Mauro Bigonzetti: "I fratelli - Die Brüder"

Mauro Bigonzetti, as a resident choreographer of Aterballetto in Reggio Emilia, you accepted the challenge of creating your first full length ballet in Stuttgart for the company of the Staatstheater.

It is a return to Stuttgart for you – with a particularly challenging task? This is, in fact, my fourth creation in Stuttgart, after “Kazimir’s Colours” in 1995, “Quattro danze per Nino” to Nino Rota’s music two years after and then “Orma” to Bruno Moretti’s score, which was so well received that it will soon enter the repertoire of Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse and of Zurich Ballett. This time, moreover, rehearsing with two different casts, I am working with, let’s say, 50 dancers – a new, exciting, chance to broaden my mind.

Did you choose or were you asked to stage a ballet on an “Italian subject”? For this occasion, I was left absolutely free to think about the kind of ballet I wanted to stage, but looking at the tradition of Stuttgart Ballett, I made the decision to stage a narrative ballet, a quite unusual field for me. And I was inspired by the famous Luchino Visconti film “Rocco e i suoi fratelli” from 1960, based on Testori writings; a dramatic, political story of a family ...