Spartacus

When I was asked to choreograph ballet „Spartacus“ I began, as always, with a comprehensive research process, which included reading the original historical novel written by Italian author Raffaello Giovagnoli in 1874. The novel's central character is Spartacus, a real-life figure who lived around 71 BC. As a former gladiator and accomplished military leader, he rebelled against oppression, social injustice, and fought for equality. During this time, slave owners were able to abuse, injure, or even kill their own slaves without legal consequence. Spartacus's army was eventually defeated by the Roman army led by Crassus, and all of the survivors (approximately 6,000) were crucified along the Appian Way.

Upon reading the novel, I was surprised to discover that it included a plethora of layered characters and stories that differed from the ballet libretto of "Spartacus" that I was familiar with. After completing the touching book, I knew in my heart that I wanted to create a ballet that closely followed the original novel with its beautiful and rich story. For example, the novel contains a love story between Spartacus and Emperor's wife Valerie, a young and beautiful courtesan named Eutibide who is in love with Spartacus but is rejected by him, and her jealousy and revenge contribute to the deaths of Oenomaus and Spartacus. Additionally, there is a touching love story between Artorix, a young gladiator student and friend of Spartacus, and Mirza, Spartacus's sister, who decides to take her own life due to the loss of her love.

I collaborated with Nadina Cojocaru, my wife and costume designer for this production, to develop the dramaturgy of the performance. From over 600 pages and numerous scenes, we carefully selected the most important ones to represent the story written in Raffaello Giovagnoli's masterpiece as closely as possible, including the roles, names, and characters, and their relationships, to create an entirely new libretto. This is totally a new approach focusing not so much on the demonstrative performance, but retelling and staging a dramatic storyline.

Our new libretto enabled me to view the music with fresh eyes. I fell in love with the music and re-arranged it to align with the development of our new narrative plot. Therefore in our ballet version we are using Aram Khachaturian’s score, but for the first time ever with a completely new order that enhance the main story, deals with the revolt of the gladiators in the first century B.C, but as well supports it's characters and their love story lines. Spartacus with all his strength is introduced not only as a hero, but more importantly as a human with all his sensibility, doubts and strong love for Valerie.

To express the story for today's audience, I chose a dance technique that is based on classical ballet combined with contemporary way of moving. Together with Dario Gessati’s stage design, Nadina Cojocaru's costume design and Aram Khachaturian’s music, I belive that you will enjoy the entirely new work as much as I did when creating it for the wonderful dancers at the Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb.

Jiří Bubeníček, Choreographer, Concept and Dramaturgy