Program booklet »Giselle«

giselle

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giselle Fantastic Ballet in two Acts Choreography & Direction Elena Tchernichova after Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot & Marius Petipa Libretto Théophile Gautier, Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges & Jean Coralli after Heinrich Heine Music Adolphe Adam with an insert (Peasant Pas de quatre) by Friedrich Burgmüller Musical Direction Luciano Di Martino Stage Design Ingolf Bruun Costume Design Clarisse Praun-Maylunas Coaching Julio Bocca, Alessandra Ferri Staging Pino Alosa, Marcelo Gomes, Barbora Kohoutková, Lukas Gaudernak, Louisa Rachedi WORLD PREMIERE 28 JUNE 1841, OPÉRA DE PARIS IN THE CHOREOGRAPHY BY JEAN CORALLI & JULES PERROT WORLD PREMIERE 29 JANUARY 1993, BALLET OF THE VIENNA STATE OPERA IN THE CHOREOGRAPHY BY ELENA TCHERNICHOVA

Elena Bottaro (Giselle), Ensemble

about today’s performance

ANNE DO PAÇO

The world premiere of Giselle on 28 June 1841 at the Opéra de Paris represented a toplevel meeting of leading artists on the ballet stage. The man of letters and experienced playwright Théophile Gautier had found the story of a young girl whose love of dance leads to her death and whose ghost then haunts a ballroom while reading Victor Hugo, and subsequently come across the saga of the Wilis popular in Slavic regions in Heinrich Heine’s De l’Allemagne. These twin sources inspired him to create the story for a ballet, which the accomplished dramatist Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges adapted into a libretto, which was then turned into choreography by Jean Coralli – ballet master at the Paris Opera – and Jules Perrot – consort of the up-and-coming ballerina Carlotta Grisi, who became the first dancer to perform the role of Giselle. The work’s immense success also owed a great deal to its original music. Adolphe Adam created a score in which not only a succession of different dances unfolded as was customary at the time but where the accomplishments of romantic opera also bore fruit in dance theatre: in his work with reminiscence motifs running through the composition as musical leitmotifs, leading to a powerful musical realization of the dance that is taking place on stage and also in his distinctive instrumentation emphasising the atmospheres of the two contrasting acts.

As a Romantic work, Giselle shows the fascinating power that the wondrous, the fairy tale-like, the evocative, the ephemeral, the intangible and the inexplicable still held in an

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age of great social upheaval, when life was changed by industrialisation and numerous mysteries were dispelled by the sciences. Ghosts populated not only literature, the visual arts and the operatic stage: the most airy and ethereal of them, the sylphs, became favourite characters in ballets, occupying an intermediate world that was exclusively feminine: in pointe shoes and delicate tutus, these embodiments of enigmatic, unworldly creatures “hovered” above the stage. The choreography of Giselle picked up on this and took it even further: its depiction of the Wilis has a cutting edge that is atypical for its time.

These ghostly brides are no delicate fairy creatures. Under the command of their ruler Myrtha, they appear more like a dangerous army whose weapon is unrestrained anger at the male sex. Giselle, however, does not let herself be caught up in this. By refusing to renounce her love for a man whose unfaithfulness drove her to death, and continuing to declare it unconditionally, she overcomes the Wilis’ quest for revenge.

From the very beginning, Giselle is a figure caught between opposing poles. Even if her parents are the only ones to know that she is the illegitimate daughter of a Duke and a peasant woman, she is unlike the other girls in the village. She is hyper-sensitive and does not work in the vineyards along with the others. She loves dancing: a dance that is more than simply an escape from reality – it consciously offers itself to the observer’s gaze in a way that Théophile Gautier described as a “chaste and delicious lust”.

This reaches its climax at the end of Act 1, which turns Giselle into a sister not only of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, but also the women who descend into madness on the opera stage: Bellini’s Elvira, Donizetti’s Lucia. The scene, which is staged half as dance and half as mime, follows the dramaturgy of an attack of hysteria, just like those that the famous pioneering neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot would later try to investigate at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière. “Her head starts spinning: a terrible and gloomy delirium overpowers her as she sees that she has been betrayed, abandoned, dishonoured!” the libretto states.

And it goes on: “Her mind wanders, tears roll down, then she laughs a nervous laugh …

Her love of dancing flares up once again in her memory: … She sets off, starting to dance longingly and passionately … A final sigh escapes from her mistreated soul, she takes … one sad look at Albrecht before closing her eyes forever!”

In a world governed by opposites – peasants on one side, nobles on the other; a log cabin on one side and on the other a castle; on one side work and on the other a hunting party; and one side a society in which men regard women as their property and on the other the yearning for a different world and true love – Giselle becomes the focal point, not only where life and death meet, but also where life may cross the threshold into the spirit realm – one that both Duke Albrecht and Hilarion will be drawn into.

Ever since its world premiere, the story has lost none of its fascinating power.

Today the title role still makes the greatest demands of its performers: requiring not only excellent technique and physical fitness, but also a genuine actress who can act while she is dancing. In the choreography and production that Elena Tchernichova brought to the stage of the Vienna State Opera in 1993 after Perrot, Coralli and Marius Petipa, Giselle continues to this day to be one of the Vienna State Ballet’s signature works and the performance of its leading roles among the highlights for the ensemble’s soloists.

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ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE

synopsis

Act 1 Giselle is not like the other peasant girls in the village. Fatherless, she lives together with her mother Berthe. She is more sensitive than her friends and obsessed by a passionate desire to dance. Looking for fun, Duke Albrecht disguises himself as a peasant to mingle with the ordinary people. Fascinated by Giselle’s innocent beauty, he courts her. Giselle falls in love with this stranger. They acknowledge their feelings for each other.

Hilarion, a gamekeeper who has had his eye on Giselle for some time, watches these events warily and is filled with jealousy.

Giselle persuades the girls who work in the vineyard to dance. She ignores her mother’s warnings about the fate of the Wilis – the young women who were jilted before their wedding day and from then on are condemned to dance every night as the living dead under the spell of their queen Myrtha.

A hunting party stops off in the village, led by the Duke of Kurland and his daughter Bathilde, who is Albrecht’s fiancée. Giselle’s house is one the Duke knows well: he has come here before for a love affair with Berthe. They are still the only two people who know the secret that they are Giselle’s parents. When Bathilde is delighted with the young girl’s charms, he allows her to give Giselle a valuable chain as a gift.

The grape pickers celebrate the harvest and crown Giselle as “Queen of the Vines”.

In the meantime, Hilarion discovers Albrecht’s dagger, which bears the Duke’s crest, and reveals his identity in front of the assembled hunting party. Forced to explain himself in front of Bathilde, Albrecht is evasive and makes the excuse that he is just flirting with Giselle as a joke.

Giselle is stunned by this betrayal: she loses her mind and dies.

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Act 2 Hilarion goes looking in the forest for Giselle’s grave. At midnight, will-o’-the-wisps suddenly start dancing. Hilarion runs away in terror. Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, is awakening her followers. Giselle, too, follows her magical summons and rises up from her grave.

She is accepted as one of the Wilis.

Duke Albrecht is in deep mourning. Giselle appears to him at her grave, but he is unable to hold on the ghostly bride.

Hilarion has not succeeded in escaping the powerful circle of the Wilis. They pursue him and extract their revenge: like any man who ventures onto their territory after midnight, they dance him to death.

Giselle appeals to the Queen to have mercy on Albrecht. But Myrtha commands her to tempt Albrecht away from her grave. This plan, to lure the Duke away from the protection of the Holy Cross, seems to be working: Albrecht cannot resist Giselle’s dancing.

But Giselle’s love, which not even death can diminish, fills him with such strength that he is able to keep dancing through until dawn.

The power of the Wilis vanishes with the sunrise. Giselle, too, has to return to her grave. Albrecht is left behind disturbed.

“In the region of Žilina … it is popularly believed that the souls of women who are engaged but die before marriage can find no rest: they are compelled to wander by night, dancing in circles at the time of the new moon and singing ghoulish songs.

Whenever they catch sight of a man, he is forced to dance with them for so long that he dies.”

FROM THERESE VON ARTNER: THE WILI DANCE. A SLAVIC FOLK TALE (1822)

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SYNOPSIS

HEINRICH HEINE

“In a part of Austria there is a legend which … is of Slavic origin. It is that of the ghostly female dancers who are there known by the name of Wilis. The Wilis are brides who died before being married. The poor young creatures cannot lie calmly in their graves; in their dead hearts and feet the old passion for dancing, which they could not gratify in their lives, still burns.

So at midnight they rise, assemble in troops on the highways, and woe to the young man who meets them! He must dance with them, they surround him in unbridled madness, and he must dance with them without rest or repose till he falls dead.

In their bridal dresses crowns of flowers, and ribbons flying from their heads, flashing rings on their fingers, the Wilis dance in the moonshine, as do the elves.

Their faces, though snow white, are young and fair; they laugh so strangely sweet, they nod with such seductive secrecy, so promisingly – these dead Bacchantæ are irresistible!

For when people saw beautiful brides die they could not believe that youth and bloom, in all their brilliancy, could pass abruptly into black nothingness, so that the faith arose easily enough that the bride continued to seek after death the joys of which she had been deprived.”

FROM ELEMENTARY SPIRITS (1835)

my dear heinrich heine THÉOPHILE GAUTIER TO HEINRICH HEINE IN AN OPEN LETTER IN LA PRESSE ON 5 JULY 1841

... A few weeks ago, while leafing through your beautiful book De l’Allemagne, I found an enchanting passage – one only needs to open your book at random to find it – it is the place where you speak of white-clad fairies, the seams of whose dresses are always moist, of mermaids whose tiny satin feet appear on the ceiling of the bridal chamber, of snow-coloured Wilis relentlessly dancing and all those delightful apparitions that you encountered in the Harz and on the banks of the Ilse, where the mist mingles with the light of the German moon. And completely unprompted I exclaimed: “What a beautiful ballet could be made of this!”

In this burst of enthusiasm I took out a beautiful large white sheet of paper and wrote out at the top of the page in a wonderfully clear hand: The Wilis – A Ballet. But then I laughed and threw the paper away without pursuing my idea any further, telling myself that it is surely impossible to translate such a nebulous, nocturnal poetic vision into the language of theatre: this lascivious and sinister phantasmagoria, all these effects of legends and ballads that have so little in common with our actions. That evening, backstage at the opera with my head still buzzing with your idea, I met the very gentleman who captured all the fantasy and humour of Cazotte’s The Devil in Love in a ballet (...), though he also added a great deal of original material. I told him about the tradition of the Wilis. Three days later Giselle had been fully conceived and accepted. By the end of the week Adolphe Adam had improvised the music, the décor was almost complete, and rehearsals were already in full swing.

MY DEAR HEINRICH HEINE

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Carlotta Grisi: the Giselle of the Paris premiere in 1841

aspects of the work ELENA TCHERNICHOVA (1993)

Of course you will ask yourself: why create a black and white version of the ballet Giselle?

I have been planning this work in the form in which it can now be seen for a long time.

Long before MTV began showing their wonderful black and white clips of rock groups.

Black and white was something that existed both in photography and in the cinema. The black and white background amplifies everything that happens on stage.

Giselle is a ballet which is unrivalled within the classical repertoire. The subject is a blessing for the theatre: it is full of natural life and then the supernatural world follows mysteriously on top of it. Love, faithfulness, death, betrayal … it has everything that motivates people, even now. And all this gives the dancer-actor plenty to do. For me, the choreography of Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, significantly enhanced by the genius Marius Petipa, is such a masterpiece it no longer needs to prove its “untouchable” status.

I see my task as being to restore this choreography and only refresh those elements that have vanished without trace in a sensitive manner, ensuring that they remain as consistent as possible with the style of its creators. I will only count my work as a personal success if it is invisible.

Of course one must take progress into account, however – what is above us, in us, around us. The technical level of the dancers has advanced so much that the artistry of individuals leads one to choreographic solutions that satisfy the requirements of the present time. For this reason I have no intention of creating a collection of classic works in their original form. While this might also be interesting, it is not for me: that is a task for others. (...)

The mime in this work is particularly important; I would say that it is simply perfect. It was constructed so brilliantly that even those most famous brains who reworked all the ballets in the 1950s, describing mime as “no longer timely” and removing it, left this one untouched. However, the full meaning of these scenes is often lost due to excessively formal presentation. For example, Hilarion is not attempting to escape death when he

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tells Giselle the truth about Albrecht, instead he is trying to demonstrate his resistance while Albrecht attempts to stab him with the dagger. Is this not peculiar if the role of Hilarion is portrayed as a traditional villain? Indeed it is. Hilarion is in love with Giselle and when he reveals Albrecht’s secret to her, he understands the severity of the consequences and is fully aware of everything that is about to happen: he will perish in the Wilis’ dance of death, like a new, terrible step towards the love he so eagerly desires, the opportunity to be united with her at heart, even to follow her. Is his role not more profound philosophically than that of a jealous rival? As a child of nature is he not the romantic expression of those pantheistic ideals that the Romantics derived from philosophers such as Rousseau? And Giselle’s mother, who may once have been seduced by the Duke of Kurland and clearly remembers this encounter with him: this explains why Giselle feels drawn towards the aristocracy, an inclination that is almost inherent within her genes.

Ideas like this have contributed to my solution for staging the work, even if they originally had no fundamental significance and subsequently were not developed any further. However, the simple fact of their presence in the theme achieves an atmosphere of mutual relationships on stage far more effectively than watching a staged pastoral “reality”. This is Romanticism – and not classicism with a pastoral idyll. What I look for in Giselle are complex emotions in their many forms – because there is no naivety there.

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ASPECTS OF THE WORK

he ran ahead of the melody GUNHILD OBERZAUCHER-SCHÜLLER

The year 1831 not only marked the beginning of Romantic ballet with the world premiere of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, it also saw the first ballet composition, again in Paris, by Adolphe Adam, who had already established a reputation in the genres of Vaudeville and comic opera as a talented and fast worker. “He loved the excitement of working quickly,” Jacques Fromental Halévy wrote of Adam, “and he ran ahead of the melody, meeting it on his way, as busy as him, darting and lively, simple or elaborate, naïve or knowing, but avoiding any platitudes ...”.

Born in 1803 and the son of a musician, Adam turned to ballet with particular gusto, a genre for which he would develop a special fondness. “On ne travail plus, on s’amuse”, one of his sayings that is often been quoted with reference to his ballet compositions, might easily be misunderstood – for his ballet music was not the result of perfunctory speed or empty lack of ambition but a natural lightness of touch based on his knowledge of the means at his disposal and the genre. La Chatte blanche was the title of his first ballet, written in collaboration with the composer Casimir Gide.

Adam would continue to work on ballets throughout the Romantic era, but his output was fundamentally different from that of other ballet composers of the time: he consistently worked across all genres of music, and he did not compose his ballets for a one single choreographer but for all the leading maestros of the period.

While Cesare Pugni composed for Jules Perrot, and Ludwig Minkus and Riccardo Drigo worked mainly for Marius Petipa, Adam composed his next ballet, Faust, which

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was produced in London in 1833, for André Jean-Jacques Deshayes. A few years later Adam composed for the Taglioni clan: La Fille du Danube, which received its world premiere in 1836 at the Paris Opera choreographed by Filippo Taglioni, proved to be such a success for its principal performer Marie Taglioni that the composer was immediately invited to collaborate with them on another ballet for St. Petersburg. In the meantime, in 1837, and again for the Paris Opera, he wrote Les Mohicans, a ballet produced by the brilliant Antonio Guerra, who would die prematurely. In 1840 the St. Petersburg Taglioni ballet L’Ecumeur de mer was unveiled and that same year on the way back to Paris he wrote a piece for another member of the Taglioni family: Paul Taglioni choreographed Die Hamadryaden in Berlin in 1840, a work that was billed as an opera-ballet. The next year it took Adam just two months to complete Giselle or The Wilis, and a year later he presented La Jolie Fille de Gand, which was choreographed by Albert. In 1843 he wrote Le Diable à quatre for Joseph Mazilier in Paris and two years later The Marble Maiden for London, once again with Albert as choreographer. After this, Adam concentrated on his collaboration with Joseph Mazilier in Paris: in 1848 they produced Griséldis, ou les Cinq sens, in 1849 La Filleule de fées, 1852 Orfa, and finally in 1856, the year of his death, Le Corsaire, a work whose music remains widely known to this day.

What distinguished Adam’s music most of all from the other ballet scores of the time was its quality. The music for Giselle received a “seal of approval” at its premiere when the opera house’s principal conductor, François-Antoine Habeneck, insisted on conducting the world premiere himself. And indeed the score was seen as the kind of gift that the ballet only too rarely receives. The music was appreciated as elegant, fresh and full of melodies, yet also dark and mysterious – it immediately cast listeners under its spell and would not let them go. What was admired most was how it heightened contrasts by using all the tools of musical dramaturgy: Acts 1 and 2 differed in sound, harmony, melody, rhythm and tempo as well as their tonal patterns – in one the cheerful, sunny valley, in the other the eerie and menacing forest of the Wilis, with the two connected by the mad scene (an act finale whose opera-like character was reminiscent of Meyerbeer). A combination of instruments never heard before (violins accompanied by four harps) drew listeners into the magical realm of Act 2 and the spell of Myrtha, an effect that was as surprising as the approach of a fugue, a form of composition that was extremely rare in the ballet genre. They were surprised by new and daring harmonic relationships as well as the skilful use of “airs parlants” for the mimed dialogues. The waltz for the lovers in Act 1 was considered to be “German à la Strauss”, forming an attractive contrast with the music for the pas de deux that followed, which, like Act 1 in general, remained within the “genre villageois”. The use of solo instruments as a method of characterising the protagonists also received great attention: with the flute representing the voice of Giselle and the cello featuring in the darker moments of the story; Berthe’s prophecy, Hilarion’s thirst for revenge and the entrance of the gleaming ghostly apparitions.

Adam’s ballet music set standards: and the fact that in the year of his death (1856) Léo Delibes’ first work of music theatre received its premiere in Paris allows us to believe in the workings of a higher power with a particular penchant for ballet theatre.

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HE RAN AHEAD OF THE MELODY

CARLO BLASIS

“Be as light as you can; the public wants to find something ethereal in a dancer, wants to believe that you are barely touching the earth, that you are ready to take to the air.”

TRAITÉ ELÉMENTAIRE, THÉORIQUE ET PRATIQUE DE L’ART DE LA DANSE (1820)

Elena Bottaro (Giselle), Masayu Kimoto (Duke Albrecht)

Cassandra Trenary (Giselle), Davide Dato (Duke Albrecht)

Ioanna Avraam (Myrtha)

Rosa Pierro (Myrtha)

Laura Fernandez Gromova (Giselle), António Casalinho (Duke Albrecht)

António Casalinho (Duke Albrecht)

giselle: a “russian” ballet?

ALFRED OBERZAUCHER

“To claim that the Russian ballet merely dragged Giselle out of obscurity would be to neglect the importance of what it actually contributed to this ballet.” With this observation, the Soviet ballet scholar Yuri Slonimsky summed up the effective history of Giselle.

For after the work achieved a level of success in Western Europe and America following its Parisian world premiere unrivalled by any other ballet of the Romantic period except La Sylphide, it was only rarely performed at the Paris Opera once Carlotta Grisi left in 1849 and disappeared entirely from the repertoire in 1868 – a phenomenon that was repeated almost everywhere else at that time. A key element in the work’s original po­ pularity with audiences was its alignment with the prevailing taste of the times – what is more, it provided an ideal altar upon which the exalted ballerinas of the age could celebrate their art. Once the great ballerinas of the Romantic era retired, Giselle’s fate also seemed to have been sealed.

It was different in Russia, where the genius of the libretto was clearly appreciated and dance itself was perceived as the ballet’s true theme: Giselle, filled with the desire to dance, is restless even in death, she joins the ranks of the Wilis who return in the form of dancing avengers, Hilarion is danced to death, while Albrecht only narrowly escapes a dance of death. Antoine Titus, who had encountered the ballet in Paris, restaged it in St. Petersburg for Elena Andreianova in 1842. In the years that followed it also offered stars of the Romantic ballet such as Lucile Grahn and Fanny Elßler a chance to shine.

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In 1850 Jules Perrot staged a new version of the ballet in St. Petersburg for Grisi – with a significant contribution to the staging coming from Marius Petipa, whose knowledge of the work dated back to the time of its world premiere, when he had been staying in Paris unemployed and had recorded the choreography in written form (his notes are still in the Theatre Museum in St. Petersburg today). Petipa had an excellent knowledge of the piece, also from a performer’s perspective – he danced the role of Albrecht in France and Russia. However, Giselle also seemed to fall out of fashion in St. Petersburg – performances would only be programmed sporadically for ballerinas such as Nadezh­ da Bogdanova, Marfa Muravyeva and Adele Grantzow, for whom the variation on the love theme from Act 1 that is still in use today was inserted into Act 2 in 1866. When Ivan Vsevolozhsky was appointed Director of the Imperial Theatres, their repertoire policy changed. With his deep appreciation of French culture, Vsevolozhsky supported Petipa, who had now advanced to become sole mater of the St. Petersburg Ballet, in his dismissive attitude towards the lavish ballets of Italian origin that visiting companies had brought to Russia and encouraged him to revive older French works as well as creating his own original ballets.

As a consequence, Giselle received the first of three revivals “choreographed by M. Petipa personally” on which the ballet’s current manifestation – and especially the grand pas of the Wilis – are based at the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1884. For the ballet’s transfer to the Mariinski Theatre in 1887 Petipa created the variation of Giselle in Act 1 to music that is probably by Ludwig Minkus. This solo, created by Emma Bessone, remains a touchstone of a ballerina’s technical skills to this day. Petipa’s final version of Giselle was created in 1899. Fyodor Lopuchov, the eminent expert on the classical repertoire wrote of the creative contribution made by this great maestro, who simultaneously both preserved and enriched Giselle: “Perrot, Coralli and Petipa may not have worked at the same time, but they did work in one and the same spirit!”

Petipa’s final work as Ballet Master of the Imperial Theatres was also on Giselle.

In 1903 he prepared Anna Pavlova, who he regarded as Grisi’s legitimate success or, f­or her debut as Giselle. And in doing so, Petipa himself together with this ballerina ushered the ballet, resurrected in new glory, into the 20th century. The basis for the ballet’s widespread performance from then on was laid by Sergei Diaghilev in 1910, the year of Petipa’s death, when he included it in his “Russian Season” at the Paris Opera – 42 years after the work was last performed in Paris. Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky danced in the production overseen by Michel Fokine, which reintroduced the fugue of the Wilis that had gradually been dropped over the course of time. Anna Pavlova, who included Giselle in the repertoire of her ensemble and danced it all around the world, also made a significant contribution to the work’s popularity. However, the key figure in Giselle’s reception in the 20th century would prove to be Nicholas Sergeyev. The former Principal Director of the St. Petersburg Ballet had recorded Petipa’s version in Stepanov notation and with the aid of these notes, he created model productions in Paris (1924) and London (1932) performed by Olga Spessivtseva. Sergeyev’s stagings are still required knowledge today for almost all ballet masters in the Western world.

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GISELLE: A “RUSSIAN” BALLET?

In the Soviet Union too, despite all the stylistic shifts and technical advances, Petipa’s choreographic text remained the basis for subsequent productions, such as those of Agrippina Vaganova (1932) and Vladimir Ponomaryov (1941) in Leningrad. The auto­ nomous performance tradition in Moscow that could be traced back to Alexander Gorsky in 1907 gave way to Petipa-inspired versions by Alexander Monachov (1934) and Leonid Lavrovsky (1944). The outstanding performer of this period was Galina Ulanova.

Visits to the West by the Bolshoi Ballet and the Kirov Ballet and the work of Kirov dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Mihkail Baryshnikov and Elena Tchernichova in Europe and America in the second half of the 20th century were key influences in the treatment of what was once a French creation. The question of the provenance of what are now considered traditional productions of Giselle has therefore been answered unambiguously.

On Giselle’s History in Vienna Only two weeks after Giselle caused a sensation on the “boards that meant the world” of the Paris Opera, Adolf Bäuerle could be justifiably proud to present the readers of his theatre newspaper a four column report on the premiere by Jules Janin, which the “king of the Parisian critics” ended by exclaiming “That’s what I call a ballet!” Viennese audiences then had to wait a whole ten months before Giselle achieved its Viennese premiere on 4 May 1842. (Bordeaux, London, Brussels and Marseille, where Hermine Elßler, a cousin of the “divine Fanny” became the first Viennese to dance the title role, preceded the K. K. Hoftheater.) The intense expectations of the Vienna audience were satisfied

by Hermine Blangy both with her production and her performance in the title role, which led to her being called “the ethereal one”. Then principal dancer at the Kärntnertortheater, she was well acquainted with the work, in which she had taken over the role of Myrtha at the Paris Opera shortly after the world premiere. Blangy’s partner in Vienna was Gustave Carey, who would continue to dance the role of Albrecht in almost all the performances over the following decade. An unusual feature of the Viennese Giselle was a polka composed by Joseph Lanner included in Act 1 (Lanner’s daughter Katti was highly praised for her performances as Myrtha during this period).

Having become a fixture in the Vienna repertoire, in the 1840s and early 1850s Giselle provided an ideal vehicle for appearances by the leading ballerinas of the day.

The cycle began with Fanny Elßler, who, after her American tour, made the role of Giselle her own in London and with her extremely dramatic rendition of the mad scene developed a concept whose validity is still recognised today. “This mimicry says more than words, she reaches into the character’s innermost feelings and brings a world of pain to our eyes.” With these words the critic of the theatre newspaper had spoken to the hearts of the Viennese public, who offered the “homecomer” some indescribable demonstrations of homage in 1844. The great Romantic ballerina naturally kept Giselle in the repertoire of her guest performances for the next two years (with a new partner as Albrecht, Louis Mérante, in 1846).

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HANS WERNER HENZE

“Giselle, the metamorphosis of Heine’s Wilis through Gautier, Coralli and the rigorous music of Adam, which completely avoids any superficiality here, is an art work of the highest order: unsentimental, full of awe and, especially in Act 2, suffused with genuine poetry, whose composure offers us a vision of rare clarity of a spirituality that combines gravity and depth with a quality that is described in German by the rather dismissive word ‘Gefälligkeit̕, but which is more than mere pleasantness: it is a form of elegance achieved through masterly and restrained expression.”

Lucile Grahn and Fanny Cerrito, who also helped to define this “Golden Age” of ballet, presented their interpretations of Giselle to Vienna audiences at the beginning of the 1850s. In addition to them, Karoline Wendt, Augusta Maywood, Elise Albert Bellon, Leopoldine Brussi, Amalia Ferraris and Nadezhda Bogdanova could be seen as Giselle and Irakli Nikitin, August Horschelt, son of the founder of the notorious children’s ballet and Pasquale Borri all danced Albrecht. However, the public gradually lost interest in this ballet. A new aesthetic – which the Berlin-based choreographer Paul Taglioni had also brought to Vienna – had squeezed out Giselle, so that when she finally brought her Giselle to the Kärntnertortheater in 1853, the creator of the title role Carlotta Grisi found herself looking out at a half-empty house.

In 1859 Carl Telle, Taglioni’s appointee in Vienna, had one more effort at freshening up a work that was now considered passé, but neither Claudine Couqui and Katharina Friedberg nor Virgilio Calori, Julius Price or Alfred Caron was able to achieve success in the sparsely attended performances. Though Giselle moved from the Kärntnertor­ theater to the opera house on the Ring in 1870, its occasional performances tended to happen more at the request of ballerinas who wanted to be seen in that illustrious role: Guglielmina Salvioni in 1870, Adele Grantzow in 1876, Luigia Cerale in 1880 and Irene Sironi in 1894. On such occasions, Caron, Josef Hassreiter, whose ballets topped the lists of audience favourites towards the end of the century, and Otto Thieme would dance the role of Albrecht.

Giselle was not resurrected until 1909, as part of a visit by the Imperial Russian Ballet to the Hofoper. Anna Pavlova, whose interpretation of the title role had begun a new chapter in the work’s performance history, and Nikolai Legat were the leads. However, the dancer acclaimed as the ideal ballerina for the new century received some highly critical reviews in Vienna. “Pavlova is not beautiful. Excessively thin in shape, with lines that only rise gently and fall gently once again when the muscles force them to, but are otherwise devoid of any curves”, said one withering review. The ballet itself was brushed aside as “boring”, even as “sensationally ennuyant”. Boris Romanov failed to do much better in 1923, when he presented Giselle with his Russian Romantic Theatre at the Apollotheater. His version, in which the Wilis entered to music by Franz Schubert, was danced by Elena Smirnova und Anatol Obuchov. Vienna was then thoroughly under the spell of expressive dance and “old ballet” had had its time.

It was not until the renaissance of classical ballet in central Europe after the Second World War that new interest arose in the “classics” of the 19th century. A very deliberate choice was made for the first ballet premiere of the State Opera once the opera house on the Ring reopened in 1955 to couple a modern ballet with a revival of Giselle by Gordon Hamilton, based on the version by Marius Petipa that had been passed on by Nicholas Sergeyev. The cast for the premiere was Margaret Bauer as Giselle and Willy Dirtl as Albrecht. Erika Zlocha and Edeltraud Brexner subsequently danced the title role and Richard Adama and Karl Musil the role of Albrecht. There were guest appea­ rances by Josette Amiel and Flemming Flindt.

Thunderous acclaim, on a scale that no performer in Giselle had received since the days of Fanny Elßler, greeted Rudolf Nureyev as Albrecht in 1966. His partner was Yvette

GISELLE: A “RUSSIAN” BALLET?

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Chauviré, and in the following year he danced alongside Margot Fonteyn. Isola­ted performances of Giselle in Vienna were also given by visiting ensembles: in 1957 Rosella Hightower and Vladimir Skouratoff as well as Nina Vyroubova and Serge Golovine in the performances by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, in 1965 and 1973 Marina Kondratieva and Vladimir Tichonov in guest performances by the Bolshoi Ballet and in 1977 the American Ballet Theatre’s Giselle at the Theater an der Wien starred Natalia Makarova and Mihkail Baryshnikov alternating with Gelsey Kirkland and Ivan Nagy.

In 1980 Alicia Alonso, herself one of the greatest Giselles of the 20th century, was responsible for a new production of the work at the Vienna State Opera. This remained in repertoire at the opera house on the Ring until 1981, with the production moving on to the Volksoper in 1983. The depth of the list of its recent dancers is reminiscent of that from the ballet’s heyday in the 19th century: in the title role Gisela Cech has been followed by Cynthia Gregory, Susanne Kirnbauer, Galina Panova, Christine Gaugusch, Eva Evdokimova, Ildikó Pongor, Lilly Scheuermann, Yoko Morishita, Lesley Collier, Nadezhda Pavlova and Elisabeth Maurin; following Michael Birkmeyer as Albrecht have been Rudolf Nureyev, Heinz Heidenreich, Valery Panov, Georg Ditl, Ludwig Karl, Gyula Haran­ gozó, Vyacheslav Gordeyev, Michael Pinnisch and Jean-Yves Lormeau. A counterpoint was provided in 1984 by the visit of the Cullberg Ballet with its radical new version of Giselle by Mats Ek, one of the most sensational ballet productions of the 1980s. Further dimensions were added decades later: a biographical reading in Boris Eifman’s Giselle Rouge (Vienna State Ballet 2015) and an African one in Dada Masilo’s Giselle (a guest performance by The Dance Factory, ImPulsTanz 2017 at the Volkstheater).

Elena Tchernichova’s version created for the State Opera’s Ballet Company in 1993 is based – despite her personal note – along with the earlier Vienna stagings by Hamil­ton and Alonso on the late 19th century, i.e. “Russian” form of the work. Tchernichova, who led the State Opera’s Ballet Company from 1991 to 1993, dedicated her version of Giselle to the memory of the State Opera’s Director Eberhard Waechter, who died in 1992. The leading roles at the premiere were danced by Brigitte Stadler and Vladimir Malakhov, and in subsequent performances up until 1994, Katherine Healy and Svetlana Kuznetsova were seen as Giselle and Christian Musil, Michael Shannon and Tamás Solymosi as Albrecht. In the 2001 revival of the work staged by Brigitte Stadler, Eva Petters and Margaret Illmann alternated in the title role, with Gregor Hatala as Albrecht. In the course of the ten years that followed, the new Giselles were Alexandra Kontrus, Alina Cojocaru, Aliya Tanikpaeva, Polina Semionova, Irina Tsymbal, Svetlana Lunkina, Maria Yakovleva, Diana Vishneva, Liudmila Konovalova, Natalie Kusch, Nina Poláková, Ioanna Avraam, Olga Smirnova, Olga Esina, Elena Bottaro and Hyo-Jung Kang. During the same period, the new performers appearing in the role of Albrecht were Boris Nebyla, Johan Kobborg, Sergei Filin, Leonid Sarafanov, Giuseppe Picone, Andrian Fadeyev, Roman Lazik, Eno Peci, Shane A. Wuerthner, Andrey Teterin, Denys Cherevychko, Robert Gabdullin, Masayu Kimoto, Semyon Chudin, Kimin Kim, Davide Dato and Brendan Saye. The 2025/26 season will see numerous other Viennese role debuts, including Cassandra Trenary and Laura Fernandez Gromova as Giselle and António Casalinho as Duke Albrecht. In this way they all continue to create the legend of Giselle in today’s Vienna.

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GISELLE: A “RUSSIAN” BALLET?

where life & love reside BALLET DIRECTOR ALESSANDRA FERRI IN CONVERSATION WITH IRIS FREY

For the opening of the programme of your first season as Director of the Vienna State Ballet, you chose Giselle. What was your reason for selecting this ballet?

I chose this ballet because it is a masterpiece of the 19th century. To this day, the beauty and purity of the 2nd Act remains unmatched — particularly the way it tells the story through dance alone. Moreover, it is a profoundly meaningful ballet. Dealing with transcendence, self-transformation and the search for true, unconditional love, it carries a deep existential message about human development.

AF

Giselle was also one of your signature roles. Which moments were especially meaningful for you?

I have many memories of it! A particularly special one was my debut at the age of 21, dancing alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov. I danced with him many times, but also with Rudolf Nureyev. Of course, it was an incredible moment for me to work and speak with him. I experienced him as a wonderful person and artist, who gave me a lot of advice and shared his ideas on certain things.

AF

WHERE LIFE & LOVE RESIDE

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You worked with Elena Tchernichova yourself when you were a young dancer. What memories do you have of her?

During my time at the American Ballet Theatre, I was coached by Elena Tchernichova, who was then the principal ballet mistress, in the role of Giselle, when I made my debut in Baryshnikov’s version. She had a wonderful eye and great artistic expertise. I was very young, and Elena was very caring and loving. She was more than a coach – she was like an adoptive mother to me. In Vienna, of course, she had a different role as Director of the Company (1991-1993).

AF

What is special about Tchernichova’s choreography and staging of Giselle?

Her version does not differ significantly from most other classical versions. Only small details vary. I would say, however, that Tchernichova’s version is very minimalist, which is also reflected in the production design. Regarding the set and costumes, it is a very unique version with a particular color dramaturgy, where almost everything is in black and white or gray-blue. I like that Giselle and Bathilde in the 1st Act are almost the only ones whose costumes stand out in color, which is visually very stunning. Choreographically, she expanded the role of Hilarion considerably, particularly in the 2nd Act. Therefore, you need a very good dancer.

AF

In place of the ‘Peasant Pas de deux’ in Act 1, a ‘Peasant Pas de quatre’ is now performed. Why did you decide to make this change?

The choreography itself will not change. It remains faithful to Elena Tchernichova’s version. I’ve only restructured the opening of the “Peasant Pas de deux” into a Pas de quatre for two peasant couples. Giselle and Albrecht will only dance the adagio, while the variations and the coda will be performed individually by the four other dancers. I felt that, dramatically, it was more in line with the story for Giselle not to dance so many solos – her original solo expresses her joy and love of dance, which her worried mother only allows her to do in a special moment due to her weak heart. It would be out of character for her to dance so extensively throughout the act, as it would be for Albrecht to dance with the peasants. This small change also provides a wonderful opportunity for young dancers to shine on stage – something that is very close to my heart.

AF

You are restaging Giselle in Vienna together with your former dance partner Julio Bocca. What does coaching dancers mean to you?

AF

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I am very interested in it and love coaching dancers in a ballet that I have performed myself in many different companies – including in New York,

WHERE LIFE & LOVE RESIDE

London, Milan, Tokyo and Buenos Aires – as well as in different versions by Baryshnikov, Pierre Lacotte, and Patrice Bart. This ballet has been with me for over 40 years, it is a work that I know inside and out. Working with the dancers is a gift for me because it allows me to experience the ballet again, helping them discover its true core and deeper meaning of the piece. I think it is one of the most difficult ballets, and understanding and performing it takes a lifetime. As mature human beings, we can understand Giselle’s journey, which is actually a journey of all of us.

In addition to the dramatic challenge, there are also strong stylistic contrasts between the two acts …

The 1st and 2nd Act are so different in style that it is also hard to work on them. The challenge lies in using the technique in such a way that one achieves the feeling of a soul is dancing rather than a physical being. That takes time.

But it is truly a fascinating ballet for both Albrecht and Giselle. I would say they are probably the greatest roles in 19th century ballet.

AF

You were especially celebrated for your interpretations of dramatic roles, such as Giselle, but also Manon and Juliet. What is special about these roles?

They are roles that portray humanity – and that is what I love. It is not only about the story itself, but about the emotional level behind it. It’s about becoming one with your soul.

AF

What meaning does Giselle have for you and for the audience today?

Giselle will always remain a true masterpiece. It is the combination of beautiful choreography and a story that tells so much more beneath the surface. Even if you don’t realise it consciously, it touches you deeply. This ballet should be seen as a transformative experience, as contact with the inner world, where life and love reside. That is what Giselle is all about.

AF

WHERE LIFE & LOVE RESIDE

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Alessanda Ferri as Giselle at the American Ballet Theatre

Liudmila Konovalova (Giselle), Masayu Kimoto (Duke Albrecht), Iliana Chivarova (Berthe), Ensemble

Elena Bottaro (Giselle), Davide Dato (Duke Albrecht)

Elena Bottaro (Giselle), Franziska Wallner-Hollinek (Berthe), Giorgio Fourés (Hilarion), Ensemble

Natalya Butchko (Moyna), Ladies Ensemble

Masayu Kimoto (Duke Albrecht)

VICTOR HUGO

“Elle aimait trop le bal, c’est ce qui l’a tuée; Le bal éblouissant, le bal délicieux!

Sa cendre encor frémit doucement remuée, Quand, dans la nuit sereine, une blanche nuée Danse autour du croissant des cieux.”

“She loved o’er-much the ball: – it was her death: The ball so dazzling, so delicious!

E’en now her ashes thrill, when, in a night Serene and calm, a snowy cloud doth dance Around the silver-robèd Queen of Heav’n.”

LUCIANO DI MARTINO – Musical Direction The Italian-German conductor Luciano Di Martino studied at the University of Music and Theater in Hamburg as well as at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena among others with Ilya Musin. He has been a regular guest conductor at the Hamburg State Opera since 2008, leading numerous opera productions as well as ballets by John Neumeier. As an internationally sought-after guest conductor for concert, opera and ballet, he has collaborated with many prestigious orchestras, including the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion, Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice, Symphony Orchestra of NBC in Beijing and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra. He has also conducted at the Mariinsky Theater, Academic Opera and Ballet Theater Novosibirsk, National Opera of Bucharest, National Opera of Sofia, Megaron Concert Hall in Thessaloniki, New Israeli Opera, State Theater of Nuremberg and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, among others. At the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, he recorded a complete audio version of the ballet Giselle and conducted the premiere of La Sylphide. His work also includes contemporary music by Lera Auerbach, Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt.

After his initial positions as general music director of the State Opera in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, he was appointed permanent conductor of the Classic FM Radio Orchestra in Sofia. He is currently the conductor and artistic director of the State Opera Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

Luciano Di Martino makes his house debut with the Vienna State Ballet in the 2025/26 season, conducting Elena Tchernichova’s Giselle, followed by Roland Petit’s Die Fledermaus.

ELENA TCHERNICHOVA – Choreography & Direction Born in 1939 in Leningrad, Elena Tchernichova was a graduate of the Vaganova Institute, a member of the Kirov Ballet and later choreographic assistant to Leonid Jacobson. A position as ballet mistress followed in Odessa before she became Principal Ballet Mistress of the American Ballet Theatre New York in 1976. In 1991, Eberhard Waechter appointed her director of the Vienna State Opera’s Ballet – a position she held until 1993. For her Viennese ensemble she choreographed among others the full-length ballets Don Quixote (1992) and Giselle (1993), and the latter is still one of the ensemble’s calling cards today. In 2013 she published her autobiography Dancing on Water. A Life in Ballet, from the Kirov to the ABT. Elena Tchernichova died in 2015 in her hometown.

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Giselle Elena Tchernichova after Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot & Marius Petipa Season 2025/26 PUBLISHER Vienna State Opera GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav Director Vienna State Ballet: Alessandra Ferri Managing Director Vienna State Ballet: Mag.a Simone Wohinz Editorial Team: Nastasja Fischer MA, Mag.a Iris Frey Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Layout & Type Setting: Miwa Meusburger Producer: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau TEXT REFERENCES The synopsis and the texts by Anne do Paço, Elena Tchernichova, Dr. Gunhild Ober­zaucher-Schüller and Alfred Oberzaucher are revised versions of the original texts for Vienna State Ballet’s booklet Giselle, 2001/02 & 2021/22. The interview with Alessandra Ferri by Iris Frey is an original contribution for this booklet.

Reprint only with permission of the Vienna State Ballet/ Dramaturgy.

P. 7: Therese von Artner: Der Wili-Tanz. From Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte. Vienna 1822 / pp. 8–9: Heinrich Heine: Elementary Spirits. In: The Works of Heinrich Heine. Vol. VI. Germany II (English translation: Charles Godfrey Leland). London 1895 / p. 10: Théophile Gautier to Heinrich Heine as cited in: Booklet Giselle, Hamburgische Staatsoper 1980/81 / p. 16: Carlo Blasis: Traité Elémentaire. Théorique et Pratique de l’Art de la Danse. Milan 1820 (English translation by Anne do Paço) / p. 27: Hans Werner Henze: Undine. Tagebuch eines Balletts. München 1959 / p. 40: Victor Hugo: Fantômes.

In: Œuvres completes: Poésie I. Paris 1985 (English translation by Henry Attwell. Leiden 1856).

Unless otherwise stated, the English translations are by David Tushingham.

produced according to the Austrian Ecolabel criteria for printed matter (Uz24), Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, UW-NR 715

PHOTO CREDITS Cover: Ewa Bathelier Blue, from the private collection of Kathryn and Stephen Mee, Sydney / p. 11: Carlotta Grisi as Giselle (1841), Lithography. From Ivor Guest: The Romantic Ballet in Paris. Hampshire 2008 / All rehearsal photos on pp. 17 - 23 and all stage photos on pp. 34 - 39 taken in September 2025 and February 2022: © Ashley Taylor / p. 33: Anthony Crickmay, courtesy of American Ballet Theatre / p. 41: © Kiran West, Marc Höm Rights owners who could not be reached are requested to contact the editorial team for the purpose of subsequent legal reconciliation.

Ewa Bathelier, Blue

The Vienna State Ballet is part of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Volksoper