The story of Cleopatra is being brought to the stage in a new ballet interpretation by Northern Ballet, choreographed by artistic director David Nixon to a new score by Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Schönberg, of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon fame, has previously collaborated with Northern Ballet for a production of Wuthering Heights, and this time he joins up with Nixon, who also has designed the ballet.

Premiering tomorrow night at Leeds Grand Theatre, Nixon’s Cleopatra will focus on Cleopatra as the most powerful woman in the world of her time and on her passionate love affairs with Marc Antony and Julius Caesar.

“I’ve been fascinated by the story of Cleopatra for a long time,” he says. “There’s little factual information about her yet she managed to hold in her grasp two of the most powerful men in history. She was in some ways beautiful and unbelievably sensual for the almost barbaric Romans, but she was also a woman, mother and above all a queen.”

Schönberg is delighted to see Northern Ballet’s Cleopatra come to fruition: “From the moment David Nixon suggested this ballet, it took me five years to find an elusive spark of inspiration,” he says.

“I had to understand how sensuous the way of life was in Egypt, the opposite to the culture of Rome. I realised that the chaos of being in love with such a woman as Cleopatra put the Roman Emperor and his Empire in danger.

“That’s what the score is trying to reflect without falling into clichés associated with that era. The relationship between Rome and Egypt is another aspect of the Yin and the Yang: the perfect incompatibility responsible for the drama of destinies.”

• Cleopatra runs at Leeds Grand Theatre from tomorrow until March 5, box office, 0844 848 2701 or leedsgrandtheatre.com; and on tour at Hull, New Theatre, March 16 to 19, 01482 226655 or hullcc.gov.uk/hullnewtheatre