PETIT, Roland: Jeune homme et la mort (Le) / Carmen (Paris National Opera, 2005) (NTSC)

• TDK presents two masterpieces of French post-war ballet and a homage to Roland Petit, its most influential representative, filmed at the Opéra National de Paris in July 2005.
  


• Premièred in June 1946, The Young Man and Death marked the start of a whole new generation of choreography in liberated Paris, becoming the trademark of existentialist ballet. The setting is a down-at-heel garret that disappears to show a night-time panorama across the roofs of Paris. Petit’s choreography, set to Bach’s famous Passacaglia in C minor, conveys an expressionistic naturalism that leaves nothing to the imagination in its erotic significance. It is here danced by Nicolas Le Riche in “arguably his greatest role” (ballet.co.uk).
  


• Petit choreographed his Carmen ballet to a musical potpourri from Bizet’s opera. To match the colourful sets and costumes designed by Antoni Clavé, he arranged five scenes of an erotic thriller, in which Don José, who has been captured by bandits, murders the torreador before, in the final scene, stabbing Carmen out of jealousy.