SWAN LAKE

Alexander Parish — known as Xander — was born in 1986 in Beverley, East Yorkshire. He began his ballet training at the age of eight in Hull, attending classes alongside his sister Demelza. At 11, he moved to London to join the Royal Ballet School at White Lodge, graduating from the Royal Ballet Upper School with honours in 2005.

He and Demelza subsequently entered The Royal Ballet’s corps de ballet together, becoming the first brother and sister to be engaged simultaneously by the company.

In 2010, at the personal invitation of Artistic Director Yuri Fateev, Xander made history as the first British dancer to join the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. He rose through the ranks to become a Principal Dancer in July 2017, a promotion announced after the opening night of Swan Lake during the Mariinsky Ballet’s London season at the Royal Opera House.

His career has been recognised with numerous distinguished awards, including the Positano Premia La Danza Léonide Massine Award for Emerging Dancer on the International Scene, Best Young Male Dancer at the inaugural Taglioni European Ballet Awards, and Outstanding Male Performance (Classical) at the UK Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards.

In 2017, the University of Hull conferred upon him an Honorary Doctorate, and he delivered the keynote address at that year’s graduation ceremony. In 2019, he was appointed OBE by HM The Queen for services to dance and to UK–Russia cultural relations. In 2025, he was invested as a Knight of the Royal Order of Francis I of the Two Sicilies in recognition of his achievements in the arts.

As a guest artist, Xander has performed with distinguished companies worldwide, including English National Ballet, the Stanislavsky Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.

In 2021, he founded the online ballet training platform balletclass.com, which he continues to develop alongside his wife, Anastasia — a fellow dancer whom he met at the Mariinsky Theatre and married in St. Petersburg in 2021. In 2022, the couple joined the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo and performed with the company for two years. In 2024, they welcomed their daughter Amalia and resettled in Xander’s hometown in East Yorkshire.

In September 2022, Xander was appointed Artistic Director of Reunited in Dance, a company dedicated to supporting displaced dancers who formerly worked with Russian ballet companies before the invasion of Ukraine. Under his direction, the company appeared at prestigious venues internationally, including the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, Festival Napa Valley, and the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as part of the New Generation Festival.

In September 2024, Xander made his stage acting debut in The Gates of Kyiv, a play by Ian Kelly, performing opposite Stockard Channing at the Theatre Royal Windsor. That same year, he was named among Variety magazine’s Ten Brits to Watch for 2025.

Jean-Romain Vesperini studied acting at L’École du Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris and singing at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he trained as a baritone.

After graduation, Jean-Romain decided to pursue a career as a stage director and spent several years collaborating with Luc Bondy, Peter Stein and Georges Lavaudant, from 2005 until 2017. As a result of these long-term partnerships, he built solid professional experience managing and leading artistic ensembles in major opera houses such as La Scala, Paris Opera, Lyon Opera, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Opéra-Comique, as well as at the Salzburg Festival and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

In 2012, his own career developed with a successful production of La Traviata, presented by the opera houses of Rennes, Limoges and Reims in France. The production was broadcast on French national television and radio and led to return invitations from these opera houses to stage a new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

He also founded his own company and became a producer of his theatrical shows, taking responsibility for fundraising and production budgets. His theatre productions include Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, Paravidino’s Two Brothers, Levin’s The Labour of Life and Sacha Guitry’s Quadrille.

At only 33, at the specific request of Nicolas Joël and Stéphane Lissner, he staged Gounod’s Faust at the Opéra National de Paris, conducted by Michel Plasson, with whom he would work on the same opera at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2018. In 2018, the Bolshoi Theatre invited him to create a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème, now an important part of the opera house’s repertoire. That same year, Opera Hong Kong, in co-production with Le French May Arts Festival, engaged him for Bizet’s Carmen.

He staged Puccini’s Turandot at Ekaterinburg National Opera House, as well as the rediscovery of Benjamin Godard’s Dante at Opéra de Saint-Étienne, in co-production with Palazzetto Bru Zane. The Opéra de Saint-Étienne subsequently invited him for another French rediscovery, Joncières’s Lancelot.

In 2021, he staged Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, a production which was revived in Avignon in 2024.

He also made his debut in the United States, staging Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at Festival Napa Valley, with the support of Maria Manetti Shrem. With the festival, he has since staged Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore and Don Pasquale, and will stage Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. He will also create a brand-new opera commissioned by the festival and composed by Jake Heggie.

Vesperini continues to develop his career in North America. In 2023, he staged Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIII at the Fisher Center at Bard as part of Bard SummerScape, a production named among the year’s best classical music performances by The New York Times.

In Canada, he staged a new production of Faust and was subsequently invited to direct La Vie Parisienne and Le Comte Ory.

He made his debut at the Opéra Royal de Versailles last season with La Fille du Régiment, which was subsequently revived at Festival Napa Valley and is scheduled to return to Versailles next season. The Opéra Royal de Versailles has invited him to open its 2026/27 season with Salieri’s Tarare, followed by a double bill of Gluck’s The Tricked Pasha and Rameau’s Pygmalion.

The Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège invited him to stage Le Nozze di Figaro last season, and Vesperini will return in the upcoming season to stage Puccini’s Turandot.

Jean-Romain Vesperini will also make his debut at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon with Beethoven’s Fidelio. He will also stage a programme at Carnegie Hall devoted to Ravel and Gershwin, featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Angel Blue.

Jean-Romain Vesperini is a native French speaker and is also fluent in English, German, Italian and Russian.

Étienne Guiol is an innovative video artist specialising in immersive and monumental productions. He was born in France in 1989.

Following a multidisciplinary academic background, he pursued artistic training, particularly in drawing and animation, and founded his first studio, BK International, in 2012.

Working with his team, he has created more than one hundred productions for theatre, opera and ballet. His creative studio is also known for designing installations for museums and artistic projects around the world.

Étienne Guiol was part of the creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, working as a scenographer and video designer.

In 2024, he founded a new studio, Immersive Opera, specialising in the production of immersive works inspired by opera.

Several of his creations have received awards and distinctions, including Best Opera Creation for Maria Republica (2016), Best Stage Concept for Le Coq d’Or (2015), recognition by The New York Times among the Best Productions for Henry VIII (2023), and Best Video Creation at Lyon’s Fête des Lumières (2015).

Bruno de Lavenère is a set designer for opera, theatre, and dance for over 25 years.

His visually striking and dramaturgically rich creations have been featured on major stages across France and internationally, including the Paris Opera, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Bolshoi Opera, Theater Basel, the Hong Kong Opera, Monaco Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Royal Muscat Opera House, Comédie-Française, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre du Lido… He regularly collaborates with acclaimed directors and choreographers such as Jean-Romain Vesperini, Florian Zeller, Gilles Rico, Thomas Jolly, Lucinda Childs, Alexander Ekman, Lilo Baur… In 2024, he co-designed the set design for the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games and created the scenography for the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Paralympic Games.

In October 2025, he designed the scenography for Robert Badinter’s Panthéon induction ceremony in Paris.

In June 2026, he designed the scenography for Marc Bloch’s Panthéon induction ceremony in Paris.

Awarded the Critics’ Prize in 2014 and the Éloges in 2024, he asserts a vision of theatrical space that is both poetic, rigorous, and resolutely contemporary.

A graduate in Art History and trained in fashion design at the Cours Berçot in Paris, Alain Blanchot began his career as a costume designer working in film and advertising. Drawn early on to live performance, he created costumes for singers with distinctive artistic identities, including Brigitte Fontaine, Sapho, Anna Karina and Ingrid Caven.

His passion for the performing arts soon led him towards more unconventional stage productions. In 2004, he began his long-standing collaboration with stage director Benjamin Lazar, designing the costumes for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Molière and Lully’s comédie-ballet performed by Le Poème Harmonique in a production lit entirely by candlelight. He continued to explore the sumptuous and imaginative visual language of Baroque opera with productions including Landi’s Sant’Alessio, conducted by William Christie for Les Arts Florissants and featuring Philippe Jaroussky, and Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione at the Opéra Comique. Through these productions, he further developed his distinctive approach to materials and colour.

Since then, Alain Blanchot has designed costumes for numerous Baroque opera productions, including Handel’s Rinaldo, Lully’s Phaéton, Cavalli’s Egisto and John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. His work has been presented at major Parisian venues including the Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de l’Athénée, as well as internationally in Germany, Russia, New York, Los Angeles, Sweden, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and Monte Carlo.

His work also encompasses contemporary opera, with productions such as Cachafaz, based on the work of Copi, Au Web ce soir, a live opera created for the internet, and Lalala, as well as works from the classical repertoire including Cendrillon, Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and La Nonne sanglante.

Over the course of his career, he has worked with many acclaimed stage directors, including Louise Moaty, David Bobée, Robert Carsen, Jean-Romain Vesperini, Basil Twist, Aurélien Bory and Lilo Baur, while developing close artistic collaborations with singers such as Lea Desandre, Jakub Józef Orliński, Julie Fuchs, Michael Spyres, Véronique Gens and Philippe Jaroussky.

Alain Blanchot has also collaborated with the House of Guerlain, designing the staff uniforms for its Institut on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

His costumes are regularly exhibited in France at the Centre National du Costume de Scène.

More recently, he reunited with Jean-Romain Vesperini to design the costumes for Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII at Bard College in New York, followed by Smetana’s Dalibor. Both productions received critical acclaim in The New York Times.

His forthcoming projects include Salieri’s Tarare at the Royal Opera of Versailles and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Sweden.

Founded in 1928 by Vittorio Gui as the Stabile Orchestrale Fiorentina, it has been engaged since its inception in concert performances and opera seasons at the Teatro Comunale of Florence, and is today one of the most highly regarded orchestras by conductors and audiences worldwide. In 1933, with the founding of the Festival, it took the name Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.