Last night the Royal Winnipeg ballet started their run of one of the world’s most beloved and most well-known ballets, the ballet Giselle.
Choreographed to the magnificent musical score written by Adolph Adam, Giselle has enchanted audiences since it was first performed in Paris in 1841.
Giselle has everything an audience could desire in a ballet: a tale of love and redemption, one of the most stunning and unforgettable Pas de Deux in the entire ballet repertory, and a heart-wrenching story where the protagonist, broken by love, dies only to forgive her beloved in death. In the second act, ethereal, ghostly spirits move with haunting grace and flawless synchronicity, elevating the emotional intensity. Giselle is, without a doubt, a timeless masterpiece of the ballet canon.
The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is performing with the RWB and here in Winnipeg to guest conduct the WSO is Geneviève Leclair. An associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music, Leclair has made a name for herself as one of the preeminent ballet conductors. She has worked with The National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet, Northern Ballet.
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Aside from her ballet engagements, she has conducted the Orchestre Metropolitan in Montreal, Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra, Saskatoon Symphony, and in 2017 she was awarded the American Prize for Orchestral Conducting.
The opportunity to conduct Giselle marks a highlight in Leclair’s career. As she says, “Yesterday [Thursday, November 7th] was my first performance of Giselle. I have been conducting ballet for 15 years... and that is one of the big staples that just had not come by and so I was very excited to conduct my first performance yesterday.”
When describing what it is like to conduct Giselle Leclair says, “It’s a fantastic score! There are beautiful moments. The first act is almost entirely pantomime, and the second act is very much dance focused. From a conducting standpoint, you get a lot of storytelling in the first act...a lot of making the music match what is going on in the action on stage. In the second act its very much about hitting the right tempi so that the dance is at its best.”
Giselle, as presented by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, with the WSO in the pit under the direction of Geneviève Leclair, is sure to be amazing. The costumes, athleticism of the dancers on stage and the supreme musicianship of the WSO musicians is sure to make for a truly unforgettable evening.
For more details on the RWB’s run of Giselle click here.