Eleonora Abbagnato, standing ovation for farewell to the Paris Opera

Tears, applause and an endless standing ovation of about 20 minutes. Eleonora Abbagnato bade farewell to the Paris Opera last night. Sold out box office at Palais Garnier (no distancing and only masks for the audience in the room) for the Hommage a Roland Petit. The French etoile and director of the corps de ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma danced two of the masterpieces of the choreographic literature of the 20th century, Le Rendez-vous with libretto by Jacques Prevert and original music by Kosma (scenes by Pablo Picasso ) and Le jeune homme et la mort from an idea by Jean Cocteau on the Passacaille de Bach. “I no longer hoped to celebrate my farewell to Paris after 29 years – Eleonora Abbagnato told Adnkronos – In 2019 the demonstrations of the Gilets Jaunes then the pandemic. With tears I leave a theater that has given me so much, to which I owe my international career, a great, very great theater, the temple of dance “. Numerous les italiens flocked to Paris to celebrate our great etoile alongside great interpreters of the contemporary scene and ‘old glories’ of the theater. Eleonora Abbagnato’s parents Elio and Piera and her brother Giuseppe, her husband, former Roma player and sports manager Federico Balzaretti with their children Lucrezia, Ginevra, Julia and Gabriel, Daniele Cipriani and Alessandra Martines, Sophie Marceau and Alessio Carbone, Isabelle Guerin, Giorgio Mancini, Luigi Bonino, Rebecca Bianchi, Benjamin Pech, Pierre Lacotte and his wife Ghislaine Thesmar, Angelin Preljocaj, Claude Bessy, director of the School of Dance where Eleonora Abbagnato studied as a child after the show he presented her with the Medal of Valor of the Paris Opera in front of hundreds of fans and the director of the corps de ballet Aurelie Dupont. At the end of the evening in a long and moving speech Eleonora Abbagnato thanked some of her traveling companions: Alice Renauvand, Stephane Bullion, Mathieu Ganio, paired in Roland Petit’s Rendez – Vous, Benjamin Pech, Audric Bezard, her husband (‘ mon beau mari), the children, the mother (‘thank you mom, I love you more than anything’), especially the colleagues, her company. “Now I’m back in my country -said the great etoile- I was a lucky woman to have been able to work at the Paris Opera- I am an Italian, but above all a Sicilian ‘Sicilian’. in mutual respect and admiration, always motivated by sincere passion, courage and extraordinary friendship “. Eleonora Abbagnato will be in Rome with the company of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma for the resumption of Swan Lake in the choreographic reinterpretation of Benjamin Pech at the Circus Maximus. Debut June 22nd.