Spartacus was one of the last great ballets created in the era of the Soviet Union, these ballets were the heirs of the Russian tradition dating back to the nineteenth century.
The music was written by Aram Ilich Khachaturian (1903 - 1978), already a well-known composer of scores for the ballet (Gayane 1942). Spartacus premiered in 1956, during the cold war.
It celebrates a hero of liberation, a historical figure from ancient Rome. Sold as a slave to a gladiator trainer, Spartacus escaped and hid in the area of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy, where many fugitive slaves lived.
He organized the fugitives as an army, planning a revolution that would free the slaves and end slavery. The revolt began in 72 B.C.
After a series of initial victories, the legions of Marcus Licinus Crassus drove Spartacus's army into Calabria, then on to Lucania where, with the aid of traitors, the Roman legions destroyed the slaves' army. The captured rebels were crucified.
The ballet focuses on the relationship between Spartacus and Phrygia, his girlfirend, who accompanied him until the end. Sold to different owners, they are reunited after they escape. They express their love in a marvelous pas de deux.
The relationship between Crassus and his lover Aegina is also emphasized. Aegina tries to corrupt Spartacus's followers with every possible means.
The events and the scenes are true to life, reflecting the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski (1863 - 1938), founder of a school of acting that has influenced all modern theater. Stanislavski created a technique of performance in which the actor seeks a relationship between his part and his own real life experiences, in particular in the expression of his feelings, a technique he called "psychological realism".
This research is particularly evident in the pas de deux in which, in the words of the dance critic and historian Alberto Testa, the dancers "free themselves from the material to become a pure vision of the spirit".
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The first version of the choreography, created by L. V. Jacobson, was modified in 1968 by Yuri Grigorovich (1927 - ), using masses of dancers in movement to build dramatic effects, forging the definitive version. Spartacus, in its strong masculine roles, demonstrates the vigorous athletic movements widely used in ballet in the second half of the twentieth century.