The Philadelphia Ballet will offer five fully staged productions and a gala celebrating the company’s 60th anniversary while the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society will present 48 recitals in three historic settings during the upcoming 2024-25 season.

The Ballet’s celebration of its founding by Barbara Weisberger also marks the decade-long tenure of artistic director Angel Corella. Formerly a star of American Ballet Theater in New York, Corella is the company’s first artistic director not personally taught and coached by the late George Balanchine, the most seminal figure in American classical ballet. 

 Balanchine had danced in Russia and then with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in Paris. Upon emigrating to the United States, he first founded the School of American Ballet and then the New York City Ballet. It was through these two institutions that Weisberger became a student and then a working disciple of Balanchine. It was he who encouraged her to start up what was then the Pennsylvania Ballet in 1964.

 The gala, dubbed “Past, Present, Future,” is set for Friday, Oct. 25, starting at 6:30 p.m. with a dinner followed by a performance that will offer selections of the troupe’s repertoire including works by Balanchine, Corella, Christopher Wheeldon, Juliano Nunes and more.

The company’s season of fully staged productions opens Oct. 18-26 with “Le Corsaire,” with Corella’s choreography set to Adolphe Adam’s beloved score. The season continues Dec. 6-29 with Philadelphia Ballet’s traditional holiday “bon-bon,” “The Nutcracker,” featuring Balanchine’s classic choreography to Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s immortal score.

The company enters 2025 with “Swan Lake,” perhaps the most romantic ballet of them all. Tchaikovsky’s peerless core is danced to via Corella’s own choreography. Performances are set for March 6-16. “Bolero” offers a foray into the modern March 20-23. Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” was commissioned and choreographed by modern dancer Ida Rubinstein. Although her steps have been mostly forgotten, Ravel’s music retains its place on the concert symphonic stage and is a favorite of Maestro Riccardo Muti, former music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Muti will conduct the “Fabulous Philadelphians” in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Manzoni” Requiem in late October.

 The season will close with “La Sylphide” and “Etudes” March 8-11.

 For more information on the Philadelphia Ballet’s 60th anniversary season, call 215-893-1955 or philadelphiaballet.org.

 Chamber Music Society

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (PCMS) is known throughout the country for the breadth and depth of its season and for the affordability of its tickets, which range in price from $25 to $30 for any seat in the three venues where its recitals are presented.

 Those three sites are the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater at Broad and Spruce Streets, the American Philosophical Society’s Benjamin Franklin Hall at 427 Chestnut Street in Old City, and the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square. Recitals on Mondays through Fridays start at 7:30 p.m. while Sunday concerts begin at 3 p.m.

PCMS’s October dates feature the Philadelphia Orchestra Winds on Oct. 7 in the Perelman Theater, Sphinx Virtuosi on Oct. 18 at the Perelman, tenor Karim Sulayman and guitarist Sean Shibe on Oct. 20 at the Philosophical Society, pianist Einav Yarden on Oct. 25 at the Philosophical Society, and Escher Quartet on Oct. 30 at the Perelman.

 November’s performers include pianist Jonathan Biss, Musicians from Marlboro, the Belcea Quartet, pianist Paul Lewis, the Parker Quartet, guitarist Raphael Feuillatre, and violinist Alexi Kenney & fortepianist Amy Yang. December’s offerings feature saxophonist Valentin Kovalev & pianist Amy Yang, countertenor Iestyn Davies, soprano Barbara Hannigan & pianist Bertrand Chamayou, the Vertavo Quartet, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Isata Kanneh-Mason, and the Ariel Quartet.

For more information on PCMS’ entire season, call 215-569-8080 or visit pcmsconcerts.org.

 Looking ahead

Valentin Radu’s Camerata Ama Deus will pay its first visit to Chestnut Hill Saturday, Nov. 9 at 8 p.m. with “Vivaldissimo” in the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The program features concertos and sinfonias by Antonio Vivaldi, who along with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel form the “Mighty Trio” of baroque music.  

For more information, call 610-688-2800 or visit voxamadeus.org. 

 You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Micahel-caruso@comcast.net.