Nicoletta Manni shines as La Scala's 1st company Etoile principal dancer in nearly 40 years

Still flush from her role in Onegin, La Scala prima ballerina Nicoletta Manni received the surprise of her career last fall: The 32-year-old dancer was named La Scala’s first Etoile, or star principal dancer, chosen from the storied ballet company in nearly 40 years.

Now, months later, she capped her first whirlwind season as La Scala Etoile this week in the femme fatale role of Manon, receiving the loudest applause during a nearly 9-minute curtain call for her melding of technical precision and abandon.

“She is a stupendous ballerina. At the top of her career. Since Onegin, every time she dances, she gets better,’’ said Manuel Legris, director of La Scala’s ballet company and former Paris Ballet Etoile chosen by the great Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

“It was the same for me,'' Legris recalled. "Once you get the title, not just doors open, but also the vision and the trust. It can make you afraid. But it can also push you to fly.”

Manni arrived at La Scala’s academy at age 13 from her small town in Italy's southern Puglia region, where she started dancing in her mother’s ballet school a decade earlier. After completing the academy, she spent four years at the Berlin Staatsballet before returning to La Scala in 2013.

A year later, she became prima ballerina, or principal dancer. The fact that she was chosen as the first Etoile from La Scala’s company is meaningful to Manni, and sets her apart from La Scala’s other Etoile principal dancer, Roberto Bolle, who has held the title as a guest dancer for two decades. Etoile is a ballet honorific taken from the French word for star, and bestowed on dancers whose prowess is deemed superior.

She had just finished performing with Bolle last November when La Scala's general manager, Dominique Meyer, announced her promotion. Meyer said he chose that moment to create “a communion between the audience and the dancer.”

“It was completely unexpected, not just for me, but for everyone, because it was truly years since anyone from the company was named Etoile,’’ Manni said after a recent rehearsal for Manon.

Praised for her technical skills, Manni says it is the minimum she can bring to a role.

“When a dancer manages to not show the technical difficulty, then you can play with the interpretation, the expression of an emotion, of something that you want to tell, that is the difference between a dancer, and an artist,’’ Manni said.

“It is important to be able to communicate through the body, through the arms, the fingers, the gaze, the head. Even if sometimes, something can go wrong because we are humans, and that is how the show goes.”

With her new title, Manni has been embraced on and off the stage, sitting in the front row for Giorgio Armani and Tod’s runway shows during Milan Fashion Week and posing on the red carpet for La Scala’s opera gala premiere. Most recently, she received the highest order of the Italian Republic in June for her contributions to the arts.

Her new artistic recognition is opening doors, which she will have to balance with her duties at La Scala. Already in her career, she has danced on stages from Tokyo to Mexico City, Moscow to Toronto. She said she dreams of dancing as a guest with the biggest European companies, like the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet and the American Ballet.

“Nicoletta is the Etoile of the moment. When we have an Etoile like this, we need to let her be seen and shine on other stages. It is not always easy because we need to prepare the new ballets. She knows that. But I want to let her go, and go with great joy,’’ Legris said.

This season she traveled with the La Scala ballet to China, where she danced Giselle in Shanghai and Legris’ production of Le Corsaire in Hong Kong. She will travel to Australia later this summer for a gala with her Latvian-born husband, La Scala principal Timofej Andrijashenko, who fittingly proposed to her on the stage of the Arena di Verona two years ago, getting a roar of approval from the crowd.

At La Scala, she is most often paired with her husband or Bolle, who was best man at their wedding last August. For the role of Manon this week, she danced with Royal Ballet principal Reece Clarke, who stepped in on short noticed after Andrijashenko was injured.

It was her first performance of Manon in seven years, and during a recent rehearsal, she worked on the second act solo, which she described as a “delicate moment” balancing the seduction of a wealthy suitor and embarrassment in front of her true love, the Chevalier des Grieux danced by Clarke. With just 10 days to prepare with Clarke, she traveled to London to start rehearsals while he finished other commitments.

The principal roles in the Kenneth MacMillan choreography require an intimate pairing to trace the euphoric inception of a love story through worldly temptations that lead to disgrace, exile and death.

If the couple doesn’t work, “it can be a disaster,” Legris said. Instead, Manni and Clarke quickly “found unity,’’ he said, calling it a testament to Manni’s artistic growth.

Clarke said dancing with the new La Scala Etoile “was easy from the beginning.”

“From day one, with Nicoletta, it worked. Proportion-wise, it works physically. And story, we were able to read each other. The trust was there,’’ he said backstage, after he huddled with Manni and Legris to exchange notes on the performance.

Manni's injured husband stood discreetly nearby, dressed in a suit and tie, and dress shoes.

Andrijashenko said it was painful for him to watch his wife dance with Clarke in scenes the two had prepared together.

“It’s very emotional,” he said.