October is the spooky season: a time for reading ghost stories, eerie, uncanny tales of the preternatural, and thrilling, suspenseful mysteries.
In the classical dance world, many professional ballet companies will be performing balletic adaptations of classic books like Dracula and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Yet, before these tales found their way out of the pages of print and into the footlights of the stage, ballet had its own Gothic story of betrayal, madness, and vengeful phantoms, namely the Romantic ballet, Giselle.
Premiering in 1841 at the Paris Opera with music by Adolphe Adam and choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, Giselle tells the doleful but ultimately redemptive story of the titular character Giselle, a modest maiden with a weak heart.
Giselle lives with her mother in a small village and is courted by the local gamekeeper Hilarion. However, Giselle does not return his affection. One day, Albrecht, a disguised nobleman visits the village, and he and Giselle swiftly fall in love. She dances exuberantly with her friends, defying her mother’s concerned admonitions not to over-exert herself thereby taxing her weakened heart. Her mother fears Giselle may perish and enter the realm of the Wilis (more on them in a bit.) Albrecht soon swears his troth, pledging himself to Giselle, though unbeknownst to her, he is already betrothed to another.
Hilarion uncovers Albrecht’s duplicity and reveals the truth to the whole village. The news devastates Giselle, who descends into madness and dies of a broken heart.
The Act 1 curtain falls on the dramatic tableau of Giselle’s mother weeping over her daughter.
When the curtain rises on Act 2, the setting is now a forest glade in the deep of night. We see Giselle’s grave on one side of the stage, and soon the Wilis, led by their queen Myrtha, begin to emerge. The Wilis are the spirits of scorned brides whose betrothed betrayed them before they were wed. Now, they seek revenge by luring men into their dominion and forcing them to dance to their deaths.
Myrtha summons Giselle’s spirit to join her avenging ranks, and Giselle performs an ethereal solo. Presently, Hilarion enters the forest to visit Giselle’s grave, but he is entrapped by the Wilis and dances to his demise. Then Albrecht comes, also to pay his respects to Giselle and to weep in sorrow over his misdeeds. The Wilis intend to punish him as well, but Giselle intervenes, her pure love and her forgiveness sustaining his life and also saving herself from becoming a vengeful Wili. With the coming of dawn, the Wilis withdraw and Albrecht is left with Giselle’s spirit hovering over him.
Classical ballet is nothing, if not dramatic! The libretto or story of Giselle is based upon a short story of German writer, Heinrich Heine’s as well as a poem by Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Giselle is one of the most renowned of the Romantic era of classical ballet and contains some of the most famous solos and breathtakingly precise corps de ballet work in the ballet canon.
It is one of my favorite ballets. Through the years, as I’ve read more classic literature, the characters of the Wilis call to my mind the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Living in her decaying mansion and consumed by bitterness and ire over her own wedding-day betrayal, I can easily imagine her sympathizing with and eagerly joining the vindictive Wilis. I also think of Jane Eyre and how she, like Giselle, faces treachery with forgiveness instead of revenge, even though she easily could have perished on the moors and become a Wili herself.
The story of Giselle, though straightforward in itself, is rich in symbolism and demonstrates that love transcends death and forgiveness is more powerful than hatred.
If you ever have the opportunity to attend a performance of Giselle, I fully encourage you to do so.
Recently, I was inspired to write my own poem about the dreadful Wilis:
Beware, mortal man,
if you enter our realm
of forest, wrath, and night!
Deadly dancing’s your fate.
You cannot escape.
You are no match for our might.
No more to be woo’d,
No longer betrayed
by cowardly fool untrue.
Oh, beware, mortal man!
If you’re in our grasp,
we will exact our due.
You will dance till you die.
Your life will be forfeit.
It will slowly ebb away.
Beware, mortal man!
You cannot leave.
You are compelled to stay.
Scorned brides are we.
Vengeance we seek.
We reign from dusk till dawn.
When the sun starts to rise,
we will meet our demise,
spurned by morn’s blessed light.
But till then, we hold sway and
you must obey,
unless love and forgiveness do save
your cursed soul from a wretched end.
They alone triumph o’er the grave.
Oh, beware mortal man!
To your vows be true,
Lest you meet us in forest glade.
We wait for you here,
cunning, fair, and fell.
Though for now,
our power fades.
