The most loved and mesmerizing of classical ballets, "Swan Lake" was Tchaikovsky's first. It was composed in 1875 and over 100 years later it remains a favorite with ballet companies regularly performing it throughout the world.
"Swan Lake" debuted in 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, but it was not well-received at the time. In 1895, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov reworked the choreography for their St Petersburg performance and this has remained the most popular version.
For one night only, join BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night and the BBC Concert Orchestra for a trip along the Yellow Brick Road to celebrate the beloved musical film The Wizard of Oz in its 80th anniversary year.
Alongside the classic songs from the film such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Follow the Yellow Brick Road, the concert also features music from Wicked as well as the Michael Jackson and Diana Ross movie The Wiz – both inspired by Frank L. Baum’s original Oz stories.
The incredible cast includes the Olivier Award-winning Rebecca Trehearn as Dorothy, singer-songwriter Joe Stilgoe as the Scarecrow, West End leads Hadley Fraser as the Tin Man and Trevor Dion Nicholas as the Cowardly Lion, and Sharon D. Clarke, fresh from her triumph in Caroline Or Change. Actor Warwick Davis, who has starred in Star Wars and Harry Potter, presents his first concert for BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night, while the sixty-piece BBC Concert Orchestra is conducted by Broadway maestro Larry Blank.
Don Quixote is a ballet in four acts and eight scenes, based on episodes taken from the famous novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa to the music of Ludwig Minkus and first presented by the Ballet of the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, Russia in 1869. All modern productions of the Petipa/Minkus ballet are derived from the version staged by Alexander Gorsky for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1900, a production the ballet master staged for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in 1902.
Faust is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust.
The concert is staged far above the city streets, swift as night and strong as steel, courageous defenders stand ready to protect the weak and fight injustice. Alongside them, the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Robert Ziegler are set to underscore every blow they strike!
This spectacular concert included a special tribute to the great Stan Lee, whose superhero characters graduated from comic books to international screen stardom all over the world. With music from The Fantastic Four, Batman, Spiderman, Superman and the X-Men films plus comic strip heroes including Dick Barton Special Agent, Modesty Blaise, The Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon.
The brilliant ballet by Sergius Prokofiev is colourful, delightful with melodics, instrumentation and wit. It was created during World War II, probably in the Caucasus, where the authorities first evacuated the composers and at least partly in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. It is one of his most popular and melodious compositions, and has inspired a great many choreographers since its inception. The piece, with three acts, was composed between 1940 and 1944, telling the story of a young woman who is transformed into a beautiful and enchanting princess who eventually marries her prince, but only after she loses her glass slipper and he searches the entire kingdom for it’s beautiful owner.
