Teatro de la Zarzuela

Artistic director: Joaquín De Luz

PROGRAMME

GISELLE

Ballet in two acts

Approximate duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Directed and Choreographed by JOAQUÍN DE LUZ (after the original by Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli)
Music by ADOLPHE-CHARLES ADAM (musical version: Joaquín De Luz and Oliver Díaz)
Booklet by Borja Ortiz de Gondra and Joaquín De Luz (from the original by Jules Henry Vernoy and Theóphile Gautier)

World premiere: Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid (Spain), December 9th 2020.

A Giselle viewed through the lens of Spanish romanticism and inspired by the poems of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.

“In 1841, the Ópera de París held the premier of the ballet Giselle, in which the poet Théophile Gautier is inspired by the German legends of Heinrich Heine, creating romantic myths that would come to mark the history of dance: innocent peasant girls in love, grape harvest fiestas, handsome seductive princes, apparitions of the ghostly spirits of the woods …
The previous year, Gautier had visited Spain. Subsequently, his book, Le voyage en Espagne, spurred the romantic fashion among European travellers to experience the country, its society sets and traditions and its folkloric dances.
In 1863, the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer retired to the Veruela Monastery, in the Moncayo mountains and, there, surrounded by woodland and nature, he wrote his rhymes of forlorn love and legends of sad fates.
For this new version offered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza our wish was to envisage a Giselle viewed through the lens of Spanish romanticism: inspired by Bécquer’s poetry, we will dance the story of this maiden in love with the handsome foreign traveller whom she will love even beyond death.
Without dropping any of the elements that have placed this piece among the summits of classical ballet, our Giselle also includes Spanish traditions and the bolera school of dance. And in the woods, inhabited by the Willis—those spirits of maidens who died befote marriage—the wind’s voices whisper Bécquer’s verses.
The end of Giselle sees the forces of love and the forces of dance beat both death and darkness. That is the hope that guides us throughout the performance.”
Joaquín de Luz and Borja Ortiz de Gondra