La Fenice di Venezia, 'Marie-Antoinette' by Malandain Ballet Biarritz in the first and exclusive Italian

The Malandain Ballet Biarritz debuts at La Fenice Theater of Venice with Marie-Antoinette, scheduled from 26 to 30 January 2022. The show is a danced portrait of the controversial figure of the Queen of France, choreographed by Thierry Malandain to music by Franz Joseph Haydn is Christoph Willibald Gluck, with sets and costumes by Jorge Gallardo and lights of François Menou.

The production of the famous French company arrives in Venice in first and exclusive Italian after the 2019 debut at the Opéra Royal in Versailles.

And it is precisely on the life of Marie-Antoinette in Versailles, amidst frivolity, court intrigues and power games, that the creation of Thierry Malandain focuses. The Trianon, the diamonds, the favorites, the flirtations, amplified by the grotesque caricatures and the pamphlets hostile to the Court, paved the way to hell for the unfortunate queen.

She who embodied the charisma of royalty, how could she accelerate its fall? A queen adored by a whole people, how could she lose her affection by turning it over into hatred, to the point of dying? A ballet cannot of course answer such complex questions, Malandain comments, nor transcribe the whole story of the unfortunate “Autrichienne” with the language of movement. The choice of the choreographer was therefore to circumscribe the horizons and action of the ballet at Versailles, summarizing the vicissitudes of Marie-Antoinette in the initial and final moments. In other words, passing from one evening to the next, from the queen's first appearance on the stage of the Opéra Royal to her departure from a play of which she had now become a "star of doom".

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(Marie-Antoinette from Malandain Ballet Biarritz, photo © Olivier Houeix)