Un immense soleil orange derrière un arbre nu, la foule en silhouettes

Guest company · Rome

Opéra Palatina, Rome

The Opéra Palatina ballet: a nineteenth-century Roman house, a proscenium stage in the Italian manner, and evenings that play as well under the open sky as in the auditorium.

Scènova represents the Opéra Palatina Ballet and co-produces its European tours.

The house opened in 1880 in a district that was not yet the centre of anything. Its architect gave it a horseshoe auditorium conceived as a sounding box, and that acoustic decision made its reputation before its repertoire did.

The theatre passed through the hands of an impresario, then of the city, before taking on the status it holds today. Successive renovations left it its present form: three tiers of boxes, a painted dome, and a chandelier of twenty-seven thousand crystal drops.

The ballet

The dance company took shape in the shadow of the opera season before winning its independence. It has kept the taste for a big stage and live music: every production goes on tour with its orchestra.

For fifteen years the house has staged an open-air series each summer, on one of the city's ancient sites. The images that come back – a corps de ballet in the dead of night, with no back wall – have done a great deal for its name outside Italy.

La Nuit Couture

With the company, Scènova presents a programme in two parts, Nuit Dansée and Nuit Romaine, choreographed by Ludovic Mérat, with costumes created by Maison Valcourt.

It is a commission, not a revival: both pieces were written for this cast, and the costumes were drawn in the workshop from the set designs.