Dance Education
The Making of Giselle
Giselle set a new course. The ballet was conceived by the influential French poet, author, critic and possibly the greatest champion of the Romantic ballet, Théophile Gautier. Giselle was created to honor the ballerina Carlotta Grisi, whom Gautier not only admired for her dancing, but with whom he was in love. It is said that in three days Gautier and Saint-Georges finished the libretto that has remained unchanged, often referred to as the perfect Romantic ballet. Giselle or Les Wilis was first performed at the Paris Opéra Monday June 28, 1841 preceded by the performance of the third act of Rossini's opera Moïse. At the premiere the principal roles were danced by Carlotta Grisi as Giselle, Lucien Petipa (Marius Petipa’s brother) as Albrecht, and the twenty year old Adèle Dumilâtre as Myrtha. The ballet was a success on all levels, gaining critical and public acclaim for the choreography, music, designs and the dancing of all. This made Grisi's Parisian debut in a full-length ballet a particular success. Perhaps even more of an endorsement of Giselle's success was the fact that a style of hat and a type of fabric were named after the ballet. The ballet was subsequently performed in Italy and then Russia, after which time certain changes were adopted as part of the Giselle stagings we know today. Most of the surviving choreography for Giselle comes not from the original French production but from Marius Petipa's St. Petersburg version. Giselle offered audiences an escape to a world of mystery, beauty, danger, and death, a vision that stirred the blood of poetic, as well as prosaic, imaginations. What secures its place as the apex of romantic ballet is that in place of the usual happy ending, in which virtue is rewarded, a tragic death followed by a ghostly resurrection is substituted. In general the second act of Giselle is the best preserved, with most contemporary renditions relying on the Russian lineage of the work. There is probably a large amount of Petipa's revisions in this act. Wilis came from a Slav legend of maidens who are engaged to be married but die before their wedding. They are unable to rest in their graves because they could not satisfy their passion for dancing when they were alive. They therefore gather on the highway at midnight to lure young men and dance them to their death.
Compiled from Ballet Notes