Perfect Christmas confection
Is besotted by the simple joy of the Royal Ballet’s production of at Covent Garden
Ayoung man, Franz, has a fiancée, Swanhilda. She is lovely, spirited and a little bit loud. Franz knows that he shouldn’t, but he has become obsessed with an unknown girl sitting in a high window: tantalisingly out of reach and blessedly silent.
This is the clever little story at the heart of Coppélia, a work first performed in Paris in 1870, now revived by the Royal Ballet as a delicious Christmas cake with a bit of tooth-jabbing truth inside. As Coppélia’s original choreographer, Arthur Saint-Léon, was all too aware, a real-life girl is almost always at a disadvantage against a dream girl.
Saint-Léon was also referencing a ballet like La Sylphide, in which the hero has a charming girlfriend but cannot resist an evanescent beauty who drifts around him in white wings. This concept, indeed, is central to the image of classical ballet. Think of the second act of Giselle, in which our hero gets all worked up about a dead girl. Think, above all, of Swan Lake.
So there is something intensely refreshing about the effervescent little masterpiece that is Coppélia, a gloriously earthbound pastiche of this grave and majestic theme. Here, Franz’s love object is in fact a life-size doll, created by a perverted Pygmalion named Dr Coppélius. When Franz climbs a ladder to reach the girl in the high window, Coppélius morphs into a quasi-Frankenstein. He tries to steal the soul of the hapless lover and transfer it to his creation. Swanhilda, who has disguised herself as the doll, begins to move, leading poor old Coppélius to believe that he has made his own dream girl.
Then the “doll” starts to act up, rampaging around Coppélius’s studio. His illusions are crumbling fast even before Swanhilda’s ruse is revealed and her happy restoration to Franz guaranteed.
It is a riot, made all the merrier by the celebrated Délibes score – all those light and luscious waltzes – and by Osbert Lancaster’s drolly retro designs. Saint-Léon’s choreography is pretty much lost, as is the fact that Franz was originally danced by a woman: another intriguing nosethumb at convention.
The ballet libretto survives, however, and the Royal’s production – like the company itself – was created by Ninette de Valois (after those great Russian influences, Lev Ivanov and Enrico Cecchetti). It has not been staged at Covent Garden since 2006. And it is a bold move to use it as a Christmas substitute for The Nutcracker.
Nevertheless the decision is justified. What gets it so triumphantly over the line is the quality of dramatic dancing at the Royal. Gary Avis, beyond invaluable to the company, is a superb Coppélius, an arch-creep but a pathetic one. Alexander Campbell, as Franz, is also tremendous. He has an unusual gift for such a high-level performer: he can convince as an everyday bloke.
If it is a little hard to believe that he would stray, even for a moment, from his Swanhilda, then that is because she is danced by Francesca Hayward, soon to become widely known through her appearance in the film Cats. Gossamerlight in her dancing, wonderfully rooted in her characterisation, she is sheer incandescent delight.
There were moments, none the less, when I found myself thinking how odd it was, to be watching a ballet d’action from 150 years ago, firmly set in the ballet world of the mid-Fifties. Modernity has frequently asked what this art form is for, what it signifies.
One might offer in reply the fact that Coppélia has a contemporary resonance, with its puncturing of the dream girl myth, its promotion instead of spirited Swanhilda, swigging beer like a ladette. Yet even Swanhilda gets her traditional Act III pas de deux in white tutu and tiara. And in truth this production belongs, quite unrepentantly, to a time before fractious analysis, when relevance was less important than entertainment value, and when a sublime naivety created its own kind of sophistication.
As a young girl besotted with ballet I would have loved the simple joy of this Coppélia. To be honest, I still do.