Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake

This ‘’Swan Lake’’ is a ‘’Swan Lake” for our times capable of transporting the audience to another world. The magic in the story suddenly takes hold of the viewer. Ballet is not simply a way of telling the story. Rather than gestures asking to be deciphered, the choreographer created large-scale, visionary movements closer to an artistic language of symbols and plays on the whole spectrum of human emotions. It always maintains a relationship of creative tension with its surroundings, especially the music, the poetry of the set, the use of light and colour, the texture of the costumes. A key element of this artistic responsibility is to tell the story precisely but openly, without pinning it down, especially the ending – an ending which is in a many-facetted sense a “deliverance”. Does this mean that the lovers are saved? Is the spell’s power broken? Are there other kinds of salvation and deliverance? Perhaps even by death and transfiguration? Ballerina Polina Semionova performs the mythic parts of Odette and Odile (white swan and black swan) with her great partner Stanislav Jermakov. The Zurich Opera House Orchestra is conducted by Russian musical director Vladimir Fedoseyev acclaimed in this repertoire.