Philadelphia Ballet’s 2025-26 season will include a new ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and a horror ballet
Among other offerings is a Philadelphia premiere of 'The Merry Widow' and, of course, 'The Nutcracker.'
The Academy of Music will be haunted by two horror ballets in October and then see new love in April 2026. Both programs are part of the Philadelphia Ballet’s 2025-26 season it announced Tuesday morning.
The company’s resident choreographer, Juliano Nunes, will be setting the mood for both. Nunes will be creating a new full-length Romeo & Juliet, which will run April 30-May 10, 2026. The ballet danced the John Cranko version for many years before artistic director Angel Corella brought the Kenneth MacMillan version to Philadelphia in 2018.
Nunes will also create half of the Evening of Horror program, running Oct. 16—19, 2025. His world premiere will be called Valley of Death and be set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sergei Rachmaninoff. It will be paired with Agnes de Mille’s Fall River Legend, inspired by the Lizzie Borden case and set to music by Morton Gould.
The season will open with a second season of Carmen, which Corella created in 2023. That will run Oct. 9-12.
Corella is also bringing The Merry Widow to Philadelphia audiences for the first time. He chose Ronald Hynd’s choreography based on the operetta by Franz Lehár and arranged by English Australian composer and conductor John Lanchbery. That will premiere March 5-15, 2026.
Of course, no Philadelphia Ballet season is complete without The Nutcracker. Philadelphia Ballet’s founder, Barbara Weisberger, began the tradition in 1968 and in the early years, the company only used George Balanchine’s second-act choreography, with others creating dances and pantomime for the first act. That was done with Balanchine’s blessing, as Weisberger had been his first child student in the United States, as well as his mentee when she started her troupe.
In 1987, then-director Robert Weiss converted the entire ballet to the Balanchine version, which the company still performs. This will be the second season for the ballet with Nutcracker as the only Balanchine ballet on the program. George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker will bring the annual holiday magic to Philly on Dec. 5-31.