Cheri.

LA SCALA BALLET TEATRO ALLA SCALA, MILAN FEBRUARY 14-20, 1996 REVIEWED BY SILVIA POLETTI

In 1996 Carla Fracci celebrates two important milestones in her life: her sixtieth birthday and her golden jubilee with La Scala. As a gift for the ballerina the theater invited Roland Petit to create Cheri, a one-act ballet inspired by the work by French novelist Colette.

The principal role of Lea is exactly right for Fracci today. Lea is a mature and fascinating woman of the demimonde who allows herself to be captivated by a young man, Cheri. She lives out her last passion with him, though she knows that Cheri will hurt her. As Colette writes, he is too young, too handsome, too spoiled not to be an egoist. Sure enough, Cheri leaves her to marry a young heiress, not understanding that Lea is the true love of his life. Returning from war, when he realizes his decadence and returns to Lea, he finds only an old woman lost in loneliness.

Petit counters Fracci's twilight beauty with Massimo Murru's fresh cockiness, a mix that makes the love scenes an intriguing dramatization of the very different feelings in the hearts of this tragically mismatched pair. The dancing, as always with Petit, is flowing, elegant, and sensual made particularly interesting here by the dancers' interpretations. instead of the sophisticated courteson amused and attracted by Cheri's boldness, as described by Colette, Fracci is more motherly, more tender. This makes Lea and Cheri's final meeting weaker dramatically, but Fracci is so effective at expressing Lea's mute despair that her tiny, frail figure towers over the audience, involving all in her drama.

Small touches enable Petit to characterize Lea's frivolous entourage and to show the years rolling by the turn of the century by depicting social dances of the day. Luisa Spinatelli's set and decor ideally evoke fin-de-siecle Paris, and music by Poulenc provides the right melancholic atmosphere.

A young premier danseur, Murru is quickly maturing artistically. Also worthy of remark is twenty-year-old Roberto Bolle, a soloist in Petit's light and mannered Les Six Danses de Chabrier ("Six Dances by Chabrier"), which opened the program. Tall, handsome, bold, and technically strong, Bolle is a talent to encourage.