Pulcinella Alive

The Philadelphia Orchestra opens the festival with a program of two masterpieces from the first decades of that century, including a rare collaboration with Pennsylvania Ballet. In 1919 in London, Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes presented the world premiere of the full-length version of Manuel de Falla's ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, and the following year in Paris the same company gave the premiere of Stravinsky's commedia dell'arte-inspired Pulcinella. Both works originally featured choreography by Lonide Massine and sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso. In his first collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Finnish native and Boston Ballet resident choreographer Jorma Elo creates a new ballet to Stravinsky's Pulcinella, to be performed live onstage by the Orchestra and Pennsylvania Ballet. Rossen Milanov, the Orchestra's Bulgarian-born associate conductor, conducts.