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A Monthly Culture Matrix For the Cosmopolitan Traveler

Napoli


Royal Danish Ballet / Copenhagen / Stage

The Royal Danish Ballet has cancelled performances through April 19, but it’s arranged to stream—for free—one of its most beloved Bournonville ballets, Napoli. Choreographed in 1842, this three-act work has one of those old-fashioned stories. A pretty girl, Teresina, refuses marriage to two wealthy suitors because she loves the poor charmer, Gennaro. After a storm, Act Two finds her underwater, now a naiad in the Blue Grotto. Gennaro rescues her and in a celebratory Act Three they marry. In 2009, under director Nikolaj Hübbe, the ballet received an update that moved it from early-1800s Naples to the 1950s. While this kind of transposition can rub balletomanes the wrong way, most seemed to roll with it. Here’s a chance for us all to see the production. The leads are danced by the charmingly paired Alexandra Lo Sardo and Alban Lendorf. She is dark-haired and petite, a beauty with lovely line, especially through the feet. And he is her match for correctness fused with ecstatic brio. —L.J.

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Royal Danish Ballet Kongens Nytorv 9, 1050 København K, Denmark
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