Eleonora Abbagnato: “Farewell to Paris with excited Roland Petit, a circle closes”

It will perhaps be his last time on the stage of the Palais Garnier. Eleonora Abbagnato leaves the Paris Opera on 11 June due to age restrictions (dancers in France retire at 42). A suffered farewell and repeatedly postponed in full revolt of the Gilets Jaunes in December 2019, forced to take a step back, in May 2020, in full pandemic. And it will be a tribute to her choreographer and pygmalion Roland Petit, who discovered her very young, making her participate in the role of Aurora as a child in her extravagant and surreal ‘Sleeping Beauty’, alongside Zizi Jeanmaire, Luigi Bonino, at the Ballet National de Marseille. “I have always been linked to Roland Petit, to his wife Zizi Jeanmaire – Eleonora Abbagnato told Adnkronos – I was consecrated étoile after a performance of his ‘Carmen’ and several times I made the public of Costanzi known, with monographic evenings, his masterpieces’. And Eleonora Abbagnato added: “with this evening I feel like I’m going home, I’m safe, calm, even if it will be a great emotion. It is a circle that closes, a dutiful homage, almost a destiny that awaited me at the gate. I had to say goodbye to the Opéra with ‘Le parc’ by Angelin Preljocaj, then the hypothesis of a mixed evening, a sort of gala, alongside the colleagues and partners with whom I had danced all these years. Finding Roland Petit in Paris is a wonderful gift for me – he continued – He is no more, but I had the honor of always dancing his ballets at the Paris Opera. “Over the course of the year, the great Palermitan étoile l ‘he promised his fans via social media: “I’ll be back soon to say goodbye and also greet our wonderful audience. I miss that stage to death, that indescribable emotion, that fear and that pure adrenaline. I miss you, friends and colleagues, always close in every moment of my life. This Theater will always be the temple of dance. Don’t forget it “. On the program, for his ‘adieu’, and also to remember the French choreographer and master on the tenth anniversary of his death, the sulphurous ‘Carmen’, whose success in 1949 catapulted Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire to international fame, ‘Le Jeune Homme et la Mort’, a disturbing duet imagined around a libretto by Jean Cocteau and ‘Le Rendez-vous’ based on a text by Prévert, with Brassaï’s scenographies bringing the Paris of the 1950s to life. On 11 June, therefore, Eleonora Abbagnato, married to the former Roma footballer and now sports manager, Federico Balzaretti, and mother of Julia and Gabriel, is preparing for another challenge. She leaves the role of director for a few days. of the corps de ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (new debut this summer, June 22 at the Circus Maximus, with ‘Swan Lake’ in the choreographic reinterpretation of Benjamin Pech) to cover those of étoile, the first Italian to be consecrated , with a standing ovat ion on March 27, 2013, at the highest spheres of the Parisian corps de ballet pyramid. It had never happened in over a century. Eleonora Abbagnato’s next appointment in Italy will be alongside Claudio Baglioni from the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (streaming on the ItsArt platform on 2 June at 9 pm) in the show ‘In this story that is my’. “I worked a lot with Claudio in Lampedusa in his ‘O Scià’ festival. He is a great artist who loves and respects artists and the theater. It is a unique emotion to work with him and with Giuliano Peparini who follows all his shows , choreographer and director who has no equal – concluded Eleonora Abbagnato – who knows how to bring out the best of dance, of what each performer embodies “.