Nureyev at Opéra de Paris

Parisian audiences discovered Rudolf Nureyev in May 1961 when the Kirov Theatre Ballet came on tour. The dancer took his first steps on the Palais Garnier stage in the role of the Prince in Sleeping Beauty. Success was immediate. From that moment on, strong links were forged between Nureyev and the Opéra national de Paris, who invited him to take part in numerous performances of its Compagnie de danse.

In 1979, Nureyev created his first choreography for the Paris Opera Ballet: Manfred.

Don Quichotte was created by Marius Petipa in Moscow in 1869. The ballet, inspired by the novel by Cervantes, tells the story of the thwarted love of Kitri and Basilio. Rudolf Nureyev first danced Don Quixote at the Kirov Theatre in 1960, making it one of his signature roles. He remounted it in 1966 for the Vienna Opera Ballet. This production entered the repertoire of the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Pairs in 1981, at the request of Rosella Hightower, then Director of Dance

On February 4, 1982, Rudolf Nureyev was appointed Director of Dance at the Opéra national de Paris. He took up his post in September 1983, inaugurating the season and his debut with Ballet Raymonda. This was followed by six classic ballets that remain top of the bill to this day: Romeo and Juliet (1984), Swan Lake (1984), The Nutcracker (1985), Cinderella (1986), Sleeping Beauty (1989) and La Bayadère (1992).

Serguei Prokofiev's score, inspired in 1938 by William Shakespeare's play, gave rise to countless ballets, including MacMillan's 1965 version, which Rudolf Nureyev performed with Margot Fonteyn. Nureyev choreographed his own version in 1977 for the London Festival Ballet, and reworked it in 1984 for inclusion in the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet.

Rudolf Nureyev danced Swan Lake with Margot Fonteyn in 1963, then with the stars of the Paris Opera Ballet, Noëlla Pontois and Claire Motte. In the version he presented in 1984 at the Palais Garnier, he offered a "Freudian" re-reading of Petipa and Lev Ivanov's ballet: Prince Siegfried escapes the reality of power and marriage to take refuge in dreams, where he appears to a magical lake bearing the idealized love of a swan-woman.

Rudolf Nureyev danced The Nutcracker as a student at the Vaganova School, then as a young dancer at the Kirov, in versions very close to Marius Petipa's ballet. He remounted the ballet in 1967 for the Royal Ballet of Sweden and the Royal Ballet of London, for the Ballet de la Scala in Milan the following year, and for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1971 and in Berlin in 1979.

When Rudolf Nureyev created Cinderella, the work was unprecedented at the Paris Opera. Unlike the great classical repertoire, the story of the young orphan was new to the Palais Garnier. He therefore chose to cast it in a new light, making no reference to any previous choreography. He transposes Perrault's tale to the Hollywood world of the 1930s.

Sleeping Beauty belongs to the "grand spectacle" ballets choreographed by Marius Petipa for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg. Premiered in 1890, it marked the beginning of his fruitful collaboration with composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. In his first staging of Sleeping Beauty, at La Scala in Milan in 1966, Rudolf Nureyev took Petipa's original choreography and introduced his own arrangements. 

La Bayadère was revealed in Paris in May 1961 for the first with Rudolf Nureyev. Rudolf Nureyev remounted the piece at London's Royal Ballet in 1963, then at the Opéra national de Paris in 1974. The production he presented at the Palais Garnier in October 1992 was the first complete, three-act version of La Bayadère ever danced in France. It was his last creation, three months before his death.