France La Fille mal gardée: Paris Opera Ballet, Orchestra of the Paris Nationwide Opera / Philip Ellis (conductor). Palais Garnier, Paris. 15.3.2024. (JO’D)
Creatives:
Choreography – Frederick Ashton after Jean Dauberval
Music – Louis-Joseph Ferdinand Hérold
Musical preparations – John Lanchbery
Set and Costume design – Osbert Lancaster
Lighting – Jean-Pierre Gasquet, Pascal Neniez
Solid included:
Lise – Léonore Baulac
Colas – Guillaume Diop
Alain – Antoine Kirscher
Thomas – Jean-Baptiste Chavigner
Mom Simone – Simon Valastro
Cockerel – Hyuma Gokan
With the Étoiles, Premières danseuses, Premiers danseurs, the Corps de Ballet of the Paris Opera Ballet
‘The extra trivial the topic,’ wrote the critic Edwin Denby, as quoted by David Vaughan within the programme notice to The Royal Ballet’s manufacturing of La Fille mal gardée in 2017, ‘the deeper and extra stunning is Ashton’s poetic view of it.’ The ostensibly easy topic of this ballet, created by Frederick Ashton on dancers of The Royal Ballet in 1960, is the love between a younger farmer, Colas, and a farmer’s daughter, Lise.
On the Palais Garnier (the place it has been within the repertoire since 2007) as at Covent Backyard, La Fille mal gardée is a ballet that fills the auditorium with an unparalleled sense of happiness: Osbert Lancaster’s vibrant drop cloths, units and costumes; John Lanchbery’s association of Ferdinand Hérold’s music for the unique model of the ballet in 1789, spritely and spiritedly performed underneath the baton of conductor, Philip Ellis; Lise and Colas dancing off into the wings collectively on the finish.
But within the determine of Alain, the son of a wealthy winery proprietor who Lise’s widowed mom had needed her to marry, Ashton the ‘theatre animal’ is ready to distinction comedy with seriousness and pathos.
As an obstacle to the consummation of the bucolic lovers’ relationship, as somebody whose clumsiness makes him unable to bop, Alain incurs the wrath of Nature itself. The storm that ends Act I solely begins to rage after he has put up his pink umbrella. It’s on Alain that the Cockerel, whose presence together with 4 Hens from the opening scene provides the entire ballet the air of a fertility ceremony, subsequently vents its anger. The music because it does so has all of the dramatic high quality of that written for the demise of Giselle in Giselle, or the second in Swan Lake when Siegfried realises he has been tricked by Rothbart and Odile.
Ashton’s mixture of mime, and social and classical dance has the impact of creating an viewers really feel they know and care concerning the characters represented on the stage. An impact that’s heightened by his give attention to epaulement. A few times, just a bit, I questioned if there ought to be extra of that within the performances of Léonore Baulac as Lise, likeable in her characterisation and wonderful to take a look at on pointe, and Guillaume Diop as Colas, elegant, lithe, and with an underlying energy.
Simon Valastro is delicate en travestie because the clog-dancing Widow Simone, the mom who Lise will disobey, however who (as a result of that is Ashton) she loves even so. Antoine Kirscher, within the demi-caractère function of Alain created on Alexander Grant, demonstrates that to be a personality who dances badly a dancer wants to bop very properly certainly. He does this, with Colas and Lise, in a travesty of the pas de trois involving two males and a lady that Frederick Ashton included in so a lot of his ballets.
Just like the Blue Boy who danced alone in Ashton’s Les Patineurs twenty-three years earlier, Alain as carried out by Antoine Kirscher could possibly be the character the viewers involves care about most of all.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Picture: Léonore Baulac (Lise) and Guillaume Diop (Colas) in La Fille mal gardée © Benoite Fanton
