Segerstrom Center for the Arts Presents American Ballet Theatre’s Sylvia
Choreography by Frederick Ashton
Music by Léo Delibes
Original Designs by Robin Ironside and Christopher Ironside
Additional Designs (Revival) by Peter Farmer
Lighting by Mark Jonathan
Segerstrom Hall | 5 performances April 9 – 12
Tickets at SCFTA.org
COSTA MESA, CA | Segerstrom Center for the Arts presents American Ballet Theatre’s Sylvia, a captivating ballet combining the elegance of classical ballet with elements of folklore and mythology. With choreography by Frederick Ashton and music by Léo Delibes, America’s National Ballet Company® will give five performances of the beloved classic from April 9-12, 2026. Tickets are on sale now at scfta.org.
The audience is transported on an epic journey to the splendors of Ancient Greece. Here, in this world of short-tempered gods and fantastical creatures, an unlikely romance unfolds between the regal huntress Sylvia and the handsome shepherd Aminta. As with all great love stories, their bond is put to the test – in life and in death – but love’s transformative power prevails. This is a bold retelling of a classic ballet, promising all the passion and humor of Greek myth, tangled love affairs and ballerinas with bows and arrows.
Ivy Lin wrote in Bachtrack, “I walked out of the theater feeling airborne and filled with the kind of joy you only feel after a truly special performance. Sylvia is an absolute treasure. It is a wondrous ballet. Ashton’s choreography has a perfect mix of his trademark humor and romanticism with extremely difficult steps that challenge the entire company. The mythical story has it all: love, betrayal, danger, harmony restored. The costumes and sets are sumptuous and look like something from Imperial Russia. And it is a great vehicle for the corps.”
Casting for American Ballet Theatre’s Sylvia
ABT Artistic Director Susan Jaffe has released principal casting for Sylvia
*Debut in the role
Thursday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Chloe Misseldine (Sylvia)
Joo Won Ahn (Aminta)
Cory Stearns (Orion)
Carlos Gonzalez (Eros)
Friday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Devon Teuscher* (Sylvia)
Thomas Forster* (Aminta)
James Whiteside (Orion)
Takumi Miyake (Eros)
Saturday, April 11 at 2:00 p.m.
Catherine Hurlin (Sylvia)
Isaac Hernández* (Aminta)
Jose Sebastian (Orion)
Carlos Gonzalez (Eros)
Saturday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Skylar Brandt (Sylvia)
Jake Roxander (Aminta)
Patrick Frenette (Orion)
Elwince Magbitang (Eros)
Sunday, April 12 at 1:00 p.m.
Hee Seo (Sylvia)
Aran Bell* (Aminta)
Cory Stearns (Orion)
Takumi Miyake (Eros)
*role debut
This exciting revival is of a rarely staged ballet. Sylvia was first performed in Paris over 150 years ago and has since attracted some of the world’s leading choreographers, including Lev Ivanov, George Balanchine, John Neumeier, and Frederick Ashton.
One of the world’s greatest and most distinctive choreographers and a principal architect of 20th-century classical ballet, Frederick Ashton’s 1952 revival of Sylvia popularized the work, and it has become the basis for all productions since. This engagement of Sylvia is part of the Ashton Worldwide 2024–2028 Festival, celebrating the universal appeal of Ashton’s ballets across the globe and fostering the spread and influence of his legacy.
Sylvia was Frederick Ashton’s second full length work and The Royal Ballet’s most ambitious venture to date when it premiered in 1952, conceived as a vehicle for Margot Fonteyn and as an homage to the great three-act ballets of Petipa. In 2005, when The Royal Ballet reinstated the ballet in a season that marked the centenary of Ashton’s birth, Sylvia had not been performed since 1965, and only two of its original cast were still alive.
Christopher Newton, who danced in many performances, was assigned to stage the 2005 revival. He said Sylvia “offers a really challenging role for the ballerina, dramatic as much as technical. She starts off as an Amazon figure, then becomes lovelorn, then distressed, then seductive. She’s on stage for most of Act I, all of Act II, and most of Act III. She has as much dancing as the ballerina in Swan Lake – and today’s audience will love that. They love a full-evening ballet, too.”
Margot Fonteyn said, “Frederick Ashton’s ear for music, his eye for movement and his perception of human nature make him to ballet as William Shakespeare is to drama. His choreography shows us the heart of the matter as no one else has ever done. He has an extraordinary understanding of the human heart and mind, and an ability to illuminate them through his own art form.”
Robert Greskovic wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Sylvia, in Frederick Ashton’s 1952 staging, provides the company with the grandest and most lustrous showcase of them all. Choreographed to reimagine Louis Mérante’s work of French ballet theater from 1876 to a glorious score by Léo Delibes, its three richly textured acts of entertainingly detailed dancing are replete with narrative twists and turns telling of gods, goddesses and mythical figures along with some rustic mortals.
Brian Seibert wrote in The New York Times, “There is a winning quirkiness to the whole ballet, in which the choreography and characterizations alternate between sincerity and tongue-in-cheek playfulness. Then there is Delibes’s score, dance friendly and extremely catchy, filled with distinctive orchestral colors that set each scene, like the horns in the opening, a translucent flute melody for Sylvia’s love interest, a young shepherd, and the saxophone, a novel instrument at the time whose mellow timbre Delibes used in the final act to suggest an atmosphere of bucolic calm.”
Léo Delibes’s enchanting music adds an extra dimension to the show as his haunting melodies and rich orchestrations gracefully accompany the dancers’ movements, helping to create a perfect harmony between the choreography and the music. In fact, Delibes’s score was so admired by Tchaikovsky that he purportedly declared: had he known the music existed at the time, he would never have composed Swan Lake.
Tchaikovsky wrote, “Sylvia is a jewel. Such grace! Such melodic richness! Such refined orchestration! Better than anything Minkus or Adam did. If I manage to do something at the same level, I will have fulfilled my role.”
Ana Claudia Paixão in her MiscelAna blog, wrote Delibes’s Sylvia “plunges into ethereal, sensual, and heroic atmospheres. Right from the overture—a flawlessly constructed symphonic piece—one notices the elevation of language: the ballet no longer begins lightly but with grandeur and dramatic tension … Delibes explores the orchestra freely—highlighting woodwinds, harps, and brass with clarity and daring. The sensuality of the nymphs, the bravery of the hunter Aminta, the dominion of the goddess Diana: all is translated musically with precision and poetry.”
For Sylvia, the original designs are by Robin Ironside and Christopher Ironside with additional designs by Peter Farmer. The lighting is by Mark Jonathan.
Tickets for American Ballet Theatre’s Sylvia at Segerstrom Center for the Arts start at $59.00 and are available for purchase online at scfta.org, in person at 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, and by phone at (714) 556-2787. For inquiries about group ticket discounts for 10 or more, call the Group Services offices at (714) 755-0236.
About Frederick Ashton by Julie Kavanagh
Excerpt from The Frederick Ashton Foundation Website
What we have come to call “the English style” was embodied by Frederick Ashton’s muse, Margot Fonteyn, whose own restraint, simplicity and poise was enriched by traces of the lush, romantic plastique he had loved in Anna Pavlova. After the war, de Valois’ company – renamed The Royal Ballet – moved to the Royal Opera House, and in 1963, when she retired, Ashton took over as director, remaining in the post for the next seven years.
With an oeuvre of over one hundred works – at least four of which, Symphonic Variations, Scènes de Ballet, The Dream and La Fille mal gardée, are 20th century masterpieces – Frederick Ashton is unquestionably one of the most important choreographers in the history of ballet. He was also a major figure in the cultural landscape of the day: Gertrude Stein pronounced him a genius; Yeats wanted him to direct plays at The Abbey Theatre; Matisse was inspired by the spontaneous flow of his movements; the three Sitwell siblings all sought his company.
He took delight in cultivating a dazzling life outside his profession, drawn into the Bright Young set of the ’20s, and launched into English society in the 1930s, by the American millionairess Alice Astor. Success in this world was Ashton’s fieldwork. The aristocratic manners and mores he observed, like his ability to capture the very essence of a person and their surroundings, imbued ballets such as A Wedding Bouquet and Enigma Variations with their vividness of character and period.
Sylvia is performed by arrangement with The Frederick Ashton Foundation and is one of over 100 ballets created by Frederick Ashton. These performances are given as part of the Ashton Worldwide 2024–2028 festival. For further information, visit frederickashton.org.uk.
American Ballet Theatre’s Sylvia
Segerstrom Center for the Arts
Segerstrom Hall
Thursday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 11 at 2:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 12 at 1:00 p.m.
Tickets start at $59.00
In-Person
Box Office
600 Town Center Drive
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
