Music by
Cesare Pugni
Choreography by
Yevheniya Khasyanova
Ballet company of
Kharkiv Opera Theatre
Based on the homonymous novel by Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris is a ballet written by the Italian composer Cesare Pugni (entitled Esmeralda in its original version). In the present version of the show, the libretto is more akin to its literary source.
Through the language of ballet, the show narrates the legendary, century-old story historically renowned. The tragic love story sees as protagonists the gipsy Esmeralda, the bell-ringer of Notre Dame Quasimodo, the archdeacon Claude Frollo and the captain of the royal archers Phoebus de Chateaupers. Respectively, love is taken away from them because of their clerical position, of their physical conditions and of the other’s contrary will. Above them all, the cunundrum of passions and the medieval Paris, the untouchable Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.
The show stands out for merging musical rhythm and ballet, revealing in depth the nature of the characters and plot narrative threads. Such important characteristics reflect the talent of the composer Cesare Pugni, particularly committed to ballet with a personal catalogue of over 300 works dedicated to it.
Notre-Dame de Paris will be performed in its choreographic version of the Ukrainian People’s Artist Yevgeniya Khasyanova. Such a version is based on the academic background, though the ballet model is definitely more complex and the perfect beauty of the classical version is integrated by the grotesque and saturated by elements of modern plastic arts.
