Guest Performance of the Ballet “The Glembays” of the Croatian National Theatre from Zagreb

On April 28 on the Main Stage the Croatian National Theatre from Zagreb gave a guest performance of the neoclassical ballet “The Glembays” choreographed by Leo Mujić.

This is the eponymous, most famous play by Miroslav Krleža, which, five years ago, in the 2016/2017 season, for the first time got its ballet version to the selected music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Mujić, who is also the author of the libretto, while creating this stage work, also used prose texts by Miroslav Krleža from the cycle "About the Glembays".

Before the famous events that culminate at the celebration of the jubilee of The Glembay Bank Ltd., we learn many details from the lives of these famous characters that led to the complete breakdown of an Agramer patrician family ...

“I read The Glembays through emotions; I am interested in the relationships between the protagonists, their characters, their fetishes, system of values, father-son conflict, dependence on the mother and infatuation with the stepmother…That is exactly what the ballet conveys so brilliantly… translating one of the most important Croatian dramas into a ballet form", Mujić said in the press release on the eve of the premiere held on May 30, 2017.

The set designer is Stefano Katunar, and the costumes were designed by Manuela Paladin Šabanović.

The Ballet Ensemble of the Croatian National Theatre from Zagreb last visited the National Theatre in Belgrade in 2003. Two evenings in a row, on July 10 and 11, on the Main Stage, they performed the show Circus primitif ballet, choreographed and directed by Staša Zurovac.

Before that, on July 9 and 10 of the same year, the Ballet Ensemble of the National Theatre from Belgrade was a guest at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb with the show "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", choreographed and directed by Vladimir Logunov.

This was, until now, the last cooperation between ballet ensembles from the two most important theatres in Serbia and Croatia.