DANGEROUS LIAISONS Salford The Lowry | London Sadler’s Wells 1 – 10 June 2021 A BALLET BY DAVID NIXON OBEWelcome David Nixon OBE Artistic Director David Nixon OBE. Photo Simon Lawson. Cover: Joseph Taylor and Antoinette Brooks-Daw in Dangerous Liaisons. Photo Emma Kauldhar. Dear audiences, we heartily welcome you back to our tour. As I write this, following one of the most challenging years our industry has ever faced, there is a palpable sense of optimism and excitement that the light is finally at the end of the tunnel and better days are just around the corner. Indeed, it feels like a victory to be writing this note knowing it will be read by audiences attending our first tour since autumn 2019. Through the darkest days of lockdown, at Northern Ballet we have found opportunities to let our creativity shine a light. Without the tour demanding most of our time and resources, our programme of digital films has grown exponentially in unexpected and wonderful ways. However, performing live in front of an audience is in our blood; at the very core of why we do the job we do. We are still limited in terms of the productions we are able to rehearse and perform whilst adhering to the safety measures we have in place to protect our company. In Salford and London, we will perform an adapted version of Dangerous Liaisons which was a big success when we were able to revive it for a brief number of performances at Leeds Playhouse in October 2020. Contemporary Cuts 2021, which will be performed in London only, is a fantastic programme of our most popular contemporary short works and excerpts from full-length productions. This programme includes Kenneth Tindall’s States of Mind which was our first stage production to be created entirely during lockdown. Finally, we return to Leeds Grand Theatre, one of our home venues, with our unique interpretation of Swan Lake. Although the tour this season will only reach three venues, we are just thrilled that even this short tour has been possible. We have bigger plans afoot for another tour later in 2021 that will see us return to more towns and cities that we have missed visiting a great deal. I do hope that circumstances for us all will continue to improve in the coming weeks and months. Once again, I would like to thank each and every one of our supporters, audience members, staff and freelancers for all you have done over this difficult period. Continue to stay safe everyone. Enjoy these performances and we will be back again soon. 2DANGEROUS LIAISONS Choreography & Costume DesignDavid Nixon OBE StoryPierre Choderlos de Laclos MusicAntonio Vivaldi Lighting DesignAlastair West Production supported by Filippo Di Vilio and Rachael Gillespie in Dangerous Liaisons. Photo Emma Kauldhar. Audio Description supported by 3Pierre Choderlos de Laclos STORY Born in Amiens, France in 1760, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos studied at university before serving in the army for much of his life. He began writing during his time in the military and Les Liasons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) was published in four volumes in 1782 becoming a widespread success and has since been adapted many times for TV, film, theatre and dance. Alastair West LIGHTING DESIGN Alastair graduated from Bretton Hall in 2004 with a degree in Performance Design and Production, having specialised in Lighting Design. He is currently Head of Lighting for Northern Ballet where he has designed for multiple full-length and short works for the Company including most recently Geisha. Antonio Vivaldi MUSIC Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678. He composed a huge collection of works during his life, including more than forty operas and his best-known composition, a series of violin concertos The Four Seasons. Regarded today as one of the greatest composers of all time, Vivaldi died in Vienna in 1741. David Nixon OBE CHOREOGRAPHY & COSTUME DESIGN See page 13. Creative Team For full biographies visit northernballet.com/dangerous-liaisons Music played live by Northern Ballet Sinfonia Music Director Jonathan Lo (See pages 20 & 21) 4Abigail Prudames in Dangerous Liaisons. Photo Emma Kauldhar. 5The Story In 18th century France, passions run high amongst the wealthy elite. The Marquise de Merteuil is simmering from a previous affair with Gercourt, who left her for another woman. She enlists her former lover Valmont to enact her revenge. The Marquise unveils her plan for Valmont to seduce Gercourt’s virginal fiancée Cécile de Volanges but Valmont takes this as an insult to his talents and refuses. He has already set his sights upon the happily married and virtuous Madame de Tourvel. The Marquise offers Valmont a wager; seduce Madame de Tourvel and he will be rewarded with a night of pleasure with the Marquise herself. Her only condition is that he must present proof of his accomplishment in a written letter. Valmont accepts the challenge with relish. While Valmont heads to his aunt’s country estate in pursuit of Madame de Tourvel, the Marquise devises another plan and introduces Cécile to the young and dashing Chevalier Danceny. Neither plan bears fruit: Danceny proves to be all poetry and no action, whilst Madame de Tourvel is resistant to Valmont’s charms. The Marquise decides a shake-up is necessary and sneakily informs Cécile’s mother of the letters Danceny has been writing to her daughter. Shocked, Madame de Volanges sends Danceny away and, following the Marquise’s advice, takes Cécile to visit Valmont’s aunt in the country. Valmont agrees to deliver letters secretly between Danceny and Cécile, giving him an opportunity to return to the country where he continues his pursuit of Madame de Tourvel. All eventually goes to plan. Valmont agrees to deliver letters secretly between Danceny and Cécile but uses it as an opportunity to seduce Cécile. Madame de Tourvel succumbs to Valmont’s charms and falls madly in love with him, becoming his lover despite her principles. Finally, the Marquise takes Danceny as the latest in her string of amusements and pleasures. However, when the Marquise receives Valmont’s triumphant letter describing his lovemaking and feelings for Madame de Tourvel, she becomes inflamed with jealousy. Coming to collect his reward, the Marquise mocks Valmont for being in love, telling him his only chance of claiming her as his prize, is to give up Madame de Tourvel. Giving into his pride, Valmont breaks off his relationship with Madame de Tourvel, knowing it will destroy her. In an emotional rage he returns to the Marquise to demand his reward and discovers Danceny is her new lover. Valmont convinces Danceny to return to his true love Cécile but still, an outraged Marquise refuses to give Valmont the reward she promised and instead declares war upon him. The Marquise reveals to Danceny what Valmont has done to Cécile. In a fit of rage, Danceny challenges Valmont to a duel. Emotionally tired and in realisation of the evils of his life, Valmont allows himself to be killed but, before dying, gives Danceny the Marquise’s correspondence. Now understanding the truth of the matter, Danceny seeks advice from Valmont’s aunt and chooses to reveal a few of the letters. The Marquise becomes an outcast and, totally humiliated, retires from public life. 6Characters Marquise de Merteuil An aristocratic woman who takes pleasure in seduction and toying with the love of others. Manipulative and prone to jealousy, she plots revenge but becomes a victim of her own game. Vicomte de Valmont The Marquise’s former lover who shares her enjoyment of games of passion. He falls uncharacteristically in love with Madame de Tourvel before committing an act of betrayal which leads to his downfall. Cécile de Volanges Young and naïve, Cécile unknowingly becomes the subject of a plot by the Marquise to exact revenge on her former lover Gercourt, who left the Marquise for Cécile. Madame de Tourvel A happily married and God-fearing woman. She finds herself the unwelcome focus of Valmont’s plans of seduction but the pair awaken unexpected feelings in one another. Chevalier Danceny Introduced to Cécile by the Marquise, he courts Cécile’s affections through poetry and letters much to the disappointment of the Marquise who later seduces him for her own lover. Photos Emma Kauldhar. 7A Note on the Music Antonio Vivaldi - the mere mention of the name perhaps already conjuring strains of The Four Seasons. Astonishing to think then that until around the 1950s, the composer known as il Prete Rosso (the ‘red priest’, for he was ordained and had striking red hair) was little more than a curiosity, a footnote in music history most often mentioned in the biographies of J. S. Bach, who arranged the Venetian’s music as a ‘form of instruction’. Thanks to the incredible energies of the Italian musical institutions and the period instrument movement, and sparked by the discovery of 90% of his music in the Turin Manuscripts from a monastery in Northern Italy, the past 70 years have seen a re-discovery of Vivaldi, with new scores and fresh studies inspiring new performances and interpretations. Despite being known primarily for his nearly 500 concertos, one of the striking aspects of the emerging picture of Vivaldi is how much of a man of the theatre he was. Venice had become the European capital of cultural tourism by the late 17th century, with opera a particularly important attraction. Both Vivaldi and his father, the barber-turned-professional violinist Giovanni Battista, worked as impresarios who put on operas during the fêted ‘seasons’ in the city. Antonio was successful enough that he was asked to write the centre piece opera for the 1716 Carnival season. He claimed to have written nearly 100 operas (even though only half that number have been discovered), and clearly prided himself as an opera composer, understandably so given the lucrative and cultural significance associated with the art form. Set against the light of the operatic conventions, where music serves to evoke the pictorial and to arouse high emotions and drama, Vivaldi’s seemingly revolutionary programmatic musical content in his concertos becomes an almost inevitable result of his theatrical aesthetics. What has always been well-known was that Vivaldi was one of the leading violinists in Europe. The German merchant Johann von Uffenbach, who met the composer and heard him play on several occasions, wrote in his travel diary that ‘Vivaldi played a cadenza which really frightened me, for such playing has never been nor can be’. Furthermore, he was also an excellent director of music and orchestra, as is evident from his work as ‘Maestro di Concerti’ at the all-girls orphanage, the famous Ospedale della Pietá. The French aristocrat and writer Charles de Brosses ranked the orchestra at the Pietá to be better than the one at Paris Opera, noting in particular their expressive quality, how ‘they not only play forte, or piano, but fortissimo and pianissimo, and every nuance between’. He also recorded the setting in which they performed, with the orchestra in the dark behind church grates and veils, candles casting sensational shadows from the ladies’ – and Vivaldi’s – flowing locks and robes, a sight that would have been particularly provocative for early 18th century sensibilities. It is with this sense of the theatrical and a touch of the devilish rock-star flair that we should approach Vivaldi’s music, which makes it the perfect accompaniment to David Nixon’s ballet; where the suffocating heat of Vivaldi’s Summer becomes the tense atmosphere in the pas de deux between Valmont and Cécile, the turbulent north-wind becoming the tempestuous struggle between them. The ballet also draws out the operatic in Vivaldi’s music: take the pas de deux between Valmont and Madame de Tourvel near the start of Act Two, one could almost hear every aching syllable as the solo cello becomes the voice of Valmont in this expressive aria. This is Romantic music in every sense of that word. Jonathan Lo Music Director 8Joseph Taylor and Antoinette Brooks-Daw in Dangerous Liaisons. Photo Emma Kauldhar. 9Next >