Giuseppe Picone, the international ‘étoile’, is on stage Saturday 1st August at 9pm, in a unique gala evening, in a performance entitled Picone & i grandi della danza starring world-famous ballerinas. The show is not included on the Teatro Lirico’s 2009 Opera and Ballet season ticket.

The evening originates from an idea by Giuseppe Picone who aims to take the great stars of dance and ballet around the world in order to stimulate, sustain, spread and support this ancient art.

The evening programme, in two parts, includes choreography from The Spectre of the Rose, Swan Lake, La Sylphide, Raymonda, up to a more modern section with La Lacrimosa, Anna Karenina, Architekture of Silence, Who Cares!, interpreted by distinguished dancers from international companies such as: Olga Esina and Vladimir Shishov (Staatsoper, Vienna); Maria Gutierrez and Magali Guerry (Ballet Capitole, Tolosa); Shoko Nakamura and Wieslaw Dudek (Staatsoper, Berlin); Alessandro Macario (Teatro di San Carlo, Naples); Bojana Nenadovic Otrin (Slovene National Ballet ); Sterling Hyltin (New York City Ballet).

It is a vast innovative and stylish programme of great artistic quality. Giuseppe Picone brings a futuristic performance based on the solid structure of traditional ballet and style, which grows towards more contemporary dance, exploring new horizons of choreography, thus proving that these celebrated stars of ballet, of international fame, who are used to following a particular style and tradition are able to move into a more up-to-date creative reality in which they come across not only as ballerinas, but also as people, growing internally and externally and gaining a thorough artistic maturity.