Paris Opera Ballet: Giselle -
Capitol Theatre, Sydney, 29 January -
The Paris Opera Ballet proudly claims a special ownership of the ballet Giselle: it was created for the company in 1841. Though the ballet was for many years only performed in Russia, where it underwent some changes, this current version is closely based on what the company now considers the definitive production, staged in 1924 in Paris.
Alexander Benois’s 1924 designs (realised here by Silvano Mattei and Claudie Gastine), are an essential part of this authenticity. They are charmingly old-fashioned. The first act is all autumn shades and thatched-roofed cottages; the second act the graveyard of a gothic church. The costumes in the second act, with their long skirts of cloudy tulle and slightly dowdy bodices, look much more convincingly like wedding dresses than many sleeker modern designs. The lighting, which tends toward the creamy rather than bluish, infuses the scene with the sepia glow of a Harvest Moon.
Giselle is the quintessence of Romantic ballet, with its two acts divided between the real world and the spirit world, its mad scene, and its theme of tragic yearning and unattained love. It is also structurally very deft and quite modern in the swiftness and clarity of its story telling. Essential to this version, however, is the retention of the mime scenes, which are often truncated or removed in other versions for fear the gestures are no longer understood.
On opening night Dorothee Gilbert and Mathieu Ganio as Giselle and Albrecht were utterly captivating - she sweet and vulnerable, he gentle and charming. Although it is Albrecht who is the cad, his character wins more sympathy than the suspicious and jealous Hilarion, who reveals the truth about Albrecht’s aristocratic identity - with tragic results.
It is the second act that is the highlight of Giselle, and it did not disappoint. How remarkable it is that, all these years since the choreography was first conceived, it still has the ability to entrance. The wilis are like little scraps of mist, sometimes forming soft groupings and clusters, sometimes symmetrical lines, sometimes whirling around like blinding eddies of fog. Occasionally a dancer will suddenly perform a darting bouree like something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.
Gilbert embodied the choreography perfectly, sloping the line of her neck and shoulders to resemble a Taglioni lithograph, her jump feather-light and her arms as languid as a breeze. She never compromised the mood with distracting “look-at-me” high extensions, instead keeping the technique always at the service of the mood. (So well judged was her performance that it was a shock when she broke the mood by taken a bow after her solo!)
Ganio was every inch her equal, performing a perfect series of entrechat six before collapsing with exhaustion. (That the amount of dancing he is given would in no way drive him to exhaustion is a flaw of the original choreography.) His partnering appeared effortless, conveying the sense of Giselle’s weightlessness, lifting and placing her on pointe without a break in the flow of movement, especially with the little backward lilt before he carries her forward in arabesque. Together the pair appeared to skim each other lightly rather than touch. The moment when they part for the last time is particularly delicate -- she boureed backward away from him, dodging his attempts to grasp her as if the air he stirs pushes her away.
Also impressive was Marie-Agnes Gillot as Myrtha, who drifted across the stage with perfectly smooth bourees and a stony countenance, the hard lines of her arabesques and arms conveying the coldness of her mission. Audric Bezard as Hilarion was also notable, though he is dispatched ruthlessly by the wilis. Melanie Hurel and Emmanual Thibault performed the popular peasant pas de deux with technical precision but appeared tense and lacked the sunny nature of the part.
Amelie Lamoureux was warm and sympathetic in the mime role of Giselle’s mother. The company as a whole was very uniform in appearance – both men and women very slender and long-limbed – and schooled to the last finger.
Since its premiere all those years ago, Giselle has suffered numerous adaptations, both good and bad. The urge is understandable. I for one would like to see a more realistic depiction of peasant life – with more grunge and fewer spotless frocks -- and have it more obviously contrasted with the lives of the aristocracy. I really wish the original choreography had given Albrecht some genuinely testing dancing. But this is a production that aims to preserve the genius of the original, rather than approach it with the benefit of present day hindsight. It is testament to its creators that this Giselle still has the power to move and astonish, 171 years since its premiere.
- KAREN VAN ULZEN