Sergei prokofiev death

Leonid Mikhailovich Lavrovsky real name - Ivanov — was a Russian ballet choreographer, most famous for choreographing the first full version of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

Sergei prokofiev compositions

Lavrovsky was born in in St. Petersburg, the son of an industrial worker. He graduated in from the Petrograd Ballet Academy, where he had studied under V. During the same period, Lavrovsky was also a member of the Molodoy Ballet Young Ballet , an experimental dance collective whose members included the young George Balanchine.

Lavrovsky's first major work as a choreographer was the ballet Katerina , which he created for a graduation performance. The ballet told the story of a serf theater, and was choreographed to music by Anton Rubinstein and Adolphe Adam. In the late s, Lavrovsky was made the artistic director of the ballet troupe of the Kirov Theater. Lavrovsky and Prokofiev struggled for a period over the score and libretto, Lavrovsky eventually persuading the composer to add variations for Romeo and Juliet as well as some other incidental numbers.

The ballet premiered on January 11, Lavrovsky's production is widely recognized as one of the greatest examples of the drambalet genre in Soviet Theater. Lavrovsky's choreography for the ballet is highly dramatic and largely realistic, closely hewing to the motions taken by stage actors and mostly eschewing traditional ballet divertissements.

In , largely owing to the success of Romeo and Juliet , Lavrovsky was made the head ballet master for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. In , he restaged Romeo and Juliet for the Bolshoi. For this production, which also starred Ulanova, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, first class. His last major work was Paganini , a fantastic re-imagining of the life of Niccolo Paganini set to Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini , which premiered in In the early s, Lavrovsky's style of choreography came under attack for its realism and lack of dance from a group of young choreographers, including the rising star Yuri Grigorovich.