Too Bad
“Scheherazade”
Czech National Ballet
National Theatre
Prague, Czech Republic
June 21, 2025 (matinee)
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf
To be upfront, Mauro Bigonzetti’s new Scheherazade for the Czech National Ballet is no asset to its repertory. Its choreography is meager and the plot thin; the characters lack depth, and the digital set design is unconvincing.
Bigonzetti takes up the narrative thread where Fokine’s 1910 Scheherazade for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes ends. Zobeida, the favorite but unfaithful wife of Shahryar, the king of Persia, had died. Enraged about womanhood in general, Shahryar took revenge by killing every woman he slept with the morning after their first night together. Scheherazade, the clever daughter of his vizier, put a stop to the slaughter. The tales she narrated to the king each night (collected in the Middle Eastern folk tale, One Thousand and One Nights) softened him.
Bigonzetti portrayed the women in line for Shahryar, among them Scheherazade (Nana Nakagawa), who was ready to sacrifice herself. (more…)