After a week of successful Don Quixote performances, the company presented Giselle, which drew curtain calls lasting about ten minutes, and rightly so. The dancers are most attractive, their personalities shine, they are good actors who respond to each other naturally and convincingly, and they dance with a rhapsodic aura of freedom.

Maria Celeste Losa as Myrtha, Queen of the Willis in Giselle (photo by Darren Thomas)

Much of the latter has to do with the Franco-Italian style of Romantic ballet, which historically predates Classical ballet. While Australian companies have danced many excellent versions of Giselle, few have fully achieved the Romanic ideal. Its simplicity, restraint, and delicacy, its effortless elevation, its lyrical use of the hands, back, and arms, will surprise many. Giselle requires perfection too, but with a human face, in keeping with the 1841 original by Jules Perrot (mainly) and Jean Coralli, and as arranged in this 1950 version by Yvette Chauviré, once prima ballerina assoluta at the Paris Opera. In her program note , Chauviré describes the ballet’s key challenge: ‘The virtuosity of Giselle consists in making the technique invisible … to make people forget the carnality of the feet … to give the feeling of “the appearance of a breath”.’ For Albrecht, the challenge is to hide any sign of effort until, late in Act Two, he is forced by Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, to dance to exhaustion and death.

Like Adolph Adam’s music, the scenario by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Théophile Gautier, is well known. The only child of a widowed Rhineland villager, Giselle is courted by Prince Albrecht – disguised as a commoner – who is engaged to Bathilde, the Duke of Courland’s daughter. Hilarion, a gamekeeper who adores Giselle, exposes Albrecht’s duplicity in front of the villagers and the duke’s entourage. Broken-hearted, Giselle dances herself to death. In the almost mystical second act, her spirit joins a flock of avenging Wilis: women who have died unmarried. Hilarion and Albrecht come separately to mourn at Giselle’s grave, until the Wilis pursue them. Hilarion dies, but Giselle intervenes to save Albrecht’s life.

Maria Eichwald as Giselle and Claudio Coviello as Albrecht in Giselle (photo by Darren Thomas)

The overall result of Chauviré’s editing and quick progression of the plot is a lighter, airier effect. Bravura steps are tossed off without fuss, dance numbers are fewer, and many set pieces – peasants en masse, six girlfriends, the ‘Peasant pas de deux’ danced to entertain the Duke’s hunting party – easily flow one after the other. Also, a long mime scene in which Giselle’s mother warns her she will die of dancing and become a Wili, is shrunk to two gestures: a cross carved in the air by one hand, and two clenched fists harshly thrust towards the ground.

The opening night cast was dazzling, heartbreaking, and authentic in every measure. European guest artist Maria Eichwald presented her Giselle as two unique, perfectly shaped counterparts linked by love, innocence, and grace. Elegant fluidity, silky turns, and gloriously long balances drew the viewer to her again and again. Her shapely hand gestures ending even the plainest variation formed enchanting visual essays in themselves. Her Albrecht, the handsome Claudio Coviello, was nobility itself, shy, tentative, then disbelieving when he discovers he has fallen in love. His solicitous partnering, soaring elevation, and thrilling solos flowed like honey. In Act Two he danced like a demon, pained but undaunted, and finished his final dance with thirty-two exhilarating entrechats quatres. The house went crazy! It did again, early in Act Two, just after Myrtha and twenty-four Wilis dance their grand centerpiece featuring treacherous cross-over hops in arabesque. It literally stopped the show: the orchestra froze while cheering kept all the dancers stock-still on pointe for what seemed like more than a minute.

Claudio Coviello as Albrecht in Giselle (photo by Darren Thomas)

Unadorned in plain white dresses, the Wilis’ emotional and physical cohesion seemed to flow over the orchestra and into the stalls. Yet another brilliant dancer, Maria Celeste Losa, created an austere and unrelenting Myrtha, supported exquisitely by two acolytes, Alessandra Vassallo and Emanuela Montanari.

The Peasant pas de deux in act one was another cause of excitement, danced on opening night by two sunny personalities: principal Martina Arduino and soloist Nicola Del Freo, whose shared and individual variations require knife-sharp landings from high jumps into still pliés and picture-perfect Romantic poses. Del Freo reprised this more brilliantly on the Friday with the sparky soloist Vittoria Valerio, who added new colours to the duet.

Principal Nicoletta Manni, a most sensitive artist, was Friday’s heartwarming Giselle opposite American guest artist David Hallberg, whose aristocratic style and greater height made his Albrecht most charming, but more knowing than Coviello’s. It seemed strange, however, that Hallberg did not do the thirty-two jumps. Alessandra Vassallo brought a very welcome imperious tone to Myrtha, and her companions, Caterina Bianchi and Montanari, seemed to fly higher and higher in their numbers. As for Giselle’s mother, Daniela Siegrist played her with extraordinary presence at both performances. Her demeanor and actions reminded me how a mature actor-dancer can devastate an audience with the smallest gesture.

The costumes and paint-on-canvas set design is by Alexandre Benois, first designer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which restored Giselle to Paris in 1909, after decades of neglect. The Act One curtain rises on a radiant dawn and a canopy turned into a tumult of leaves in myriad shades of gold shimmering over Giselle’s home, lofty grey mountains, and an even loftier palace. Act Two takes place in a gnarled, aptly threatening forest.

Peripatetic British conductor David Coleman led the Queensland Symphony Orchestra with vitality, panache, and sensitivity in equal measure to support this very satisfying season.

Giselle was presented by QPAC and Teatro La Scala Ballet Company at the Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, from 14 to 18 November 2018. Performances attended: November 14 and 18.

ABR Arts is generously supported by The Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund and the ABR Patrons.