Consultative Monarchy – Newspaper Kommersant No. 208 (7409) dated 11/10/2022

The Paris Opera is hosting the premiere of Mayerling, a three-act historical costume saga to music by Franz Liszt about the double suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and his underage mistress Maria Vechora, staged by the English classic Kenneth Macmillan. The premiere was danced by the troupe’s star couple, étoiles Hugo Marchand and Dorothea Gilbert. French accent Austrian drama appreciated Maria Sidelnikova.

Unlike Russia, where “Mayerling” is dearly loved, in France this ballet drama, based on the real story of the suicide of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in a hunting castle near Vienna, was not known to the general public. A film with Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve – yes, but not a ballet. However, Aurelie Dupont’s bet (it was she who planned the premiere of Mayerling two seasons ago, but then the pandemic intervened) on a narrative costume ballet paid off in full: all seventeen performances were sold out.

Outwardly, “Mayerling” came out from the Parisians with a needle, and this is the merit of the studio of the Paris Opera. A dazzlingly beautiful parade of dresses, tailored according to the fashions of the late 19th century, unfolds on the stage. Men to match: in tailcoats, in uniforms with gold epaulettes, in cocked hats, bowler hats, fur hats, with a wild mustache and impeccable manners, gallant in any circumstances, be in their hands even a woman, even a gun. All this smartly crowded people carelessly have fun – volleys of fireworks, the clink of glasses in magnificent halls, political conspiracies in brothels – but they do not notice that the human tragedy of Crown Prince Rudolf is unfolding at their side. In their secular indifference, Parisians are so natural and organic that one cannot take one’s eyes off the stage: the performance flows so smoothly that three hours in the theater, unthinkable in today’s fast times, fly by like a serial episode. Cinephile Macmillan would probably be pleased.

The ensemble cast is excellent. At least in the first – the premiere – line-up, everyone was in their places and in plain sight, even in minor roles. The nimble Marc Moreau made visible the inconspicuous coachman Bratfish, a mute witness to all the adventures of his master, the prince. He was good in the part of Colonel Middleton and Jeremy-Loup Coeur. The arrogant handsome man from the new generation of “first dancers” resolutely circled the Empress Elisabeth (Laura Ecke), his beloved. And even the caricatured Hungarian separatists, who for the most part have to drag the ladies in tricky supports, but with the idiotic aplomb of conspirators conceived of something fateful, performed by a peppy four (Jacques Gasztovt, Axel Magliano, Andrea Sarri and Antonio Conforti) looked like great guys. Here we must pay tribute to the sense of style for which the French school is famous: it surprisingly smooths out the roughness and hides any shortcomings in the choreography.

One of the most important adornments in the precisely painted gallery of female portraits is the Belgian princess Stephanie, Rudolf’s unloved wife, performed by the white-skinned, thin-boned first dancer Sylvia Saint-Martin. Her natural detachment and meekness came in very handy here. She limply gave her body to be torn to pieces by Rudolf-Marchand, and he reveled in her helpless pliability so furiously and greedily that once even a fake beard could not stand it – it peeled off on an adagio.

The abundance of women in Mayerling and the most complex pas de deux with them are intended to show the gradual disintegration of the personality of the rebellious crown prince. For Rudolf Hugo Marchand, two women played a decisive role – mother (Laura Ecke) and mistress Maria Vechora, danced by Dorothea Gilbert, Marchand’s constant fighting friend in all stage dramas. The last few seasons they are inseparable and have learned each other by heart. This has its advantages: trust is such that none of Macmillan’s erotic somersaults with wringing hands and throwing them around at sophisticated “fish” are not afraid of them.

The middle-aged etoile Laura Ecke – angular, thin, with a clamped top, long lashes-arms and an arrogant look – is the ideal Elizabeth for exposing all the Freudian motifs twisted in Macmillan’s ballet at once. From one of her icy glances, self-confident and deliberately bored at family gatherings, Rudolf-Marchand shrinks with some kind of completely aching childish resentment (and genuine adoration in his eyes). Their first duet in the bedroom, when his completely unchildish prayers crash against her iron back, is in contrast to the subsequent duet with Stephanie: the colder his mother is with him, the harder he treats women. After another dose of indifference from the empress, whom he finds in the arms of the colonel, Marchand pours out his soul in a single solo monologue. He does not demonize his Rudolf, does not pass judgment on him, but tries to understand and even justify all his impulsive oddities with this painful dislike. The scene of the hunt, when he accidentally shoots a man and this shot becomes a sure harbinger of his suicide, frightens him rather than turns him on. Therefore, in his selfless Maria Vechora, he first of all finds not support for his own obsessive ideas, but without looking back a loving woman, from whom he receives sympathy, and sex, and death.

Mayerling’s invasion of the main European stages – and the Paris premiere started a few days after the resumption of the ballet at Covent Garden – coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Kenneth Macmillan (1929-1992). Not even from the day, but from the evening. A British choreographer had a heart attack backstage during “Mayerling” on October 29, 1992. The master then restored his 1978 ballet especially for the new premiere of the London troupe, a fugitive from the Bolshoi Theater, Irek Mukhamedov. In the elemental Tatar, Macmillan saw all the components of his unfortunate crown prince – and obsession, and sex, and violence, and moral decay. Since 2019, this last Rudolph, fostered by Macmillan himself, has been serving as a tutor at the Paris Opera. For following the English letter of the choreography, Carl Barnett, the guardian of Macmillan performances in the world, was sent to Paris to answer.

But there was one more person in the current working team – an “intimate consultant”. Legends about the intervention of this new specialist in the rehearsal process of “Mayerling” have developed, it seems, no less than around the suicide of the crown prince himself. It is known that the invitation came from Aurelie Dupont, that this is a freelance person, not like from the ballet. And that his task is to morally support the artists in scenes of intimacy and violence. Not a single film crew can do without such consultants now. And gradually they come to the theater. At the Opera, in addition to Mayerling, consultations were given to singers in the recently held Salome. Kenneth Macmillan has a really difficult relationship with violence. He himself admitted that everything comes from childhood – a child of war, he grew up looking at the destruction and violence that could not but leave a mark. But he did not live to see metoo’s victorious movements and the establishment of a new ethic, when everything on the stage is taken at face value.

Without going to extremes, it is nevertheless worth recognizing that in places the ballet of the British classic today really hurts the eye. Time changes – optics and perception change. But performed by the artists of the Paris Opera, hardened by conversations with an intimate consultant, it is a pleasure to endure all these humiliations.