Home
Ballet Talk
Magazines
Specials
Reviews
Ballets
Dancers
Companies
Studio
Shop
Links
Subscribe

---

CARLOTTA BRIANZA (1867- c. 1933) Princess Aurora

Born in Milan, Brianza had been the prima ballerina at La Scala before going to Russia. She created a sensation in Luigi Manzotti's ballet Excelsior as the Spirit of Light. A photograph of her in this role survives, showing her brandishing a couple of Edison light bulbs!

She went to Russia in 1887 after touring the United States in a production of Excelsior (which celebrated technology!) The contract that she obtained from the Imperial Theaters gave her the right to perform in both St. Petersburg and Moscow, and she was quickly taken to the heart of the Russian audience. Never a dramatic dancer, her great virtue was in a great strength and a classical purity uncommon in Russia at that time, and her lyrical approach to roles is still apparent in the general style of Aurora's variations throughout Sleeping Beauty. Brianza was also much-admired for her personal style, which was much more relaxed than that of the aggressive, personally difficult Virginia Zucchi, in whose footsteps she followed in Russia.

Brianza was acclaimed not only for her work in Beauty, but also in Esmeralda. She returned to the West in 1891 to take up duties as prima ballerina of the Vienna Opera. She later returned to La Scala and also guested at the Paris Opera. She retired to the latter city, where she taught. Diaghilev brought her out of retirement, asking her to assist Bronislava Nijinska in staging the 1921 version of The Sleeping Princess in London. He is supposed to have asked her to dance Aurora; she, over fifty, diplomatically chose to perform as Carabosse, instead!

After the success of this revival, she returned to obscurity, and died in Paris sometime during the early thirties, reputedly a suicide.