The International Dance Day at the Sofia Opera and Ballet - 28.4.2017

The Sofia Opera presents the ballet premiere - triptych: “Paquita”, “A Story of a Love” and “A Stubborn Dance”.

One beautiful and exquisite spectacle, which on 28, 29 и 30 April 2017, the talented artists from the ballet of the National Opera and Ballet will share with the audience their gala day and will charge it with much love, beauty and laughter!

Synopsis of the ballet “Paquita”:

First production by J. Mazilier at Grande Opéra. Georges Ellie, Paris, 1846.

In Spain, in a gipsy camp lives the beauty Paquita. But she is not a gipsy. Her appearance in the camp is connected with some strange crime in 1795 and is covered with secret. Paquita is carefully keeping a miniature portrait of her father, but who and why had killed him is not known to her. She was very little and remembers only how someone took her away.

But you see that in the valley, in the environments of Saragossa, where dwells the gipsy camp, arrives Count d’Hervilly, a French general. He wants to make a monument of his brother Carl, once killed together with his wife and his daughter at this same place.

At this time the governor of the Spanish province Lopez de Mendoza makes intrigues how to marry his sister Serafina to Lucien d’Hervilly. And Iñigo, the chief of the gipsy camp, makes his own intrigues. He wants to receive the love of the wonderful Paquita. Iñigo notices that between Lucien and Paquita there are tender feelings. He goes to the governor Don Lopez de Mendoza and both of them make a plan to kill Lucien: to give him wine, admixed with sleeping pills and then to come the specially hired killers.

But to their plans it was not written to come true. Paquita hears their conversation and saves Lucien. She replaces the bottles with wine and gives the sleeping pills to Iñigo. The hired killers were told to kill the one, who is in the house and instead of Lucien they kill by mistake Iñigo himself.

The main characters: Paquita and Lucien d’Hervilly go together, alive and safe after all troubles, to the place, where is being prepared a big ball. There was made the portrait of the killed hero Carl d’Hervilly.

Paquita tells about the treachery of the governor and he is arrested. In the portrait of the perished hero, comparing it to the image in her medallion, she recognizes her own father.

In our time is being performed only the last, fifth redaction of “Paquita” by the choreographer Marius Petipa, which will be presented on 28, 29 and 30 April at the Sofia Opera – the rest of the versions were lost. This version represents 45-minutes ballet, in which take part the young forces of the ballet company of the Opera. These are: Marta Petkova, Katya Petrova, Emil Yordanov, Nikola Hadzhitanev, Aleksandar Aleksandrov and others.

The rest of the ballet miniatures:

“A Story of a Love” represents a comic look over the ballet “Don Quixote” and “A Stubborn Dance” is a comic interpretation of the ballet “Giselle”.

In them also take part the young ballet performers of the Opera.

Choreographer of the comic miniatures is Yordan Krastev, who was a soloist in the ballet company.

Conductor Boris Spasov