Boston Ballet to Stage a Soviet-American ‘Swan Lake’

To cap its 26th season, Boston Ballet will present a Soviet-American “Swan Lake,” utilizing five principals of the Kirov and Bolshoi companies from the Soviet Union, five American principals, two Soviet stage directors and a North American production team. The new production is being created simultaneously in Moscow, Virginia and Boston.

The company, led by artistic director Bruce Marks, will give 16 performances of “Swan Lake” in Wang Center in downtown Boston, May 2-20.

Restaging his own version of the 1895 original by Petipa is former Kirov Ballet director Konstantin Sergeyev, assisted by Natalia Dudinskaya. Sergeyev and Dudinskaya, who are married to each other, are now directors of the Leningrad Ballet School. Dudinskaya has visited Boston Ballet before; she staged the company’s production of “Giselle” in 1987.

The five Soviet dancers are Yulia Makhalina and Tatiana Terekhova, who will alternate as Odette-Odile, Konstantin Zaklinsky, Nina Ananiashvili and Alexei Fadeyechev. The first three are principals of the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, the other two principals of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.

Partnering the guest artists will be five principals of the Boston Ballet: Marie-Christine Mouis, Trinidad Sevillano, Fernando Bujones, Serge Lavoie and Patrick Armand.

Casting of individual performances will be announced this week, said Nina Berger, a spokeswoman for the company.

The new production--both sets and costumes--has been designed by John Conklin, based on “the 15th-Century style of Fantastic Realism landscapes and German High Gothic architecture of the same period,” said Berger.

The sets will be built at both the Bolshoi Theatre Workshops in Moscow and at Scaena Studio in Virginia and Mystic Studios in Boston. Craig Miller is creating the lighting design.

Selling 16 performances in the 4,200-seat auditorium is no easy task. Asked how ticket sales are going, Berger said, “They’re going OK. Don’t forget, we usually sell out 47 performances of ‘Nutcracker’ in this hall every Christmas.”

Founded in 1963, Boston Ballet today operates a company of 47 dancers with a staff of more than 50 and an annual budget in excess of $11.7 million.

COMPOSERS: Libby Larsen’s seventh opera, “Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus,” will receive its world premiere performances at the World Theater in St. Paul, Minn., May 25-June 3 in a staging by Nicholas Muni. In the cast will be Steven Tharp, Tom Schumacher, Mari Opatz and Gordon Holloman. . . . Marking the 20th anniversary of the passing of Ingolf Dahl, colleagues of the late composer, headed by Anthony Vazzana, Eudice Shapiro, Milton Thomas and Charles Fierro, will present a Dahl concert at USC, April 29. . . . Participants in the 1990 Composer-to-Composer Festival at Telluride, Colo., have now been announced. They are John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Michael Nyman, Geri Allen, Roger Reynolds, Henry Brant, Ge Gan-Ru, Adriana Holszky, Pauline Oliveros, John Carter, Jim Tenney, Robert Morris and I Wayan Sadra.

LOOKING AHEAD: The 1990-91 season at Long Beach Opera will offer a double bill of Massenet’s “La Navarraise” and Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” (opening Nov. 28), Debussy’s “Pelleas and Melisande” (April 21-28, 1991) rescheduled from this year and Rameau’s “Hippolytus and Aricia” (May 12-19, 1991). The Massenet/Mascagni bill will be given in the 3,000-seat Terrace Theater, the remainder of the season in the 800-seat Center Theater. Conductors will be Michael Recchiuti for the double bill, Paul Connelly in the Debussy work and Nicholas McGegan for the Rameau opera. Stage directors: Hugo de Ana, Brian Kulick and Christopher Alden.