Name: Mayerling
Start: 2022-10-06T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2022-10-22T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Hungarian State Opera House

Organization

Conductor

Paul Connelly

Paul Marsovszky

Set designer

Nicholas Georgiades

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Jacopo Pantani

Repetiteur

Grant Coyle

Tamás Solymosi

Singer

Gergely Leblanc

Crown Prince Rudolf

Dmitry Timofeev

Gergő Ármin Balázsi

Cristina Balaban

Countess Marie Larisch

Elena Sharipova

Nutsa Chekurashvili

Ellina Pokhodnykh

Tatiana Melnik

Baroness Mary Vetsera

Aliya Tanykpayeva

Lili Felméry

Maria Yakovleva

Hungarian State Opera

Mayerling

Budapest

Hungary

Hungarian State Opera House

Mayerling Franz Liszt

Public

Approved

Ballet in three acts Kenneth MacMillan's fourth full-length ballet tells the tragic story of the heir to the Austrian throne and his lover: the double suicide of Archduke Rudolf and Mária Vetsera in 1889, in the light of the social, political and personal pressure on the two protagonists, the choreographer elaborated in an extremely shocking performance, which considered by many to be his most outstanding work. The ballet's music was selected by John Lanchbery from the works of a world-famous Hungarian composer who composed several pieces for Empress and Queen Elizabeth (Sisi). The role of Rudolf is one of the most human-testing challenges in ballet literature: his psychological and emotional breakdown is shown in seven exceptionally intense pas de deux. With Mayerling, MacMillan broke with 19th-century conventions and created a ballet more suited to the harsher realism of our time.

Synopsis
We still do not know today with utter certainty what actually happened on that freezing January morning in the Mayerling Castle hidden in the Vienna Woods, probably because all evidences related to the death of the two lovers were erased with the greatest care by the imperial court. Was it a romantic suicide? Could it have been a drunk fight, or did the heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his lover, Mary Vetsera fall victim to a political assassination driven by dark intentions? The broken political marriage of Crown Prince Rudolf and Princess Stephanie of Belgium, the liberal views of the prince, his constant conflicts with his father, Emperor Franz Joseph, and feeling unloved by his mother certainly all contributed to the tragic ending of Mayerling. The journals and letters paint a picture of a bohemian, fickle, often insolent crown prince, whom they wanted to force to leave a young girl obsessed with him so much that she was willing to give up her life for this love.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew