giselle
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
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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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. 5
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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. 25
GISELLE: A “RUSSIAN” BALLET?
Liudmila Konovalova (Giselle), Masayu Kimoto (Duke Albrecht), Iliana Chivarova (Berthe), Ensemble
Elena Bottaro (Giselle), Davide Dato (Duke Albrecht)
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