After a long hiatus away from ballet, my return, shortly after the reopening of the Royal Opera House after its turn-of-the-millennium refurbishment, was to see a performance of Sir Peter Wright’s production of Giselle starring Miyako Yoshida. Despite seeing countless ballets in the intervening years, I can still remember that performance vividly (Johan Kobborg was her Albrecht). It renewed my love for the art and now, it feels like life has come full circle as Yoshida returns to the Opera House with her own production of Giselle, performed by the National Ballet of Japan, where she has been the artistic director since 2020. The delight I felt watching this Giselle was no less than that experienced a quarter of a century before.
Her production is impressive even before accounting for the performances. Dick Bird’s set is both conventional and highly imaginative. Giselle’s corner of the Rhineland village is more substantial than the usual pair of cottages facing each other: the one occupied by Berthe and her beautiful but fragile daughter; the other temporarily purloined by the aristocratic Albrecht, wearing his alter ego as a mysterious visitor from a neighbouring village, intent on wooing Giselle.
Bird’s impressive designs give the cottages thatched roofs with ladders, oak barrels and all manner of rural paraphernalia on show. Smoke billows from the chimney of Berthe’s cottage, as of course it would, and best of all the spiritual essence of the story is manifest in the amulet placed on the outside of their homestead. There is no fairy-tale castle high on a distant hill, instead the cottages are backed up by uneven rows of silver birch trees in their autumnal nakedness.
Since this production has Giselle dying of a broken heart – and not by suicide, as is sometimes the case – there is no need for her grave to lie in unconsecrated ground and so Bird has created a stunning visual concept of an ancient woodland cemetery with crosses scattered unevenly around the hills. The impact of this eerie setting as the nighttime territory of the supernatural Wilis is to emphasise both the religious and mystical sides of the story. In both acts, Bird has presented a tremendous new vision of Giselle in his supreme makeover for this much-loved friend.
Let’s leave aside the entitled audacity of a group of aristos turning up unannounced and uninvited to demand from the local peasantry sustenance, entertainment and a place to rest. It was ever thus! At least this hunting party looked as if it meant business with huntsmen possessing bows and arrows although lacking any visible evidence of successful marksmanship! As if to emphasise the importance of these freeloading visitors three guards dressed in black stood watch from above the village. An impressively bearded Fukunobu Koshiba brought aristocratic substance to the Duke of Courland and Akiho Seki was a haughty Bathilde (Albrecht’s fiancée) with a sense of noblesse oblige towards the demure Giselle on discovering that she too is to be married, not knowing it is to the same man.
Shun Izawa was an expressive Albrecht, a princely performance peppered with virtuoso dancing and excellent partnering. I was impressed by the speed and élan of the whole company’s footwork, the lightness of their landings, the torsion in their bodies and the feathery sensitivity of their port de bras and this was especially true of Izawa and the outstanding peasant pas de deux of Risako Ikeda and Shunsuke Mizui.
As Berthe, Yuna Seki’s maternal fussing over her excitable lovelorn daughter was touching and her foretelling of the menace of the supernatural nighttime forces in the woods was mimed with clarity. Masahiro Nakaya was eminently believable as Hilarion, the loner woodsman who secretly loves Giselle, although I found some of his arm gestures when jealously warning Giselle about Albrecht to be too soft to express the intended anger.
Akari Yoshida danced beautifully as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, but I didn’t feel her threatening menace was sufficiently evident. It was also a role surprisingly devoid of entrechats sixes or ‘flying’ sixes; one assumes as a choreographic choice. Although credited as Miyako Yoshida’s production, the staging and new choreography was by another former Royal Ballet dancer, Alastair Marriott (sadly underused in this country). His new work for the Wilis was outstanding, including some innovative patterning of the ensemble movement. Paul Murphy encouraged a rich performance of Adolphe Adam’s luscious score from the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.
Leaving the best to last, Yui Yonezawa's performance in the title role was an auspicious mix of excited juvenile in the first throes of romantic love with the mature, ethereal forgiveness of the spirit that follows. Her dancing was apparently weightless with perfect quicksilver feet allied to palpable emotional sensitivity and a richness of expression, bearing testimony to the impact of Yoshida’s leadership. Yonezawa was a quintessential Giselle, and her performance will last as long in the memory as that of Yoshida from a quarter-century ago.
