Jarre, Maurice/Petit, Roland: Notre Dame De Paris (Arthaus DVD)

Roland Petit likes to tell stories in which “beings apart”, be they wretched or hideous, fall prey to femmes fatales, the seductive faces of death. Whether it be the Wolf, Don José or the Young Man in Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, all have an appointment with death. Hence Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris, a beautiful story of love and death, was certain to appeal to the choreographer.

The ballet, created in 1965 at the Paris Opéra, has frequently been revived. Today, more than fi fty years later, with its incisive language, lyrical and clear at the same time, with its poetic pas de deux and passionate trios, and with the staging that lends the crowd scenes such intense immediacy, Roland Petit’s Notre-Dame de Paris has become a classic of the ballet repertoire.