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'''''Giselle''''', danced to familiar music by the French ballet and opera composer
Adolphe Adam, is a Romantic-era
ballet first danced in Paris in 1840. It is one of the very few ballets of that tradition that still holds the stage, danced in calf-length
tutus. In the second act, the undying love of Giselle for Albrecht, who has come by night to visit her tomb, saves him from having his life-spirit taken from him by the spectral
wilis, the vampiric ghosts of betrothed girls who have died before their wedding day, and their Queen.
The Romantic poet
Theophile Gautier is the author of the plot for this ballet.
The version we see today is not much like the original, where the most famous dancer of her day,
Fanny Essler had an operatic
mad scene at the end of the first act. ''Giselle'' passed out of the European repertory until it was revived by
Sergei Diaghilev in 1910, a startling change of pace for the avant-garde
Ballets Russes.
==External link==
*
Some dance history of ''Giselle'' by Suzanne McCarthy for the Royal Ballet
