Last night the cats and I watched the Royal Ballet's latest production of Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle, which, I gather, is for prima ballerinas what the role of Hamlet is to a star actor. Like Mr President - I'm with you, BK! - it's a work I keep trying to like and continue to think, meh!
It's rather dippy tale, set in medieval Germany, where a peasant girl, Giselle, living with her mother, the only old person in the village, has fallen in love with Count Albrecht, disguised as a peasant to seduce her, and who has rejected the hunter Hilarion, her mother's choice for a husband. A hunting party of aristocrats shows up, including Countess Albrecht, who is kind to the simple-minded peasant until Hilarion exposes her husband's philandering. Giselle goes mad and kills herself. That's Act One.
In Act Two, set after midnight in a forest by a lake, the perfect time to put flowers on a grave, shows up to put flowers on Giselle's grave, when the Willis attack him and drown him. The Willis are the ghosts of young girls who died for love, and their evil queen, Myrtha, is like a raging dyke on steroids. The Willis trap men and force them to dance ro death from exhaustion between the hours of midnight and dawn, so stay out of those forests after midnight. She introduces Giselle to the other Willis when Albrecht shows up with his flowers, and Giselle has to dance him to his death. Only she spares him and survives the night.
