“Le nozze di figaro” marked the beginning of the happy and fruitful collaboration between W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, which was to bring both success and artistic satisfaction. Although Da Ponte, as a precautionary measure and in view of the sharp censorship, dispensed with the biting sarcasm of Beaumarchais’ original, which served as the model for the new opera buffa, there was still enough fuel in it to deal with a major theme of the time: The examination of the complex relationships between the social classes, or rather the discrimination of the lower classes by the upper ones.While Count Almaviva embodies a reactionary representative of the nobility, the shrewd Figaro is presented as a representative of the rising third class. Two forces face each other here, each claiming power in pre-revolutionary Europe. Mozart found in this passionate and ironic piece so much of the shame and disappointments he had experienced during his artistic life that he let all his bitter experiences and mental anguish flow into the composition.Despite the explosive theme, the premiere performance in Vienna in 1786 under the reign of Emperor Joseph II was a great success. Today "Le nozze di figaro" is one of the most popular and most performed operas worldwide.

Who doesn’t immediately have the "Dance of the Four Little Swans" in their mind’s eye when they think of the subject of ballet? Or the touching pas de deux of the swan princess Odette and her prince Siegfried? Hardly any other work has had such a strong influence on ballet history up to the present day as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s "Swan Lake". Yet the reaction to the premiere at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater in 1877 was rather muted: the music too symphonic, but above all the choreography rather bland. The triumphant success of "Swan Lake" did not begin until 1895, when the choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov revised the ballet and staged it at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg - Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) had already died.The choreography around the innocent white swan princess Odette, her seductive counterpart Odile in the form of the black swan and Siegfried searching for his great love is still considered the basis for all productions today.