The Toreador

A romantic comedy ballet set in Ol' Spain. A young peasant girl is in love with a handsome bullfighter. But his eye is taken by a beautiful ballerina on tour from Paris.

Ballet San Jose opens the 2008-09 Season November 20-23 with THE TOREADOR, a ballet in two acts by the legendary August Bournonville with new and re-adapted choreography by Flemming Flindt. Ballet San Jose is the only ballet company in the world which has this ballet in repertory and will present it with Symphony Silicon Valley playing the rarely performed Erling Bjerno score (after Edvard Helsted). All the costumes and scenery were constructed by Denmark’s Royal Opera House. Choreographer Flemming Flindt and Assistant Vivi Flindt will set the piece on the Ballet San Jose dancers, and the entire company will have to learn to play the castanets.

The story revolves around Maria, the beautiful daughter of a Spanish innkeeper and her love for Alonzo, a brave and handsome toreador, whom she cannot bear to see in danger. Complications arise when Celeste, a touring French ballerina, diverts Alonzo’s eye. Along the way a few subplots provide for diversions with Celeste’s stage mother and two comic English tourists entering the action.