Jamesrhblack

16 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

Only one performance for them though, so getting tickets is probably going to be horribly difficult.

 

ETA Having put the casting into a table so I can work out the combinations, it's even more awkward because the Morera/Bonelli performance is after the other 2 performances that I think I want to go to & with all 7 performances being within 10 days then there's going to be a significant danger of getting covid at one of the earlier performances then not being able to go to the later one.

I don’t understand the logic of just one performance. Of course, there are a limited number of slots but this seems curmudgeonly to me…

20 minutes ago, jm365 said:

I've gone through my December edition of Dancing Times several times and can't find your letter, SheilaC.  Am I being particularly dim?

It’s in the November issue. There’s a response to it in the January issue now out…

7 hours ago, Rob S said:

 

😮

7 hours ago, Rob S said:

 

😮

Isn’t Giselle’s hair always down, if held back, in Act One with Berthe surreptitiously removing the restraining pins after she discovers she has been betrayed…

17 hours ago, Rina said:

 

He discusses this in his autobiography Wrights & Wrongs: My Life in Dance. In his production in Stuttgart he left it to the audience to decide but in subsequent productions for the RB he came down firmly on the side of the suicide theory. He was not pleased with Sylvie Guillem who took a different view!

 

An aspect of Giselle which intrigues me is that many of its images point to the hidden presence of the god Dionysus: the vine-dressing and grape harvest, the disguise, the madness, the dance, the hunting, the sense of mystery and underworld in Act 2, among many other features. I'd be interested if anyone has noticed this/ written about it. 

The Dionysian element is interesting indeed.

Although I’ve been watching Giselle for over fifty years, something struck me at Friday’s performance for the first time.

At the conclusion of the Grand Scene of the Wilis before Giselle’s apparition the entire company led by Myrtha unite in, I think, three a la seconde leaps side to side.

At the conclusion of the Waltz section (a musical interpolation according to the notes on the Bonynge Monte-Carlo recording), Giselle leads the company in the same step over the prone Albrecht.

One of the tensions of this Act is the tug between Giselle’s obedience to Myrtha, her love of dancing and her compassion for Albrecht. The choreography gives you a real sense that that this Dionysian love of the dance is gaining the upper hand. I’ve long been intrigued by the way in that Giselle, even though Albrecht is obviously exhausted, literally beckons him to continue dancing with her. 
 

I’m probably reading too much into this and it’s simply a choreographic structural repetition, but can it been seen as Giselle giving into dancing ecstasy and about to claim her Wili wings with her first “kill.” It’s not only Albrecht who is “saved” by the bell.

Of course, it’s over in a moment…

I’ve been reading Cyril Beaumont’s The Ballet Called Giselle, which gives the following synopsis from the Gautier’s original book of the ballet, Giselle ou les Willis, published in 1841.

”She seizes Albrecht’s sword still lying on the ground, and at first plays mechanically with the weapon, then she falls on its sharp point just as her mother leaps upon her and drags it away.”

I didn’t see Lamb but did see Morera twice. At the matinée, it wasn’t clear if she stabbed herself but she did do the gesture of seeing blood on her hands and wiping them clean. On Friday, she certainly didn’t stab herself and I didn’t notice the hand cleaning gesture either.

Does anybody know if Sir Peter Wright has a preference on this and if the dancer is allowed a personal interpretation at this point?

52 minutes ago, JohnS said:

 

I’d asked: ‘What about Nutcracker?’ but the reply was pretty categoric.

May I ask who was answering the question?

4 minutes ago, Meetmeatthebarre said:

 

Please don't apologise - I found it hilarious, and obviously a pun I'd spent too long trying to concoct when registering

 

I was sure she danced Tatiana in the 2019-20 run, or is my memory failing me? But on further thought - a Lise would be best. A full story ballet, and the image of her running into her happily ever after, forging her own new path. 

The Tatianas last time were Mendizabal, Naghdi, Nuñez and Osipova. I recall being astonished that she wasn’t cast with Bonelli after their sensational Mayerling and she mentions the hurt she felt about this in her her most recent Ballet Association interview.

Sorry for auto spell name correction. I doubt she’ll dance Tatiana again, having been taken out of it last time, and I think if there were a time for Swan Lake it has past, but I think Natalia Petrovna would be perfect for a dance actress who is also a superb Ashton dancer.

I agree with you meetmeatthebarre: I had to go for a walk and process too.

I’m probably still doing so, but enjoyed reading your response very much and agree that there was a very valedictory feel to the evening, even if Kevin O’Hare was at pains to point out, “She’s not leaving.”

6 hours ago, FionaE said:

@Jamesrhblackin case your question hasn’t been answered … Itziar Mendizabal has been out having a baby … a son born in May 2021.  Perhaps we’ll see her onstage again in the new year. 

Thanks, good to know. She’s a dancer I like very much and I’d have been sorry if she had left without it being public knowledge (which is what seemed to happen with Tristan Dyer).

5 hours ago, Irmgard said:

Bonynge's recording is of the complete 1841 score using Adam's own orchestration and I believe (but cannot swear to without getting out my copy of it) that it includes Giselle's Act I solo attributed to Minkus (the only one for her in Act I in most productions) which was interpolated into the Russian production in the 1860s plus the Act II waltz solo (probably by Pugni) interpolated around the same time, plus the Burgmueller peasant pas de deux (or pas de six in Wright's version) interpolated into the 1841 premiere. Mary Skeaping's production uses the original order and almost the whole score (with the Minkus solo and the peasant pas de deux interpolated at different places from Wright's production), apart from the Act I Galop, a very slightly shortened version of the mad scene (but still longer than most productions, or so I have been told by guest artists), and some smaller cuts in a few other numbers.  She also uses the original ending composed by Adam, rather than the one used by Wright which is probably a rewrite for a later Russian production.  As to the Fugue, it works extremely well because it leads seamlessly into the Act II pas de deux and therefore obviates the need for a bridging passage (or a silence) into  the key change.  Skeaping also followed very closely the directions in the piano reduction of the score (published just after the premiere) which gives dramatic instructions by Adam for this whole scene.  For Myrtha, Skeaping uses all the music Adam composed for her, giving her probably almost 75% more dancing than the current Wright version, again following the dramatic instructions, so that it really is a tour de force performance, and I know dancers who have done her Myrtha, followed by other productions (including Kathryn Wade who danced the role in the 1971 LFB premiere), find the other productions very easy!  Incidentally, as Skeaping had been using the original score since the mid-1950s, she was about fifteen years ahead of Bonynge's recording.  I hope that answers your query.

Really useful and interesting, thank you. I will get out my CD of the Bonynge recording and re listen plus work though Beaumont’s Giselle.

On 25/11/2021 at 23:56, Irmgard said:

Although I have been the guardian of Mary Skeaping’s production of “Giselle” since her death in 1984, the first performance I saw of “Giselle” when I was a child was Peter Wright’s production for the National Ballet of Canada (with Lynn Seymour guesting) in the late 1960s. There were a number of differences from the current Royal Ballet version but, even then, I remember not being enamoured with the score, something which did not happen for me until I saw a performance by English National Ballet and finally heard Adolphe Adam’s original orchestration and in the correct order. A few years ago, the Royal Ballet approached ENB for access to this orchestration which Skeaping found in the Paris Opéra archives in the 1950s and used for her productions thereafter, reinstating passages not heard since the 19^th century.  However, as Wright’s version does not follow the order of pieces in Adam’s score and cuts a number of them, there are still some jarring key changes, awkward transitions between pieces and some recently composed bridging passages, which makes it uncomfortable for me to listen to at times.  At the performance I attended on 19 November, this was not helped by the rather earthbound reading of the score by conductor Boris Gruzin, especially in Act 2 (which also contained some rather vulgar sounds by the horns) when the dancers need to be propelled by the music rather than held back by it.

 

As for Wright’s production, there is little in it to suggest the ballet’s Romantic origins, not just in the lack of Romantic style in the dancing (in particular, I felt the central pas de deux in his pas de six did not have the required delicacy for a Romantic piece) but also in the way the characters are drawn.  As the story is essentially about the collision of two worlds, the nobility and the peasantry, I would expect to see some delineation between the two and yet some of the male peasants were far more noble in bearing than Courland and the other male courtiers, including Wilfred who, as Albrecht’s squire, is meant to be from a minor aristocratic family.   Gina Storm-Jensen had the correct bearing for Bathilde but Wright’s conception of her is far removed from the gracious young lady envisaged by Gautier who loved the character so much that he wrote a poem about her! Having her as a bored, rather unpleasant female who is not at all interested in Giselle instead of intrigued by her, makes her gift of a necklace to Giselle rather puzzling and, because Wright chops up the scene of their first encounter, it loses its dramatic cohesion.  I also found that this lack of dramatic cohesion hampered the establishment of the relationship between Giselle and Albrecht, who spend very little time together in Act I.  Indeed, immediately after Giselle is crowned queen of the vintage, she and Albrecht have to sit on opposite sides of the stage for what seemed like an eternity, only getting to dance with each other again at the end of the Galop, immediately before the mad scene. 

 

I have to say that I missed Skeaping’s many magical touches in Act 2, especially for Myrtha.  I like Annette Buvoli very much as a dancer (her lovely “Dying Swan” for Distdancing on a floating stage in Regent’s Canal during the summer of 2020 was a lockdown highlight for me), but I felt she was not given enough scope to establish Myrtha as a truly majestic, powerful character, not least because her opening solo was so short in comparison with the tour de force version for Skeaping’s Myrtha.

 

Akane Takada was a very pretty Giselle and danced with delicacy and charm in Act 1, if not quite managing to be truly ethereal in Act 2 (not helped by Gruzin’s erratic tempi) but, for me, she has yet to explore the emotional depths of Giselle’s character.  This was a shame because her Albrecht was the very passionate César Corrales.  In 2017, at the tender age of twenty, he gave performances for English National Ballet of such emotional intensity and, of course, spectacular dancing that he literally took my breath away every time. From his initial interaction with Wilfred, it is clear that Wright sees Albrecht purely as a cad who is only toying with Giselle’s affections to begin with.  As expected, Corrales demonstrated this admirably, sweeping Giselle off her feet with his charm and ardent attentions, only realising the consequences of his actions as Giselle’s grasp on reality slips away.  His grief is then overwhelming, as he violently pushes away anyone who tries to prevent him reaching her lifeless body.  In Act 2, his Albrecht has acquired a new maturity and dignity in his remorse as he searches for Giselle’s grave.  What I particularly loved about Corrales was the realism he brought to the character, especially once he has been captured by Myrtha and the Wilis and is being forced to dance.  With each solo, while never compromising the power and purity of his technique, his increasing anguish and exhaustion were almost palpable, and he appeared to be so broken by each fall to the ground that it was almost unthinkable that he would be able to get up again.  When Giselle has returned to her grave and Albrecht is left alone, Corrales’s quiet despair was heartbreaking.  Although I find the production as a whole disappointing, I was happy to be there to have my breath taken away yet again by Corrales’s mesmerising performance.

A most interesting post.

On a musical question, does the Bonynge Monte-Carlo recording reflect the musical score for Mary Skeaping’s production? I’ve always wondered how the Fugue for the Willis works dramatically and there are other extended / altered passages from what is played at the ROH including an extended version of Myrthe’s Coda.

15 minutes ago, alison said:

 

Now, that really surprises me, from what I remember of her Lise.

As I wrote, “these things are personal.” I remember being surprised at the time and recall when writing about Coppélia something along the lines of that the third act pas de deux reinforced why she hasn’t been seen much in “tutu” roles.

Nevertheless, she’s a dance actress who I admire very much (pace John S, I didn’t see her in Anastasia but should have cited Winter’s Tale) and was really very touched by her performance today which moved and surprised me in ways I hadn’t expected, including dance as opposed to just dramatic-wise.

Lovely photos Dawnstar. Thank you.

2 hours ago, Meetmeatthebarre said:

For me, Laura's strength is being able to portray a depth and humanity that would not feel out of place in the "real" and not just ballet world. There are many portrayals of Giselle I enjoy, but I am always aware that it is a fairy tale; Laura has the ability to make Giselle seem as realistic and grounded as an Onegin or Manon. Looking forward to seeing her on closing night. 

Interesting. I’ve always felt Giselle one of the more naturalistic ballets, with the Willis legend being not only part of German folklore (as opposed to fairytale) and Romanticism (with the ideal of the Sylphide turned on its head), but also in its themes of infatuation, love, betrayal and forgiveness, especially with Act 1 being set within a real world for whom the fantasy (which becomes a living nightmare) is true.

It’s a personal impression. As Lise, her performance failed to project to me (admittedly, I was quite a long way away in the Balcony Stalls). As Swanilda, I enjoyed her acting performance, but found that in the Act 3 pas de deux her dancing didn’t have the impact I might have anticipated for such a climatic show piece.

As I hope I’ve made clear in my post above, I admire Laura Morera greatly as an artist and was very touched by her performance today.

Just back to East Sussex and been musing on today’s performance which I found unexpectedly touching, even moving.

I love Giselle, which was the first ballet I ever saw at the ROH (Sibley’s London debut with MacLeary), and for all the criticism of the score think it ideally suited to the scenario (possibly because my maiden aunts on the Isle of Sheppey had an Ace of Clubs LP with Fonteyn on the cover that was played so endlessly in my childhood that I used to sing the music in my head when trying to sleep on the back seat whilst my parents drove back from visiting them).

I’ll be honest and say that I had essentially accepted a friend’s offer of a ticket out of sentiment for Laura Morera, who is a dancer I very much like. These things are personal, but in principal roles I’d found her disappointingly under-danced as both Lise and Swanilda (nothing was wrong, just not very remarkable), but sensational as Vetsera and as Manon in the Bedroom pas de debut on two RB Lockdown streams. I am also aware that the clock may be ticking on her career reading her remarkably frank interview on Ballet Association. Of course, in those MacMillan works, her partner was Federico Bonelli, and with no disrespect to Ryoichi Hirano, I was delighted when the change of cast was announced.

Pace Bridiem, I was surprised at how very youthful she looked (I was in Stalls Row N) but, more importantly, was entranced by her performance. I had expected that she would excel in the dramatic aspects but was completely taken aback by how very beautifully danced her performance was. Nothing was shirked (well, perhaps there was a sensible adaptation that worked beautifully in the pirouette turns during the Pas de seul) and her low arabesque line in Act 2 was so exquisite: it reminded me of the famous lithograph of Carlotta Grisi, whilst her timing at the end of the Valse before the Finale was absolute musical class. The coquetry, the tenderness, the sense of community (she watched the Act 1 Harvest celebrations with keen and admiring interest) were all utterly involving; the bewilderment, the anger of the Mad Scene; and the maturity of forgiveness (I’ll agree with Bridiem there) were touching even moving. I was astonished at her speed in the turns when released from the grave and at the height of her ballonée (was there a nod to Osipova’s “I’m dead, broken neck look” before the start of the section with the high devlopée - not too high - when commanded to dance by Myrtha) and her theatrical instincts meant that we always felt when Giselle, as a spirit, could not quite be physically embraced by Alberich. 

I’m writing at too much length: forgive my volubility.

In quicker summary, Bonelli seems like a man rejuvenated; genuinely taken with his Giselle; genuinely taken aback as circumstances move beyond his control; deeply moved and moving in his Act 2 exchanges. I think the audience enjoyed the full set of entrechats six more than I did, but I’m still musing over the poetry of the image at the end of the Act 2 Pas de deux and its beautiful segue. As always, he was a most adept parter, immediately adjusting the height of his jetés at Giselle’s entrance to accommodate hers.

Gina Storm-Jensen’s Myrtha seems to me to be work in progress, understandably as it’s her debut season. It was technically there, although I always regret the shortened version of her Coda that the RB production uses, and the characterisation became stronger once the worst of the technical challenges were surmounted. I still don’t understand why such a taxing role is now so rarely given to a principal, although apart from Kaneko, Magri and Nuñez I suppose none of the current roster might suit anyway. Does anyone know what has happened to Mendizabal (who I know is a First Soloist and like very much, but found oddly disappointing in the 2018 CInema / DVD).

I enjoyed David Donnelly’s Hilario, a more than youthfully credible rival for Giselle’s affections; loved Christina Arestis as Berthe (to be fair, I’d love her on stage whatever she did whatever the role and find her Mime scene one of the most fascinating moments of all); and was very happy to be there.

Was it a Giselle for the ages? Thinking recently at the RB for me, Collier’s farewell, Osipova’s first performance, no, However, the fact that I’ve written at some length brings home that it was a performance that impacted a lot (and not just because it was my first live ballet since 2 March 2020). 

This was such a joy.

Was MacMillan inspired for Mayerling (1978) by some of Ashton’s Hamlet (1977) hand to floor images?

I so love Ashton’s Swan Lake PDQ (joyous memories still of Wendy Ellis, Rosalyn Whitten, Michael Batchelor and Stephen Beagley) and was delighted to see Leo Dixon and Joseph Sissens in this.

Kudos all round.

8 minutes ago, Texan said:

Nicol Edmonds for Rudolph, please. Only in my dreams?

 

Sorry to interrupt this Giselle thread.

I’d suggested NE for Rudolph some years back, so glad not to be alone on this one.

I’d also imagine that if works such as The Winter’s Tale and Woolf Works remain in the repertoire, Calvin Richardson might well take over some of Edward Watson’s created roles.

Back to Giselle.

25 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

Very pleased for Julia Roscoe!

Indeed and for Annette Buvoli too, but no Tierney Heap or, indeed, Fumi Kaneko, who was so splendid last time. 

1 hour ago, Richard LH said:

Oh yes, I had forgotten Kaneko's role as Myrtha, although I saw this in the Naghdi/Ball cast for Giselle (the second RB performance I had ever been to, 10/02/18 ). Actually it was Magri as Myrtha in the Hayward/Campbell debut, the day before. 

Kaneko has also danced as Hermione in  the Winter's Tale.

All in all she has successfully played a pretty wide  variety of roles.

Richard, you’re absolutely right. I saw back to back shows and remembered that Magri had been the other Myrthe but mentally switched casts. Thank you for the correction,

4 hours ago, Mary said:

You made me chuckle! - but honestly, I think it is better not to see dancers (or any performer, or anyone) in only one light. To state that Fumi Kaneko 'is' this, that or the other is a simplification, and a reduction,  of a person and a performer. How can we know?

 I am sure this very fine dancer has many aspects to her work we have yet to see.

I have often heard it said of some of my favourite dancers that they could not be convincing in this or that role - which has sometimes turned out not to be true at all.

 

I recall her as a superbly implacable Myrthe the night Hayward and Campbell made their debuts in Giselle…

1 hour ago, Mary said:

Very cheering indeed and Steven McRae's sheer bravery is quite remarkable.

 It is also uplifting to reflect on the amazing treatment, care and support injured dancers get nowadays, for such long periods of time- and the whole team who helped Steven deserve a clap too.

I absolutely agree. His courage and tenacity are remarkable and the pictures are both beautiful and very moving.

16 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Anthony Dowell was a left turner - I think Oberon in the Dream was choreographed accordingly?

As Troyte in Enigma Variations. Last time, Alexander Campbell (who turns right) turned left, whereas Matthew Ball turned right.

Her Giselle with Carlos Acosta at the ROH remains one of my most cherished ballet memories, although I really didn’t enjoy her in The Sleeping Beauty with David Hallberg.