The Ballet Giselle

The Ballet Giselle

This article relates to City of Night Birds

City of Night Birds centers on a performance of Giselle, which a world-famous ballerina is going to perform as her first foray back to the stage after a forced hiatus. Giselle is a romantic ballet in two acts that tells the story of a German peasant girl from the countryside. Giselle falls in love with a nobleman, Albrecht, who has disguised himself as the peasant Loys. The first act chronicles the courtship between Giselle and Loys, as the jealous woodsman Hilarion, himself in love with Giselle, sets out to prove Loys's deception. Hilarion eventually uncovers that not only is Loys really Albrecht, he is also already engaged to Bathilde, a friend of Giselle. Heartbroken, Giselle stabs herself with Albrecht's sword and dies.

The ballet's second act opens in a forest near Giselle's grave. The Wilis enter the stage—these are the spirits of young women who died before their wedding day, eternally forced to spend every night dancing. Myrtha, the queen of the Wilis, summons them to attend the ceremony that will initiate Giselle into their ranks. They are interrupted by Albrecht, who, filled with remorse, has come to weep at Giselle's grave. Myrtha commands Albrecht to dance to his death, but he is rescued by Giselle, whose forgiveness breaks her from the curse of joining the Wilis. She returns to rest peacefully in her grave, and Albrecht is left to mourn her.

Giselle was composed in the mid-1800s in France. Librettists Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Theophile Gautier were inspired by a prose passage from Heinrich Heine's On Germany, discussing the myth of the Wilis, and by a poem by Victor Hugo, Fantômes, about a young girl who danced herself to death. Giselle was first performed at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on June 28, 1841, with Italian dancer Carlotta Grisi performing the role of Giselle and French dancer Lucien Petipa as Albrecht. With music composed by Adolphe Adam and original choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, Giselle was an instant success, and was soon staged across Europe, the United States, and Russia. The choreography we are most familiar with today was a variation developed by Marius Petipa (brother of Lucien) during the late nineteenth century at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg.

Composed during classical ballet's Romantic Era, Giselle contains many hallmarks of this style: a focus on the lives of country folk, an interest in the supernatural, and an inevitably tragic ending. Another common feature of romantic ballets were scenes in which performers would all wear white—called a "ballet blanc"—which Giselle employs in its scenes with the Wilis. Its focus on female performers was also characteristic of ballets developed during this period.

Still widely popular today, Giselle is known both for its tragic romance and for being one of the most challenging ballets to dance. In particular, the dancer who plays the titular role has to complete a number of difficult steps and also embody a supernatural force in the second act.

Portrait of Carlotta Grisi as Giselle (1844-45), engraving by H. Robinson after a painting by A.E. Chalon, courtesy of The New York Public Library

Filed under Music and the Arts

This article relates to City of Night Birds. It first ran in the January 15, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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