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Music
by
Leo Delibes
Orchestra
of the
Royal Opera House
conducted by
Benjamin
Pope
Choreography
by
Frederick
Ashton
Production
realisation and
staging by
Christopher
Newton
Original
designs by
Robin and
Christopher
Ironside
Additional
design by
Peter Farmer
Sylvia
Marianela
Nunez
Aminta
David Makhateli
Orion
Thiago Soares
Diana
Isabel McMeekan
Artists of
the
Royal Ballet
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The Royal Ballet
Covent Garden
18 January - 31 March 2008 |
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This
wonderfully recovered ballet
is becoming a standard of
the repertoire at Covent Garden,
and deservedly so. Four years
ago the restored version was
premiered in the Ashton season;
nearly three years ago Darcy
Bussell danced Sylvia with
Thiago Soares as Orion and
Roberto Bolle as Aminta, confirming
one's conviction that this
ballet was back to stay. With
the exquisite precision of
line and crispness of execution
that is Marianela Nunez's
hallmark, this Sylvia is a
delight: expressive, romantic,
full of glorious display as
befits the fact that it was
made to show off the talents
of a great ballerina in different
moods and circumstances, for
it was Ashton's gift to Margot
Fonteyn - or perhaps she was
ballet's gift to him, for
the grace of this work reflects
the fact that its choreographer
had a remarkable ballerina
to make it upon.
Thiago Soares was a magnificent
stand-in for the injured Viacheslav
Samodurov - who better to
have on the bench than someone
who has danced Orion with
such menace and virility before
- and David Makhateli was
a highly creditable substitute
for the also injured Rupert
Pennefeather. Aminta is an
interesting role; with the
wrong dancer it can seem wimpish,
and needs a masculine but
tender interpretation such
as Bolle gave it in the November
2005 production. Makhateli
is capable of achieving that
combination, because he has
the sensitivity for it as
a dancer, with a lambent inner
poise that makes him highly
watchable.
'Sylia' has some fine cameo
roles to please the audience:
Kenta Kura and Johannes Stepanek
as Orion's slaves in Act II,
and Iohna Loots and Paul Kay
as the goats in Act III, performed
attractively.
Delibes' score and Ashton's
combination of wit, narrative
genius and flair - all present
in this work, which astonishingly
was only his second full length
ballet - are irresistible.
It is fitting that Eros should
triumph in the end, an optimistic
fact which nust have been
a refreshement in the Britain
of 1952 when the ballet first
appeared, albeit in an overweight
version that Ashton himself
never succeeded in slimming
down - it is Christopher Newton's
achievement to have found
the work of art lurking within
what Ashton tried to do. The
fact that the pas de deux
survived in the repertoire
is testimony to the genius
that went into the ballet's
making; in this restored version
the whole work has the same
luminosity as the excerpts
we had hitherto come to love.
AC Grayling |
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