Revised Requiem to be brought to Montreal

From February 21 to 25 the Company will tour at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts in Montreal. The new version of the ballet Requiem will be presented to the Canadian audience for the first time.

This ballet has a rather long story behind it. In 1991 Boris Eifman staged a one-act Requiem ballet to the music of W. A. Mozart; it was a philosophical parable exploring the never-ending mystery of human life. More than two decades later Eifman – a restless artistic mind always in search of a new and ever more perfect dance language – reverted to his past production and, proceeding from it, created a full-scale ballet performance. By largely rethinking its choreographic dance score, Eifman has added one more act to the ballet; it was set to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony “To the Memory of Victims of Nazism and War” and dedicated to Anna Akhmatova, one of the most significant Russian XX century poetesses who had a tragic fate and whose two husbands and son became the victims of the Soviet regime’s repressions. The premiere of the ballet was held on January 27, 2014 at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

In 2017, Boris Eifman enlarged the first act of Requiem by adding the scenes set to the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom by Sergei Rachmaninoff and ethnic music. The new version of the ballet to be premiered on February 21, 2018 in Montreal. The performance will be accompanied by solo voices, choirs and Les Grands Ballets Orchestra with Honoured Artist of Russia Valery Platonov at the conductor's desk.