Impression on Jewels - by George Balanchine

Impression on Jewels

JEWELS the beautiful precious stones available in different colours that women love so much. Well, this time NOT. The "JEWELS" I had to do with is a beautiful ballet performed in three parts: Emeralds, Rubies, Diamonds.

Green like Emeralds, like childhood, like the first steps in the world. Music by Faure.

Red like Rubies, like teenage, like first love and passion made of skirmishes, games and fun. Music by Stravinski.

White like Diamonds, like the adulthood, the true love, the conscious passion, the tenderness. Music by Tchaikovski.

George Balanchine put all these emotions in his 3 coreographies. The result is an amazingly beautiful performance (2 hours in total).

To say the truth, I saw it twice. The first time I was fascinated expecially by the costumes and the music. Never seen costumes so magnificent, they are really jewels: Emeralds with green stones, Rubies with red stones, Diamonds with transparent stones. The performance was not so good as I expected it to be.

Yesterday I loved all the three performances and I loved them in full, costumes, music and dancers. They performed beautifully. All was perfect!

La Scala was full, not less then 2000 people (different ages) breathing at the same time, feeling the same emotions and expressing all their appreciation and their love after each performance, expecially after the second one, Rubies (my favourite too).

Among the 2000 people attending the performance, many came from abroad, German people, English people, East-European people and African people and also a nice couple coming from the west coast of Canada. They were in Milan for visiting the city, the museums and possibly a performance at La Scala. They sat next to my friend and me and we discovered they had no idea that a ballet performance was taking place in the afternoon and learned about it by chance. Nice to know that they try to attend a performance in every city they visit! The Opera (ballet or opera can be a mirror of people, a lot can be learned attending a performance in a city you do not know, it has to do not only with what performed on stage but with the behavior the people living there have).

One more lovely thing that happened during the performance had to do with the orchestra director Mr. David Coleman, a very friendly man. He danced on his place while conducting the orchestra during Rubies, I could feel he loved what he was directing, he felt the music deep in his body and in his soul and could not help dancing. I felt the same, I wanted to stand and dance the enchanted music written by Stravinski.

Another Emeralds is waiting for me soon....very curious to see how it will be!