Red Giselle: Lithuanian National Opera

 

Boris Eifman, eulogized as the “20th‐century’s best choreographer” by the American ballet critics, staged Red Giselle especially for the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre. One of his finest performances of all time, this ballet is best described in the title of one of its reviews: “Doomed to Success”.

 

Its intriguing plot is based on a life story of Olga Spesivtseva, a legendary Russian ballerina. She was a prima ballerina at Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and member of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, making numerous appearances at major scenes in Europe and America until her last performance in 1937. All the roles she performed during her career were usually personalities secluded from the real world, marked with subtle and fragile beauty, spirituality and inwardness. Her glorious and triumphant presence on the world’s ballet scene faded as soon as her mental illness advanced. In 1943 Olga Spesivtseva was placed into a psychiatry clinic in New York. Nobody knows what made her soul sick: revolution in Russia, emigrant experience, or ill‐fated love and betrayal… Nowadays, her immortal image is often associated with Giselle – one of her favourite characters who went mad because of an unrequited love.