According to the HBSO, Giselle is the best-known ballet by French composer Adolphe Adam. It was first performed at the Salle de la rue Le Peletier, part of the Paris Opera, in 1841. The work is also regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of Romantic ballet worldwide, telling a story of love and betrayal.
The entire restaging process has been overseen by Japanese artist Yuki Ohmori and French artist Chloe Glemot.
Working alongside the two international choreographers are Meritorious Artist Tran Hoang Yen, Deputy Head of HBSO’s Ballet Troupe, and Meritorious Artist Ho Phi Diep, who serves as an assistant to the staging team for this production. The performance features outstanding artists from HBSO’s Ballet Troupe in collaboration with the Ho Chi Minh City Intermediate Dance School.
Audiences will see Do Hoang Khang Ninh deliver an emotionally charged performance as the beautiful and innocent Giselle; Le Duc Anh as the lovestruck young nobleman Albrecht; La Man Nhi as Myrtha, the stern queen of the Wilis spirits; Le Tuan Anh as the ill-fated Hilarion; and Do Thi Anh Nguyen as Giselle’s sorrowful mother.
The music opens with horns and strings accompanying villagers working enthusiastically during the harvest season. Giselle, a beautiful country girl, falls in love with Albrecht, who appears to be a peasant but is in fact a young nobleman already engaged to Bathilde, a woman of high social standing. Faced with this bitter truth, Giselle dies during a ball.
The mysterious second act opens with moments of stillness amid Giselle’s mesmerising movements beside her own grave. A powerful image then emerges as fury builds to an emotional frenzy through the dramatic choreography of the Wilis — figures from an ancient legend about the spirits of betrayed maidens who force men into the forest to dance with them until they die. Yet Giselle’s forgiveness and unconditional love save Albrecht from death.
Yuki Ohmori won first prize in the Pas de Deux-1 category at the All Japan Dance Competition in 1993. In the same year, she received a scholarship from the Australian Ballet School. In 1996, Ohmori joined the New National Theatre Ballet in Tokyo.
Chloe Glemot is a French dancer. She began studying dance at the age of four and joined the Paris Opera Ballet School’s advanced training programme in 2003. In 2006, Glemot completed a specialist coaching course at the National Centre for Dance in Paris and decided to pursue her career in Viet Nam in 2013.
