At the age of 21, Francesco Ventriglia was chosen to dance the lead role of Quasimodo in a performance of Notre-Dame de Paris for the La Scala Ballet in Milan. He was plucked from the corps de ballet by Roland Petit himself, the famous French dancer and choreographer who first created the piece for the Paris Opera in 1967. Ventriglia, who is now artistic director of Alberta Ballet, says it marked the true beginning of his career as a dancer and allowed him to work with one of ballet’s most accomplished but exacting talents.
“He was a genius,” says Ventriglia about Petit, who died in 2011. “I was 21, I was in the studio, and this tall, handsome man came in and was very calm, and he sat. I was in the last row of the corps de ballet, and he called me out and said, ‘You, come here.’ He asked me to do some steps. He looked at his assistant and they talked to each other. Then the casting went out, and I was doing a principal role. It was magic.”
“He was very demanding and very hard with the dancers, but equally very protective, very caring. You could tell that he cared about you so much. He wanted you to succeed, and the only way was to show you the way to do it, and you had to work hard. He gave me so much, personally. He nurtured me a lot. I was 21 and I had to learn everything. He gave me a lot of suggestions and dedication that I still have with me today, and I pass to a new generation of dancers. I remember, he was magnetic: his eyes, the way he spoke. He was incredible.”
Needless to say, Notre-Dame de Paris holds a special place in Ventriglia’s heart. So much so that he made it the final production of Alberta Ballet’s current season. It will open at the Jubilee Auditorium on April 30 after a 25-performance run at the Paris Opera, where it debuted nearly six decades ago. While Petit is a towering figure in the world of modern ballet, Notre-Dame de Paris has rarely been performed in Canada, and the few times it was were by a touring company from abroad. Alberta Ballet is the first Canadian company to perform the piece and will be using costumes based on the original design by Yves Saint Laurent.
“It’s an incredible opportunity for us, for our dancers, for our public,” he says. “Usually, to see this ballet, you have to fly to Paris or Japan because these are the countries that do these titles. But now Canada can be very proud, and Albertans. Alberta Ballet is the company that is bringing this title to this country. So I feel extremely proud.”
Based on Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the ballet tells the tale of devoted bell-ringer, Quasimodo, who feels unrequited love for the kind and free-spirited Romani dancer Esmeralda. She is also lusted after by Frollo, the priest who adopted Quasimodo years earlier. It is a suitably grand production to end Alberta Ballet’s 2025/2026 season, an all-hands-on-deck spectacle that will use 40 dancers to tell a classic tale of love, power, betrayal and sacrifice.
“What I get mostly from this ballet is that love is a powerful, powerful force,” says Ventriglia. “We always think of love as a positive thing. But actually, love can sometimes create a domino effect into the negative. It can create envy; it can create enemies.”
