Like every classic of the ballet repertory, Giselle is principally the story of a love affair. Yet it’s also a ballet about society and class, and Peter Wright’s production has always been outstanding for the human texture it gives to the world the two lovers inhabit, and for the dramatic opportunities it gives to the entire cast. In Wright’s production, the ensemble are almost as important as the ballerina and her partner.
This season, Vadim Muntagirov makes his debut as the duplicitous Count Albrecht and he dances the role magnificently. Innately elegant, with his graceful carriage, finely stretched feet, and crisp, soaring jump, he moves with privilege bred in his bones. But an equally vivid register of Albrecht’s character is his relationship with his squire, played by Johannes Stepanek. The latter’s subtly ironic contempt, as he helps Albrecht disguise his identity from Giselle, says everything about Albrecht’s spoilt, romantic nature – a man used to indulging his emotions without ever imagining the consequences.
There’s a similarly convincing hint of backstory in Marianela Nuñez’s Giselle. Far from being a doom-struck victim, she’s an ordinary young woman whose hunger for life makes her hopelessly susceptible to Albrecht’s ardour. It’s a hunger that animates her giddy dancing with her friends, but also drives her revulsion to the bluff peasant courtship of Hilarion – played brilliantly by Bennet Gartside as a man who believes doggedly in knowing his place.
With equal clarity, Wright’s production spells out the dangers to Giselle; we sense that her overprotective mother (Elizabeth McGorian) may once have been seduced by a rich lover (and that Giselle may have been the result). And we’re shown how brutally unbridgeable the gulf between village and court remains with the arrival of the Duke and his entourage – Christina Arestis’s Bathilde is so lost to exquisite ennui that she can barely muster an expression of polite disdain when Giselle offers her a posy of flowers.
If the acting is superb, it’s given real authority by the dancing. Muntagirov and Nuñez are technically thrilling; she, at her finest moments, can combine an absolute mastery of the choreography, with the illusion that she’s dancing it for the first time. The Act I Pas de Six is a near textbook display of musicality and style, and apart from a slightly shaky start to Itziar Mendizabal’s Myrtha, the Wilis are collectively both lethal and sublime.
- In rep at the Royal Opera House until 15 April. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
