The first mention I heard of Duncan and Ruth Stroik’s new ballet Raffaella was from Duncan Stroik himself. In a conversation about libretti, Stroik mentioned that he had written a libretto for a ballet in honor of his daughter Raffaella, a gifted ballerina who died in a tragic swimming accident at the age of twenty-three. Raffaella is a fairytale ballet, similar in genre to classical ballets like Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. The plot is a stylized retelling of Raffaella’s life, set in an eighteenth-century Italian village on the shores of Lake Como. The very idea of the piece struck me as unusual. A brand-new but deeply traditional fairytale ballet? I was intrigued but a little worried that the piece would be retrospective and overly sentimental. 

In a world of evil and death, some suggest it is dishonest to make beautiful art. Raffaella suggests otherwise.