Giselle from the Royal Opera House, live broadcast to the Basingstoke Odeon
I saw my first complete ballet on Monday.
It's embarrassing to admit, but in a world of vast cultural options, ballet has never beat opera or art exhibits for a slice of my entertainment budget. The world of live broadcasting changed that.
Instead of planning months in advance, finding someone who wants to go with me (husband not an option for ballet) and spending well over £100 for tickets and transport, I could work on the spur of the moment. Read a fabulous review in the Sunday Times the day before, nip over to the local Odeon when the work day ended on time and slip into a seat for £15.
Even a complete rookie like me grasped the magnificence. Both leads combine agility, strength and grace in a way that's almost superhuman. And they can act! Here's another way the broadcast pays dividends. I hadn't grasped how close to mime opera was; how, in the absence of words, the story is told with facial expression and subtle hand movements as well as the bigger dance moves. I can't imagine that much of the the exquisite subtlety would be visible from most of the live seats. In this way, I suspect ballet may be better in broadcast than live. At least for the neophyte.
On screen, larger-than-life, you could marvel at Osipova's guileless innocence, and Acosta's transformation from a callous playboy to a broken-hearted love. When the two stars weren't dazzling, there were plenty of impressive leaps, spins and prances en pointe, pleasant music, beautiful costumes and lush sets. Worth every penny.
Despite all that, I'm no ballet convert. The absence of words makes for obvious plot limitations. Giselle is pretty straightforward. Playboy count masquerades as peasant to woo village girl. She kills herself when she discovers the deception. He, realising he really loves her, is stricken. He mourns at her grave, where he's attacked by a corps of vengeful spirits jilted dead women (the Wilis), but Giselle's ghost saves him from their haunting.
That's about it.
While the faces of Acosta and Osipova shifted with the action, the music doesn't. It's romantic and lovely throughout, lacking any of the threat I would have liked the part with the Wilis to have. I found myself thinking wistfully back to the horror of those blood-soaked temptresses swaying to the building menace of Wagner's music in the Met's Parsifal. We could have used that here. Neither Giselle's petite, delicately-attired and pirouetting gang of spirits, nor their soundtrack, convinced me for a second that they were ever a real threat to the vibrant Acosta.
Bottom line, and rather obviously, you have to be into the dancing itself a lot more than I was to really connect with ballet. As thrilling as the physical performance was, in both acts I got to the point where I thought "enough of the prancing around, already. Let's move on with the plot." Which is not, I suspect, a thought that any real ballet fan has. Nor, I presume, do they spend most of the time when Carlos Acosta is on stage fixated by the musculature of his thighs and the beauty of …
Well, let's just say that, for anyone who appreciates the male form, it's worth the price of admission just to watch Acosta move. He is one of those ancient Greek statues, the representations of human physical perfection, brought to life. We mere mortals can simply gawp.
Thus I'm fairly sure that my physical attendance in Covent Garden will remain operatic. But more ballet by broadcast? I'd give it another go. Might have to plan further in advance, though. This broadcast thing is clearly taking off. Two sold out cinemas here in Basingstoke by the time the curtain went up. Had my workday gone any later, I would have missed this pleasure.
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