A 19th-Century Classic With All the Traditions Intact

American Ballet Theater’s season ends on Saturday. Before Monday’s performance, scores of people were standing outside the Metropolitan Opera House begging, applying, accosting for tickets. Afterward, amid the cheers and prolonged curtain calls, flowers and some kind of outsize confetti were thrown.
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Erin Baiano for The New York Times
"Giselle," with Nina Ananiashvili in the title role and Angel Corella as Count Albrecht, at the Met in American Ballet Theater’s production.

The work was “Giselle,” which is more or less the company’s best production of a 19th-century ballet classic. And the ingredient that gave such buzz on Monday was the casting of

Nina Ananiashvili as Giselle. She has been loved in New York since her first season here with the Bolshoi in 1987, and it has recently been announced that 2009 will be her final season with Ballet Theater.
There is reason to take major exception to the company’s current productions of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake.” There is cause to argue that the 19th-century ballets “Le Corsaire,” “Don Quixote” and “La Bayadère” — each also in repertory this Met season — are scarcely classics (merely popular war horses). But “Giselle” is certainly a classic, and in this production little gets in the way of the traditional ballet.
If I say it’s “more or less” Ballet Theater’s best, that’s because this staging has no episode as full of radiance as the opening of the company’s “Swan Lake.” This is just the traditional “Giselle”: the pretty tree-surrounded village of Act I with its castle in the distance; the nocturnal glade of Act II opening onto the lake; the story of heartbreak, madness, death; the dangerous wilis rising from their graves at night; the hero’s remorse; love beyond the grave; and dancing until dawn.
And in Act I Ms. Ananiashvili seemed to be dancing just like any traditional Giselle. She knows how to play the charmingly modest maiden. Her doe eyes, so often downcast, are ideal for the role; so are the lines of her still ravishing physique. There is about her nothing of the hard glaze so often apparent in experienced Russian ballerinas. Yet these general virtues apart, she seemed in Act I unusually unfocused and hectic, often ahead of the music or rushing her phrasing, making no precise contact with those around her, although always indicating every moment of the role in appropriate style.
She looks younger than I, having first seen her Giselle in 1986, know her to be, and she delivered the famous hops on point with blithe lucidity. Even so, her performance was not that of a ballerina in assured possession of the technique needed for the role.
By contrast, her partner,

Angel Corella, played everything to her and for her. His Count Albrecht has strong hints of the noble cad when Giselle is offstage, but we never doubt that his infatuation with her is sincere, and his combination of sunny commitment and personal distinction make him a natural for the role. Yet even he could not stop Act I from seeming lackluster.
The conductor was David LaMarche (good in a recent “Sleeping Beauty”), who here elicited precise orchestral playing without showing much evidence of close rapport with the dancers. Maria Riccetto and Jared Matthews danced the peasant pas de deux with skill and some admirable technical features. But why, even with the excellent Victor Barbee as the Prince of Courland, did this seem like just another Act I of just another “Giselle”?
As if in answer, Act II fell into a keener dramatic focus. Gillian Murphy has few finer roles than Myrta, queen of the wilis. She never overdoes the vindictive side, and instead, by dancing every aspect of the choreography with full value, she allows the character’s magisterial allure to gleam. Mr. Corella’s engaging ardor — there is always something of the happy boy about this highly sophisticated artist — kept rising and rising, and the fresh fluency with which he delivered all the role’s brilliance was very welcome.
And in this act everything about Ms. Ananiashvili’s performance as Giselle’s ghost seemed in focus with the music and her colleagues. Here you saw not just the loveliness of the limbs, but also how beautifully the long arms continued the sloping lines of the neck. Even that slender, long neck seemed freer. She seemed weightless in jumps, and her series of fast, small jumps (soubresauts and entrechats-quatre) were even more distinctively poetic than the large bounds carrying her, gazellelike, across the stage. In the air her feet become her most luminous feature, stretching, crossing, twinkling, breathing.