Giselle, the great romantic ballet revisited and modernized by the Bordeaux National Opera

In the first act, we discover Giselle (Marini Da Silva Vianna), a young peasant girl. In love with Albrecht (Riku Ota), she dances happily with him. But one day, Hilarion (Riccardo Zuddas), a gamekeeper in love with the young woman reveals the dark truth: Albrecht is in reality the prince of Silesia disguised as a peasant, and he is promised to another woman, Princess Bathilde (Anaëlle Mariat). When she learns this, Giselle descends into madness and loses her life.

Act two takes place at night, in the enchanted forest. The Wilis, vengeful specters of young girls abandoned by their lover and dead before their wedding, appear. Myrtha (Ahyun Shin), the queen of the Wilis, condemns Hilarion to dance until exhaustion and then death. Then comes Albrecht’s turn, doomed to the same fate. But Giselle, herself become a spirit, comes to his aid by dancing with him until dawn, when the Wilis disappear. She thus manages to save the man she loved from death.

The ballet Giselle shows the opposition between two universes. During the first act, which takes place in the village, everything is colorful, sparkling, alive. This is the real world, the world of the concrete. Conversely, the second act takes place in a fantastic universe: the decor is darker, the tutus are ghostly white.

The opposition between two worlds is also expressed between that below, the peasantry, and that above, the nobility. As Matali Grasset explains: “My role consisted of imagining a more contemporary reading of Giselle’s story by highlightingsence in the story two worlds in confrontation. On the one hand, the world of the farm where Giselle lives which I reinterpret into a “world below”. He is close to the living and defends it. On the other hand, the “top world” is that of people who fear losing their privileges. It is a more universal interpretation in relation to our contemporary world and its challenges. “

Matali Grasset is a very renowned French designer who studied with Philippe Stark. In charge of the scenography, sets, costumes and accessories on Giselle, she makes strong, modern and committed choices.

The first lies in the costumes which allow it to visually mark the class struggle which takes place between the world above and the world below. But it goes even further: the very choice of materials used to create them is significant. For the villagers, she works with raw materials produced by French know-how that she is keen to defend. Thus, the peasants’ costumes are made of a “embossed fabric [..] which is usually used to make mops”, and composed of 80% cotton and 20% recycled waste. For the world above, more sophisticated materials were chosen.

Concerning the decor, Matali Grasset chose the tutu as a starting point. So, “all the structures created to make the decor are cone-shaped with a rhythm of lines which delimit the perimeter.” A decor which, like the tutus including the tulles of those of the Wilis were recovered from an old production of Giselle and repaired to be reused, is part of a responsible approach. The cottage, the sun and even the trees were made by the opera carpenters with “unpainted wood with a view to finding a new use for it once the performances are over”.