Mixed-composer ballet / dance work including music by Lera Auerbach
Othello**
Reginaldo Oliveira’s full-evening ballet for the Ballett des Salzburger Landestheaters, built from a mixed-composer sound world including approximately twenty-six minutes of music by Lera Auerbach.
Catalogue Status
A mixed-composer ballet including music by Lera Auerbach.
Auerbach Material
Approximately twenty-six minutes of music by Lera Auerbach. The production uses excerpts from her violin and cello preludes, the Cello Sonata, Op. 69, and Ten Dreams.
Dramatic Focus
Shakespeare’s tragedy as a chamber drama of belonging, mistrust, erotic vulnerability, and psychic collapse. Oliveira’s ballet places Othello’s jealousy within a social field of migration, conditional acceptance, exclusion, and manipulation.
Work Information
Creative Team
Musical Dramaturgy
Music Used in the Ballet
- Lera Auerbach Approximately 26 minutes of music, including excerpts from the violin and cello preludes, from the Cello Sonata, Op. 69, and from Ten Dreams. The official programme also identifies Ten Dreams for Piano, Op. 45, No. 5; 24 Preludes for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 47, No. 12; and the Lament Adagio from the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 69.
- Arvo Pärt Fratres; Für Alina; Silouan’s Song; Tabula Rasa.
- Camille Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre, Op. 40.
- Alfred Schnittke Concerto grosso No. 1, Recitativo.
Auerbach’s contribution forms the inward psychological register of the ballet. Oliveira’s Othello is not organized around a single composer, but around a curated sound world. In that architecture, Auerbach’s preludes, dreams, and cello lament frame the tragedy through dream, suspicion, grief, erotic vulnerability, and irreversible psychic collapse.
The Auerbach selections belong to concentrated chamber and piano idioms rather than public spectacle. They operate as interior states: the sound of jealousy forming, trust dissolving, memory darkening, and grief becoming physical.
Principal Roles and Cast
| Role | Dancer |
|---|---|
| Othello | Kt. Flavio Salamanka |
| Desdemona | Márcia Jaqueline |
| Jago | Iure de Castro |
| Emilia | Larissa Mota |
| Cassio | Lúcio Kalbusch |
| Rodrigo | Pedro Pires |
| Ensemble | Naila Fiol, Chigusa Fujiyoshi, Gabrielly Juvêncio, Mikino Karube, Karine de Matos, Anna Yanchuk, Diego da Cunha, Lucas Leonardo, Niccolò Masini, Paulo Muniz. |
The Work
Othello is Reginaldo Oliveira’s full-evening ballet after William Shakespeare, created for the Ballett des Salzburger Landestheaters and premiered on 3 November 2018. The work transforms the tragedy into a concentrated physical drama of intimacy, social vulnerability, suspicion, and destruction.
Oliveira places Othello inside a field of migration and belonging. Othello is a man who has achieved status in a new homeland: a soldier of high standing, admired and trusted, married to Desdemona. Yet his position remains exposed. Jago’s revenge works because it touches an already vulnerable place — the fear that acceptance is conditional, that love is unstable, and that the social world around him may never fully receive him.
The ballet avoids decorative Shakespearean pageantry. Its world is closer to chamber tragedy: a psychologically exposed space in which every gesture can become surveillance, every embrace can become doubt, and every doubt can become violence.
Sebastian Hannak’s stage space supports this concentration. Rather than reconstructing a historical Venice, the design creates an architectural environment for suspicion, intimacy, and collapse. Judith Adam’s costumes and Martin Nussbaumer’s lighting help define the figures not as literary illustrations but as bodies under pressure.
Reception and Significance
Othello marked an important Salzburg milestone for Reginaldo Oliveira. After his earlier Karlsruhe work and his Salzburg debut with Medea — Der Fall M., it became his first full-evening narrative ballet created for the audience of the Salzburger Landestheater as ballet director.
Critical response emphasized Oliveira’s concentration on the inner lives of the characters rather than on external spectacle. The central couple — Flavio Salamanka’s Othello and Márcia Jaqueline’s Desdemona — was singled out for the emotional trajectory from love to mistrust, fear, violence, and grief.
Reviewers also noted the dark expressive force of the musical selection. Within that sound world, Auerbach’s music deepens the tragedy’s psychological temperature: dream becomes suspicion, lament becomes bodily knowledge, and the chamber-like intensity of the selected works makes the collapse feel internal rather than merely theatrical.
First Performances
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3 Nov 2018World premiere at the Salzburger Landestheater.
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10 Nov 2018Early performance following the premiere.
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16 Nov 2018Early performance following the premiere.
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17 Nov 2018Early performance following the premiere.
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11 Dec 2018Early performance following the premiere.
Online Materials
References, Programme, Reviews
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ProgrammeOfficial Programme PDF Reginaldo Oliveira / Salzburger Landestheater
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AnnouncementÖ1 / ORF Premiere Notice ORF / Ö1
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ReviewDorfzeitung Review Dorfzeitung / Reginaldo Oliveira Archive
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ReviewSalzburger Nachrichten Review Salzburger Nachrichten / Reginaldo Oliveira Archive
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BiographyReginaldo Oliveira Biography Salzburger Landestheater
Rights and Materials
Music rights and production documentation require separate clearance. This page documents a mixed-composer ballet including music by Lera Auerbach. For staging, image use, music excerpts, archival reproduction, and production documentation, consult the relevant rights holders, the Salzburger Landestheater archive, and the publishers of the musical works used.
