Koen Kessels
Historia
Koen Kessels, Music Director, studied at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Music, Antwerp. He made his debut with the Royal Ballet of Flanders with Cinderella and has been a regular guest conductor for Opéra National de Paris (Le Parc, Coppélia, Proust, Cinderella, Hurlevent, Hommage à Jerôme Robbins, Giselle, La Petite Danseuse de Degas) since 2005 and with The Royal Ballet (Nutcracker, Giselle) since 2008. This season he makes his debut at the Wiener Staatsoper and the Bolshoi and is back with the Brussels Opéra de Munt (Hanjo) and Antwerp Opera (L'Amour de loin). He made his opera debut with Rouen Opera, France, conducting Il barbiere di Siviglia. His standard repertory contains the main Verdi, Mozart and Puccini operas, although there is a definite accent on contemporary opera. He founded and is Artistic Director of HERMES ensemble, specialising in contemporary music. He is Music Director of Zomeropera Alden Biesen, Belgium and on the artistic direction team at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. He joined Birmingham Royal Ballet in September 2010.
Conductor
Clara is given an enchanted Nutcracker doll on Christmas Eve. As midnight strikes, she creeps downstairs to find a magical adventure awaiting her and her Nutcracker. The magician Drosselmeyer transforms the drawing room into a battle between mice and toy soldiers. During the battle, Clara saves the Nutcracker’s life – so breaking a magical spell that turned him from a boy to a toy – and the Mouse King is defeated. In celebration, Drosselmeyer sweeps Clara and the Nutcracker off to the Kingdom of Sweets, where they meet the Sugar Plum Fairy and take part in a wonderful display of dances. The next morning, Clara’s adventures seem to have been more than just a dream.
Conductor
The Sleeping Beauty holds a very special place in The Royal Ballet’s heart and history. It was the first performance given by the Company when the Royal Opera House reopened at Covent Garden in 1946 after World War II. In 2006, this original staging was revived and has been delighting audiences ever since. Frederick Ashton famously cited the pure classicism of Marius Petipa’s 19th-century ballet as a private lesson in the atmospheric art and craft of choreography. Be swept away by Tchaikovsky’s ravishing music and Oliver Messel’s sumptuous designs with this true gem from the classical ballet repertory.
Conductor
Royal Ballet Founder Choreographer Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella celebrates its 75th anniversary this Season. The ballet’s opening night in 1948, featuring Moira Shearer and Michael Somes in the lead roles, was received rapturously. After over a decade away from the Royal Opera House stage, Ashton’s timeless reworking of Charles Perrault’s famous rags-to-riches story returns, showcasing the choreographer’s deft musicality and the beauty of Prokofiev’s transcendent score. A creative team steeped in the magic of theatre, film, dance and opera brings new atmosphere to Cinderella’s ethereal world of fairy godmothers and pumpkin carriages, handsome princes and finding true love.
Director
Inspired by dark and gripping real life events, this Royal Ballet classic depicts the sexual and morbid obsessions of Crown Prince Rudolf leading to the murder-suicide scandal with his mistress Mary Vetsera. The oppressive glamour of the Austro-Hungarian court in the 1880s sets the scene for a suspenseful drama of psychological and political intrigue as Rudolf fixates on his mortality. Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 ballet remains a masterpiece of storytelling and this revival marks 30 years since the choreographer’s death. Expect to see the Company at its dramatic finestacross potent ensemble scenes and some of the most daring and emotionally demanding pas de deux in the ballet repertory.
Conductor
In times of religious violence, the young mother Vigdis Adelaïs is torn between her Christian upbringing and the Jewish faith, to which she has converted for her beloved. The Belgian composer Wim Henderickx and librettist Krystian Lada have created a new opera from Stefan Hertmans' haunting novel about identity, impossible love, faith and human strength. Western early music, modernism and film music merge with Jewish and Arab traditions to create a contemporary opera in which Vigdis' epic story is told through sound. Koen Kessels tackles the challenge of conducting not only the Orchestra, Chorus and Children’s Chorus of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, but also a cast with singers from different vocal traditions, instrumentalists who play the qanûn, duduk or oud, and a newly formed city choir made up of Antwerp citizens from diverse backgrounds.
Conductor
Based on the true story of the death of Crown Prince Rudolf and his young mistress Mary Vetsera in 1889, Steven McRae and Sarah Lamb take on these challenging roles in a dark and intense ballet. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary is emotionally unstable and haunted by his obsession with death. He is forced to marry Princess Stephanie. Soon afterwards, his former lover, Marie Larisch, introduces him to a new mistress, Mary Vetsera, a young woman who shares his morbid fascination.
Conductor
The Royal Ballet performs Tchaikovsky's classic ballet, choreographed by Liam Scarlett and starring Marianela Nunez as Odette/Odile and Vadim Muntagirov as Prince Siegfried.
Conductor
One sunny afternoon, during a garden party, young Alice sees with surprise how the writer Lewis Carroll, a friend of her parents, unusually turns into a white rabbit, and immediately feels the irrepressible desire to follow him into a magical rabbit hole.
Conductor
The Sleeping Beauty holds a special place in The Royal Ballet’s repertory. It was the ballet with which the Company reopened the Royal Opera House in 1946 after World War II, its first production at its new home in Covent Garden. Margot Fonteyn danced the role of the beautiful Princess Aurora in the first performance, with Robert Helpmann as Prince Florimund. Sixty years later, in 2006, the original 1946 staging was revived by then Director of The Royal Ballet Monica Mason and Christopher Newton, returning Oliver Messel’s wonderful designs and glittering costumes to the stage.
Conductor
The first revival of Wayne McGregor’s critically acclaimed ballet triptych to music by Max Richter, inspired by the works of Virginia Woolf.
Conductor
Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein is the world premiere of Liam Scarlett’s new full-length ballet. A story of betrayal, curiosity, life, death and, above all, love, exploring the very depths of human nature. Federico Bonelli dances the role of Victor Frankenstein, Laura Morera is his Elizabeth, and Steven McRae is the creature. Koen Kessels conducts Lowell Liebermann’s newly commissioned score in this co-production between The Royal Ballet and San Francisco Ballet.
Conductor
In 2008, the Opéra national de Paris honored the legendary Jerome Robbins. Though the general public may remember him primarily for his staging and choreography of Bernstein’s West Side Story, Robbins was also a brilliant ballet choreographer. In this production, we discover three of his works of classical ballet—En sol, In the Night, and The Concert—paired with Benjamin Millepied’s Triade.
Conductor
Conductor
This all-time ballet favourite, in which young Clara is swept into a fantasy adventure when one of her Christmas presents comes to life, is at its most enchanting in Peter Wright's glorious production.
Conductor
Ballet en deux actes et treize tableaux du chorég. This is a live recording of a performance at Paris Garnier in 2007. Petit's earlier production for the Ballet de Marseille used more realistic stage sets, but the current Paris version has minimal stage sets. Also, the costumes were redesigned. Roland Petit created a ballet based on "In Search of Lost Time" for the Ballet de Marseille in the 1970s. Petit's intention was not to make a faithful adaptation of the novel, but to capture its flavour and convey, through a number of selected scenes, the narrator's incessant fluctuations between happiness and torment. The highlights are the series of poetical pas de deux.
