La Fille mal gardee, Royal Opera House, London - review

There may be greater ballets than Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardee, just returned to the Covent Garden repertory, but while we are watching it, we know that it is the best, the happiest thing in the dance world. So it proved on Thursday night, in a performance of heart-touching emotion and heart-stirring bravura, led by Laura Morera and Vadim Muntagirov. I remember it from its first performance in 1960, but since then I do not recall one more exhilarating, more true in catching those joys of young-love triumphant, pastoral sweetness, sunlit feelings, which are the matter of this blessed work.

To particulars. Laura Morera, intelligent in every action, musical in every step, plays with a charm of temperament and technique that cannot be faulted. We love this Lise, wish her every happiness - which Ashton gives her as dancer and as actress - as Morera treasures and illuminates her choreography with joyous grace and sweetest emotion. Lise enchantingly lives.

Vadim Muntagirov gives the impression that he has been waiting with some impatience to play Colas, and now embellishes the role with those gifts of dramatic intelligence and technical finesse and power to produce a reading of most splendid effects. Steps are done with an exultant joy and heart-lifting clarity. Feelings - ardent young love; youthful grace; even Muntagirov's delight in showing us his dance skills - fire the role. Not since Mikhail Baryshnikov (decades ago) have I seen a dancer so joyously right in his interpretation.

I delight in Will Tuckett's Widow Simone, a merry and credible old biddy who is an Olympian clog-dancer, and in Paul Kay's Alain, dazzling in step and true in feeling. And in Gary Avis's bluff Thomas. And the company performance was worthy of this masterpiece. Two quibbles: the dawn in Act One verged on the blast furnace-y, and recorded thunder managed to trump Rossini's orchestral aces during the storm. These ancestral lilies need no gilding.

roh.org.uk

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