Tragedy has attracted artists since time immemorial, and Yuri Possokhov’s “Francesca da Rimini” is no exception.
The brief but tumultuous piece is the second part of San Francisco Ballet’s Program 7 mixed bill, and its ultimate highlight.
Based on the tale of Paolo and Francesca – lovers immortalized in Dante Alighieri’s 14th century poem “The Divine Comedy – “Francesca” is, essentially, a condensed “Romeo and Juliet.”
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San Francisco Ballet’s current "Nutcracker" uses 173 costumes, 42 pairs of pointe shoes, more than 59 pairs of tights and 18 wigs per show. It’s a contrast to 1944, when it made do with rhinestones from Goodwill and rationed fabric in what was the first production of the ballet in America.
Today, the show garners about 40 percent of the company’s ticket revenue each year, for good reason: "Nutcracker" is a crowd-pleasing romp, albeit with some room for improvement.
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Whatever Helgi Tomasson’s classical and restrained 1994 “Romeo and Juliet” — onstage at the War Memorial — may lack in passion is more than made up by San Francisco Ballet’s super-romantic pair of Davit Karapetyan and Vanessa Zahorian.
Karapetyan, from Yerevan, Armenia’s largest city, and Zahorian, from an Armenian family in Pennsylvania, portray Romeo and Juliet with all the heartbreaking poignancy of Shakespeare’s original.
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