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

On November 18, just in time for the holiday season, Opus Arte presents the 2007 San Francisco Ballet production of Tchaikovsky’s beloved holiday favorite, Nutcracker. Recorded live at the War Memorial Opera House on December 19 and 20, 2007, the production features choreography by SF Ballet artistic director Helgi Tomasson, scenic design by Tony Award-winner Michael Yeargan, costume design by Tony Award-winner Martin Pakledinaz, lighting design by James F. Ingalls, and projections by Wendall K. Harrington. PBS stations across the country will air this production on December 17 on “Great Performances”.

This visually-stunning all-new production of Nutcracker is set in early-20th-century San Francisco and includes more than 200 colorful characters, larger-than-life scenery, and magical surprises that will mesmerize and delight adults and children alike. Each breath-taking scene from the Waltz of the Flowers to the Snowflake Waltz is a reminder that this adored ballet offers a nostalgic musical journey while transcending all generations. Bonus features include an illustrated synopsis and cast gallery, interviews with Tomasson, Yeargan and Pakledinaz and a documentary on the 1915 World’s Fair.

As America’s oldest professional ballet company, San Francisco Ballet has enjoyed a long and rich tradition of artistic “firsts” since its founding in 1933, including performing the first American productions of Swan Lake and Nutcracker, as well as the first 20th-century American Coppélia. San Francisco Ballet is one of the three largest ballet companies in the United States. Guided in its early years by American dance pioneers and brothers Lew, Willam and Harold Christensen, San Francisco Ballet currently presents more than 100 performances annually, both locally and internationally. Under the direction of Helgi Tomasson for more than two decades, the Company has achieved an international reputation as one of the preeminent ballet companies in the world. In 2005, San Francisco Ballet won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award, its first, in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Dance,” for its 2004 London tour. In 2006, San Francisco Ballet was the first non-European company elected “Company of the Year” in Dance Europe magazine’s annual readers’ poll. This year, San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary.

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.

Guitarist Friedemann Wuttke has performed compositions from all periods of music in his concerts and recordings; from the earliest guitar arrangements through Classical and modern contemporary works.  Wuttke’s newest album 20th Century Guitar, features some of the most beloved guitar composers of our time including Ulrich Wedlich, Leo Brouwer, and Carlo Domeniconi.

Stuttgart guitarist and composer Ulrich Wedlich’s Sonata für Gitarre conjures a meditative state in the listener. Its music appears to hover in the gray area between a popular and serious guitar work.  Cuban-born and self-taught composer Leo Brouwer is perhaps the most important representative of 20th Century Guitar music on the recording. His Concerto Elegiaco for Guitar and Orchestra gives the impression of a large, lush, Romantic era orchestra.  In reality, the piece is scored for strings and 2 percussionists; one playing kettle drums, the other playing a drum, tom tom, marimba, and glockenspiel.  Domeniconi’s Koyunbaba for Guitar (named for a saint-like hermit who lived in the South of Turkey) uses solely the guitar to create a magical sea adventure for the listener with sounds that fashion a world that seems to extend beyond human horizons.

Since 1992, Friedemann Wuttke has exclusively pursued his concert and recording career. He appears regularly at international music events and festivals and participates in numerous radio and television recordings. Wuttke has traveled the world as a concert guitarist and has performed with many important ensembles and orchestras.

Cello Fiesta!
Kremerata Baltica, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Giorgi Kharadze
Compositions by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Vaja Azarashvili, Ginastera, and Chick Corea
“Recommended” By Gidon Kremer

Cello Fiesta! is a unique recording by the orchestra-in-residence of the Kronberg Academy, Kremerata Baltica, and two Kronberg Academy Cello Masters: Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Giorgi Kharadze.  Hecker (Winner of the 2005 International Rostropovich Cello Competition) and Kharadze (Winner of the International Pablo Caslas Cello Competition) perform repertoire from three centuries while incorporating a range of musical colors and historical styles.  Gidon Kremer, founder of the Kremerata Baltica, has compared Hecker and Kharadze to the likes of the great cellist Pablo Casals and has also said that they are “musicians who will secure the future of the new generation of cellists”.

The recording opens with Haydn’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in C major, followed by the inspired Pezzo Capriccioso in B minor, which was composed by Tchaikovsky in less than one week.  These pieces pave the way for a variety of pieces from the 20th century, including the single movement Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by the revered Georgian composer Vaja Azarashvili.  Written for his good friend Pablo Casals, Argentinian Ginastera’s Glosses sobre temes de Pau Casals (Op 46) is colorful and provocative.  Chick Corea’s La Fiesta, arranged for 2 celli, strings and percussion, appropriately serves as the finale of the recording.

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky: Conductor or Conjuror is a portrait of the conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky himself: born in 1931, he made his début at the Bolshoi a year before Stalin’s death in 1953. He was deeply committed to contemporary music and was a close friend of great composers including Shostakovich and Schnittke. He also championed Prokofiev’s later works, which had been banned. This documentary also examines the art of conducting. Filmed from 1991-2002 in Moscow, Zurich, and Paris, it features Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in master classes with students at the Moscow Conservatory, rehearsals with Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and performances of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Schnittke’s Dead Souls. An extensive bonus film also includes the Tchaikovksy and Schnittke performances along with Zdravitsa, a cantata by Sergey Prokofiev composed in 1939 for the celebration of Stalin’s 60th birthday.