For this broodingly tragic story the role of Rudolph requires a dancer who is also a very good actor, able to express through every nuance of body shape and movement the inwardness of a psychology - the despair, nervous oppression, weltschmerz, agony of soul, drugged and drunken abandon, and desire for death, that characterised the unstable Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince whose mother did not love him and who suffered from the combined effects of her rejection and the impossible expectations piled upon his unsuitable nature by birth. In Carlos Acosta this requirement is more than met: in Acosta a magnificent dancer is combined with an actor of high talent; as a result Rudolph and all his pain lives on stage when Acosta dances him, incomparably, movingly, wrenchingly.
      Acosta is always extremely well partnered by Tamara Rojo. There is a natural affinity between the two, a quicksilver communication and physical understanding that makes the very demanding work of their roles look easy. As the suicide-bound prince Acosta has to toss Rojo about like a rag doll, the danger and precision of the task concealed by his gracefully confident strength and her perfect timing, matched together with the accuracy and speed of a Swiss chronometer. It is breath-taking to watch, and it is real drama; the audience is caught up in the dreadful story with that pent-breath attitude, that sense of suspense and impending awfulness, which shows that they have been carried by Acosta and Rojo beyond ballet as such into ballet streaked through by something real and gritty - call it ballet theatre, or better: call it art.
      As is now standard with this fine company, the supporting roles and corps dancing is of a piece with the principal performances. The brothel scene is exhilarating, and Laura Morera is a delight as a sexy, brassy, flaunting Mitzi.
      The stiff and formal world of the Austro-Hungarian court, with the staid acceptance of the Emperor’s official mistress and the Empress’s lover, emblematic of the moribund society’s corruption and hypocrisy, is touched in by Macmillan with painterly skill.
      But it is in Macmillan’s white-hot pas de deux, his genius as a choreographer of love, longing and despair, danced as here between two consummate performers, that the deep core of this ballet lies. How Macmillan would have loved to see his conception brought into vivid, scorching life by Acosta and Rojo! She is in every molecule the enraptured adolescent for whom the idea of a suicide-pact is romantic, no thought in her mind beyond the present moment and its occupancy by her tormented lover, no grip on reality beyond the fantasy of passion currently absorbing her. You recognise that she does not really understand that she will be dead after she has been killed; it is a mere game; she simply assumes that the infatuation will somehow continue after the trigger is pulled. As for Rudolph, Acosta brilliantly portrays the blind staggering agony of a helpless soul, trapped and tortured, without any escape but the bullet to the brain; he, in contrast to Mary, knows what it means, and needs it even though his need for it is shot through with not really wanting it.
      From some ballet performances one floats into the night, humming the music and wishing that one could leap up and turn among the stars. From Mayerling as performed by Acosta and Rojo one stumbles out into the darkness, the fatal shots still ringing in one’s ears, the bleak miasma of psychological suffering still gripping one’s heart. It could be otherwise; one could march out of the Royal Opera House thinking Rudolph was a spoiled and inadequate brat whose selfishness and fecklessness single-handedly threatened to destroy an empire, and likewise thinking Mary Vetsera was a tiresome little fool, dangerously immature. So far as the historical facts go, this is closer to the truth. But Macmillan, Acosta and Rojo take the tale and turn it into something that Aeschylus or Shakespeare would relish as a theme. And that is a high achievement.
AC Grayling