Palais Garnier. Paris Opéra Ballet, Paris
We were fortunate to obtain tickets to see Ludmila Pagliero and Florian Magnenet perform La Sylphide on July 3, 2013. The world knows La Sylphide mainly through August Bournonville’s 1836 ballet, carefully preserved in Denmark and in the repertoire of companies from Covent Garden to St Petersburg. The original Sylphide, however, was French: a showcase for Marie Taglioni that was choreographed by her father Filippo to a different score and soon lost to the vagaries of history. Forty years ago, choreographer Pierre Lacotte set out to recreate it using limited archive material. It is a pastiche of classical ballet in the Paris Opera Ballet repertoire, an elaborate variation on the Romantic style, and it has made a return to the company’s stage after a nine-year gap to close the season.
