, to the notes of Tchaikovsky, the metaphor of a love story and the suggestions of a ruthless fairy tale in which art overpowers life.

The programme may undergo changes