Her search for distraction and her penchant for entertainment become the means of expression of the ballet, which shows Marie Antoinette in her greatest role, that of the Queen of France: "... but the star of disaster was written on her forehead. Because for her, who loved the theater, the curtain fell on the amusing comedy with the sound of a steel blade," says Thierry Malandain, director.
"When she holds herself erect, she is the statue of beauty; when she moves, she is grace personified," wrote the English writer and artist Horace Walpole in the 18th century about the Queen of France around whom legends are entwined: Marie Antoinette. For French choreographer Thierry Malandain, this dazzling figure from French history was the inspiration for a ballet that premiered in 2019 with his ensemble, the Malandain Ballet Biarritz, in the very place that Marie Antoinette inaugurated on May 16, 1770 on the occasion of her marriage to Louis XVI: the Opéra Royal Château de Versailles.
Marie Antoinette's life in Versailles is also the focus of Malandain's ballet, which the choreographer created to the music of two of Antoinette's contemporaries - Joseph Haydn and Christoph Willibald Gluck. The piece traces her arrival at court, the day of her wedding, the inauguration of the opera with Jean-Baptiste Lully's Persée - as a ballet within a ballet -, her attempt to escape, which proved to be her final undoing, and the infamous parties and balls with which the queen is associated.
In his movement language, Malandain's individual neoclassical style also encounters dance elements from another era. He unfolds baroque gestures, but remains true to a powerful and modern style. In his choreography, Malandain portrays a queen who not only indulged in pomp, opulence and vanity, but who also constantly became the plaything of others throughout her life - her mother, her court society, the French public - and who sank into loneliness and melancholy.
Premiere December 20
Further performances: December 22, 26 and 28, 2025, January 3, February 6, 11 and 13, March 29 and 31, April 5, 2026
