Nureyev in Milan. (News).

It fell to La Scala Ballet to be the first company to celebrate Rudolf Nureyev on the tenth anniversary of his death. While the Paris Opera Ballet, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, and London's Royal Ballet--the other European companies with which Nureyev was unforgettably associated--scheduled commemorative galas in the first months of 2003, the Milan theater beat them by devoting a substantial part of its December 2002 calendar to recalling the ballet star. The menu included a December 19 international gala, a long run of Nureyev's Nutcracker production, and the publication of the book Rudolf Nureyev alla Scala.

Little wonder in all this. Nureyev contributed to the legend of La Scala in the last decades of the century muchas soprano Maria Callas or conductor Arturo Toscanini had in earlier generations. Rudy Nureyev arrived with The Royal Ballet on the glorious Piermarini stage in October 1965 to dance with Margot Fonteyn in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet and immediately took the audience by storm.

La Scala Manager Antonio Ghiringhelli immediately guaranteed Nureyev's regular presence in Milan by fostering a legendary partnership with Milanese star Carla Fracci. Nureyev not only was a principal guest star for almost every La Scala Ballet season between 1968-90, but he also created and restaged some of his more significant productions for the company: The Sleeping Beauty, which he choreographed in 1966, with Fracci in her first Aurora; The Nutcracker, in which Nureyev launched another Milanese ballerina, the Bolshoi-trained Liliana Cosi, in 1969; and the lively Don Quixote (La Scala premiere: 1980), again with Fracci. Nureyev's presence at La Scala was instrumental in upgrading the company's classical repertoire and the technical quality of the dance. The Milanese audience always responded to him with unconditional love, through his last appearance at the theater as Rothbart in his Swan Lake in July 1990.

The sold-out, international gala, conceived by La Scala Ballet Artistic Director Frederic Olivieri, took place at the new Arcimboldi Theater. It offered the opportunity to admire for the first time in Italy some of the rising stars of the twenty-first-century ballet world, from the Russian Svetlana Zakharova and the Georgian Nikolai Tsiskaridze, to the British Robert Tewsley, to the Romanian Alina Cojocaru and the Cuban pair Lorna Feijoo and Jose Manuel Carreno, to the Italian Roberto Bolle. A brief photo and video sequence before the gala afforded the illusion of seeing a young Nureyev dance once more.

The most appreciated and enduring product of the Milanese celebrations is surely the publication of Rudolf Nureyev alla Scala (see lascalabookstore.com). Edited by dance critic Vittoria Ottolenghi, the book contains an introduction by Corriere della Sera critic Mario Pasi, essays by Italian dance scholars about the six Nureyev productions in La Scala's repertoire, interviews with Fracci and others, plus appendixes listing Nureyev's performances with the company and on RAI Television. "We did not want to do only a souvenir book," Ottolenghi explained, "but a historical and critical study about Nureyev's influence on Italian ballet that La Scala represents so well. It's a reference book that we hope will be useful to any university student or dance scholar who wishes to study the amazing period of ballet history that Rudy gave us."