Giselle at the Royal Opera House — rich and exultant

Balletomanes are not like normal people (the clue’s in the name). Where straight theatregoers relish the prospect of new work, the ballet crowd like a story they can hum. Diehard fans will think nothing of seeing a work they already know backwards three or four times in a season, either to overdose on a favourite dancer or to play Top Trumps between debuts and cast changes. The Royal Ballet’s latest 17-show run of Giselle — a work it has danced since 1934 — kicked off on Thursday with a performance by Natalia Osipova and Reece Clarke that reminded the packed house exactly why we keep coming back for more.

Peter Wright’s 1985 production scrubs up beautifully once again thanks to John Macfarlane’s easel-worthy backcloths and a well-drilled corps of ghostly wilis led by Mayara Magri with truly terrifying force. There were some rough edges in the ill-matched peasant pas de six but strong support from Elizabeth McGorian (as the heroine’s fearful mama) and Lukas B Brændsrød as the jealous old flame who triggers the tragedy.

Osipova’s first exchanges with her mysterious aristocratic suitor might be scenes from romantic comedy (the mise en scène — cottage door upstage right, loveseat downstage left — is a straight steal from 1789’s La Fille Mal Gardée). Her blithe, expansive jêtés, flirty ronds de jambe and rapturous pirouettes show us a girl with no inkling of the unhappy ending in store but little by little her happiness evaporates as her lover’s perfidy is made plain.

As the forgiving ghost of Act Two, her richly detailed reading is again underpinned by her phenomenal technique: the ferocious leaps and turns, the unwavering balances, the dauntless tick of the leg into freeze-frame arabesque all embody her determination to save her lover’s soul. Boris Gruzin’s tempi are unnervingly glacial in places but this gives us more time to admire her languorous phrasing and slo-mo développés.

In January 2021 Reece Clarke was a last minute partner for Osipova in John Cranko’s Onegin — the acid test of ballet partnering — but this night proved that the 26-year-old Scottish first soloist is much more than a safe pair of hands. His height (6ft 3), good looks and instinctive air of entitlement mark him out as an aristocrat among the bustling peasantry but Clarke doesn’t merely stand about shooting his cuffs (as Albrechts so often do). His clear, unhurried mime is all but audible and his manners are carefully calibrated, the ardour and hauteur of the opening flirtations congealing into despair and self-loathing during Osipova’s heart-rending mad scene.

Clarke’s dancing has never looked better but, like Osipova, he takes care to put technique at the service of character. The airy leaps in Act One were the perfect expression of what August Bournonville called “manly joie de vivre”. In Act II the vengeful wilis come close to dancing him to death — those off-kilter tours en l’air show us a man on the brink — but Giselle urges him to unleash an exultant sequence of tireless entrechats six. No wonder we keep coming back.

★★★★★

To 3 December, roh.org.uk