Hartford Ballet restores a classic: journey with Giselle

Dance Magazine, April, 1997 by Doris Hering

The story of Giselle has a simplicity that enables both performers and audiences to read much of themselves into it. During the eleven years that Igor Youskevitch and Alicia Alonso so memorably performed the principal roles, they never stopped experimenting with emotional shadings. Whether Albrecht should take hold of Giselle by the hand or by the wrist during their initial encounter became a typical subject for discussion.

The ballet itself was born of a great infatuation. The Romantic poet and dance critic Theophile Gautier, he of the rose-colored vest when he attended the Opera and the red bathing suit when he swam in the Seine, was in love with Carlotta Grisi. He wanted to find a vehicle for her to dance at the Paris Opera. Like most Romantics, he truly believed in the supernatural creatures--the sylphs, naiads, ondines, and forbidding wilis who inhabited forests and woodlands.

Collaborating with librettist Vernoy de Saint-Georges, Gautier wrote of a gentle country girl in love with Loys, a young farmer. How much more refined he was than the gamekeeper Hilarion, who was also her suitor. As Makarova explained, "She is special. She must be in love with somebody who is not of her world." Loys is Count Albrecht pretending to be a peasant.

A hunting party led by the Duke of Courland and his daughter Bathilde (Albrecht's fiancee) arrives to rest at the modest abode of Giselle and her mother, Berthe. Hilarion, who has learned Albrecht's true identity, reveals it to Giselle. The betrayal is too much for her. After the crucial mad scene, she falls to the ground, dead.

True to Romantic tradition, the first act depicts the real world, albeit idealized, and then takes wing into the supernatural of the second act. Here the remorseful Albrecht comes to place flowers on Giselle's grave and to beg her forgiveness. This gloomy place is also the abode of the wilis, shades of betrothed maidens deserted by their fiances. Led by their queen, the imperious Myrtha, the vengeful wraiths try to lure Albrecht to dance himself to death. Rising from her tomb, Giselle is torn between leading him on and begging Myrtha for his life. The clock in the steeple strikes four in the morning, and Giselle sinks out of sight, as do the wilis. The exhausted Albrecht has survived the witching hour.

Preparations for the first Giselle flew into place. While Jean Coralli, the Opera's maitre de ballet, was entrusted with the corps sections, the variations for Giselle were created by Grisi's gifted mentor, Jules Perrot. The lilting score, with its distinctive leitmotivs, was entrusted to Adolphe Adam, who finished it in a matter of weeks. The lovers were Grisi and the handsome Lucien Petipa, brother of Marius, who eventually reshaped Giselle for the Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. It was Petipa's version, with its French technique and Russian soul, that Maryinsky regisseur Nicholas Sergeyev introduced to the Paris Opera for Spessivtseva's debut.

When Peterson and I were having our Sunday morning discussion, I was trying to come to grips with his structuring, particularly of the glorious second act. For me, it has always been an extended pas de deux, a remarkable one that is so intimately expressive and flows so smoothly through the action that it cannot be performed separately as a display piece. Perhaps that is why it has never looked dated or merely quaint. It also links the two acts by allowing the lovers to expand upon emotions hinted at in the first act.