Opus Arte released My First Ballet Collection including 26 ballet scenes featuring some of the world’s most exciting and talented dancers from The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. From the graceful elegance and passion of Swan Lake, to the humor and wit of the Clog Dance from La Fille mal gardée and the exuberant liveliness of The Nutcracker, this is a perfect collection for any ballet beginner.

A website has been designed to accompany this entertaining and educational DVD (http://www.myfirstballetcollection.com) in association with the US branch of the Royal Academy of Dance. Founded over 80 years ago, the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) is the largest, most influential dance teacher training and examining body for classical ballet in the world. On the website, parents are able to search RAD certified dance schools to find the right school for their child and find helpful tips on locating the right dance teacher if there is no certified instructor in their area. The My First Ballet Collection website also includes a list of websites for major American dance companies, a list of all of the complete ballets from which the excerpts have been pulled, trailers from many of those ballets, and links to the RAD website.

My First Ballet Collection Includes:

Tchaikovsky The Sleeping Beauty Valse

Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Entrance of the Swans

Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Battle of the Toys and Mice

Hérold La Fille mal gardée The Fanny Elssler pas de deux

Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Madame du Cirque and the Dancing Bear

Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Chinese Dance

Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night’s Dream Oberon’s Kingdom

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Hérold La Fille mal gardée Picnic

Adam Giselle Retour des vendangeurs et valse

Hérold La Fille mal gardée Dance of the cock and hens

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Russian Dance

Delibes Sylvia Pas des esclaves

Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Dance of the Mirlitons

Prokofiev Cinderella Cinderella

Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Waltz of the Snowflakes

Prokofiev Cinderella Duet of the Prince and Cinderella

Delibes Coppélia Bringing Coppélia to life

Hérold La Fille mal gardée Clog dance

Delibes Sylvia Pizzicati

Tchaikovsky The Sleeping Beauty Act 1 Finale

Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Cygnets’ Dance

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker Waltz of the Flowers

Delibes Sylvia Les Chasseresses

Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night’s Dream Epilogue

Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Pas de trois – Odette, Siegfried, Von Rothbart

Tags: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Adolphe Adam, blog.naxos.com, Delibes, Giselle, La fille mal gardée, Mendelssohn, My First Ballet Collection, Nutcraker, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Prokofiev, San Francisco Ballet, Swan Lake, Sylvia, Tchaikovsky, The Royal Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty

On July 29, Opus Arte releases Cecilia and Bryn at Glyndebourne, a recital of arias and duets recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House on April 24, 1999. Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel open the concert with the first two scenes from Le nozze di Figaro, performing the same roles they sang together to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera. Terfel and Bartoli join forces with Myung-Whun Chung and the London Philharmonic Orchestra to perform other opera favorites such as the “Catalog Aria” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni (”Madamina, il catalogo è questo”), “Quanto Amore!” from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and “Pa-pa-pa-pa” from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Some opera rarities like the aria “Al tuo seno fortunato” from Haydn’s opera L’anima del filosofo also are included in the recital.

Also in July, Opus Arte presents Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake performed by the Paris Opera Ballet and Orchestra in December 2005. Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake was composed at the request of the Bolshoi Ballet in 1875. Its premiere was a great disappointment and in 1877 it was removed from the Bolshoi repertoire. It was not until eighteen years later that Swan Lake was resurrected to great glory by French choreographer Marius Petipa, who also convinced the reluctant Tchaikovsky to compose two additional ballets before his death in 1893: Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. Petipa’s Swan Lake revival, which secured the ballet’s place in the standard repertoire of almost every ballet troupe in the world, finally occurred on January 27, 1895 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

This production of Swan Lake, choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev, premiered with the Paris Opera Ballet in 1984. Nureyev stayed faithful to Petipa’s production, however, he offers a much more personal and intimate vision of the ballet, with what some might say is an almost autobiographical aspect to the development of the story and its characters. Nureyev’s interpretative resolutions are well-suited to Tchaikovsky’s compositional style giving the work the power to assume its true tragic structure.

Tags: blog.naxos.com, Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Myung-Whun Chung, NaxosDirect, OA BD7001D, OA BD7005D, Opus Arte, Paris Opera Ballet, Rudolf Nureyev, Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky