In Paris, a Reminder of French Ballet History and Style

New York Times

30-05-2025

Manuel Legris, lithe in a tracksuit, held up a hand. 'Stop! Stop!' he called out as Francesco Mura, a Paris Opera Ballet principal dancer, smoothly executed a tricky passage.
'It's lovely, but I've lost the character,' Legris told Mura. 'I'm just seeing technique.'
Legris, 60, knows about technique. A former étoile, or star, of the Paris Opera Ballet, and a former director of the Vienna State Ballet and La Scala Ballet, Legris was the supreme classicist of his era — the Roger Federer of ballet — his unobtrusive virtuosity always informed by an elegant refinement.
On this day, though, Legris was focused on character and intention as he worked with a cast of Paris Opera dancers in his ballet 'Sylvia,' at a public rehearsal in the Opera Bastille amphitheater.
'Imagine you are a young, fresh shepherd, bursting with joy and life,' he told Mura as he ran onstage. The character of Sylvia, he explained to Inès McIntosh, is 'strong and sensual; this isn't 'Sleeping Beauty.''
'Sylvia,' set to an enchanting score by Délibes, was the first ballet performed at the Palais Garnier, a year after it was inaugurated in 1875. Choreographed by Louis Mérante, it had a mixed reception, with most plaudits going to the score. ('What riches in the melody, the rhythm, the harmony,' Tchaikovsky wrote, after seeing it in 1877.)
Versions of the ballet came and went over the next century. Frederick Ashton's for the Sadler's Wells Ballet (the forerunner of the Royal Ballet) in 1952, with a resplendent Margot Fonteyn in the title role, put the ballet back into the mainstream repertory, though it wasn't performed by the Royal from the mid-1960s to 2004. American Ballet Theater will present it at the Metropolitan Opera House in July.
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