Opera Chic

Ele and Muti for Alitalia

Browsing today's Corriere, we found a new series of ads for Alitalia with cover boy and girl Riccardo Muti and Eleonora Abbagnato.

 

 

Eleonora Abbagnato Rocks Milano: Vogue Fashion's Night Out

It's Fashion's Night Out in Milan -- 570 stores burning the midnight oil in the worldwide shopping extravaganza (for a good cause: the environment). Among the many people involved in the effort here in Milan, Opéra Garnier prima ballerina Eleonora Abbagnato, being her usual cool self. After the jump, Opera Chic's candidate for next General Manager of la Scala, Roberto Cavalli (he brings the party!).

Eleonora Abbagnato's Mediterranean Holiday, Part II

In Stefano Gabbana's cool photo diary of his Mediterranean holiday, uploaded in real time via the designer's iPhone, we just found this gem: aperitivi with Eleonora Abbagnato, prima ballerina at Opéra Garnier.

More about Abbagnato's holidays here.

Eleonora Abbagnato's B-Side

 

The Italian ballerina suns herself in Ibizia with an Opéra national de Paris colleague, Hervé Moreau, who models Abbagnato's purple bikini top for a photo. After spending the same hours-a-day training as she does sleeping, Ele's physique is no joke. Below the jump, discover what the devoted ballerina's training has done to her a$$. (via Chi magazine).  

Third Annual Danzfest Gala Sets Eleonora Abbagnato in Motion

 

Summer school for ballerinas -- "Danzfest" as it's called in Italy-- kicked off a few nights ago at Cattolica's Teatro della Regina, where Eleonora Abbagnato (above and below) danced with Paris Opera colleague Benjamin Pech to Debussy. Also performing was Silvia Azzoni with Alexabder Riabko and twins Jiri and Otto Bubenicek. Lady in White Carla Fracci will close the event at the end of the month -- not by dancing, but to present the final scholarships for next year's Danzfest event.

 

Eleonora Abbagnato Pays it Forward

Eleonora Abbagnanto returns to the annual ballet festival, Danzfest, for her second time. Danzfest is an annual conference held in Cattolica (Rimini), a small Italian city between Ravenna and Pesaro. Celebrating its third year, the festival starts tomorrow and finishes on the 24th, offering classes and workshops to professional and armature dance students.

 

The 32-year-old Sicilian who carves her stage career as prima ballerina for Opéra national de Paris returns to her roots when she's not in Paris. Later this week she'll be in Valle d'Aosta for Festival Musicastelle in a program to celebrate the 200 birth year of Chopin, and in August she's collaborating with Naples' Teatro San Carlo and Verona's Arena.

 

Eleonora Abbagnato Works Hard and Plays Hard

 

One of the many cool things about being a prima ballerina is that you get invited to some of the best parties.  

Eleonora Abbagnato -- who cuts up the stage at Opéra Garnier when she's not out partying -- was in Cannes last night among the stars (like Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova, the Hilton sisters, Marion Cotillard, and Ellen Von Unwerth), wearing D&G for Chopard's 150 Anniversary Party at Cannes 63rd Film Festival. 

OC's slightly envious -- but not because she's in Cannes and gets to breathe the warm, lavender & sea-soaked air, but because she got to shake it with fellow party guest, Lindsay Lohan (photo below). No Bolle spottings, unfortunately.

 

LINDS!

 

Italian Ballerina Eleonora Abbagnato, Onstage Even When She's Offstage

 

Prima Ballerina at Opéra Garnier for almost a decade, the 31-year-old ballerina from Palermo turns heads when she's offstage as much as when she's on. She wraps her pilates-sculpted body(that she trains 7 hours a day) in D&G, Cavalli, and Valentino. She lives in Montmartre and counts French Garmier colleague, Benjamin Pech, as her best friend. She's redefining what it means to be a ballerina secks symbol, exploring a new age from the retired Italian pros, Carla Fracci and Alessandra Ferri.

Eleonora's also tried out acting (three years ago she appeared on RaiUno's reality show "Dancing with the Stars") and writing (her book "Un angelo sulle punte" came out last year), so it comes as no surprise to find the ballerina in a fashion shoot from a few months ago.   

 

Click to see more photos from the photo spread

Sanremo 2008: Eleonora Abbagnato Dives Into The Madness

Now that that most bafflingly Italian of bad habits, the pop music festival that yearly takes mercilessly place in Sanremo, an otherwise normal town a few miles from the French border on the Liguria coast, is over, we're happy to report that a nice smattering of classical music was indeed present, among all the bad Italian pop.

First of all, the emcee for the 5 (yes, five) nights of TV marathon, was Katia Ricciarelli's ex hubby, oldie TV guy Pippo Baudo (the one who kicked some loggionista a$$ once upon a time at la Scala, when his wife was roundly booed -- too bad Angela Gheorghiu wasn't there for Roberto Alagna when it was his turn to taste the loggione's bitter medicine). Then, among the various lam3rs in the "jury", we spotted Eleonora Abbagnato, prima ballerina of Paris Opera, a luminous presence among the trashiest of teh trashy.   

And, to make matters worse, last night a band of musicians/comedians, a sort of Weird Al Yankovic outfit, only not as funny (wouldn't take much, really), appeared on stage and played a rock version (that sounded essentially like a MIDI) of Largo Al Factotum.

Speaking of foreign bodies (literally) appearing in the middle of Sanremo's kitschy heart, Ben Harper -- who's married to that great-actress-who-also-looks-like-a-banana, Laura Dern, creating a couple that is almost unprecedented in modern times for its coolness -- was in Sanremo, too. He gave an example of what Henri Duparc might have written, had he been a bluesman married to a Hollywood Queen of the Indies.

And for four magic minutes, the lamest show on earth suddendly became something else.