Last Wednesday night I spent an impromptu night at the ballet. My own ballet & pointe classes had been cancelled and so I called up the Royal Opera House. They still had tickets left for Giselle and so I jumped on the chance to go see my first ballet here in London.
The Royal Opera House is an amazing experience in and of itself. Walking into the theatre I felt as if I had walked into one of my theatre history book sketches, which makes sense considering the auditorium (pictured) dates back to 1858 and the original opera house was constructed in 1732.
I wanted to write more about the ballet itself, but I let time get away from me, and never bothered to jot down notes. Now, nearly a week after I have the general dim recollections of a show you saw a week ago and haven’t thought of since. It was good, very good. Although i don’t have any other showings of Giselle to compare it to. (Honestly I think the last time I saw one of the old ballets I was 7 or 8 and my mom took me to see Nutcracker… Actually I think my school went and my mom was chaperone. Same thing, I still got to hang out with my mom at school and that was the coolest thing ever at that time. But I’ve only seen one other since, Alonzo King’s Line’s Ballet and that was in 2009.)
Back to Giselle. If you ever find yourself in a large theatre, and you aren’t right up near the stage, bring binoculars. It’s amazing to go from seeing the whole picture framed neatly by the proscenium and then bring up the binoculars to see the details of what the dancers are doing and their facial expressions. It adds in so many details and layers that I think a lot of people miss when they watch a show in such a big venue.
