A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden florists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez and bales of bouquets to mark major debuts by new(ish) principals Francesca Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi.
Giselle, the timid village beauty whose ghost returns to forgive her duplicitous lover, was never an obvious vehicle for Nunez’s sunny virtuosity, but she has always had absolute command of the role’s fiendish mix of crisp footwork and melting lines. Naghdi and Hayward both gave polished, intensely felt performances, their innate musicality enhanced by Koen Kessels’s responsive handling of the Adam score.
Hayward is marked for misery from the moment she opens the cottage door. Giselle loves to dance — she has a special mime that tells us so — but she isn’t a show-off and Hayward strikes exactly the right note of bashful bravura. Her exquisite feet frisk through the Act One variations with happy facility and her thistledown elevation makes her an eerily insubstantial ghost, wafting free of Alexander Campbell’s yearning arms.
Albrecht isn’t like other boys.
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