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Bcnois’ set for Giselle: the style was fairy-tale, the colors muted, the costumes si_btly coordinated

wronę one) in Rudolf Nureyev, who has been dropping in as guest artist sińce the ’60s and who has staged his own productions of Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. The “big” produc-tion of the New York season was Nurcyev's staging of his full-Iength Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), scen herc a couple of seasons ago in the reper-toire of London's Festival Ballct. When that company performed it, it looked morę tightly staged, better paced, and its dramatic points morę sharply madę. Thedcath motif which Nureyev emphasizes throughout—in fataiły stricken beggars, in Julicfs bedding by a death's headed figurę— is picked up by designer Lzio Frigerio in a unit set whose glossy black neo-classie panels suggest medieval Ye-rona less than the tombsof post-Ren-aissance popes or Fascist funerary meditations.

Nureyev and Fracci—she all smiles. performing her often thank-less steps with feathery lightness— danced the opening night with Bruno \escovo an energetic and cheeky Mercutio and Tiziano Mietto a good-looking Tybalt. One bit of unalloyed pleasure lay in Damę Margot Fon-teyn's dignified and forthright Lady Capulet, primarily an acting role. Fonteyn, taking her first bow without any of that “Thank-you-my-dear-public nonsensc. accepted her bou-quet and walked offslowly, lilting her head toward the cheering house to give it just the right amount of profile. Knowing on her part. sentimen-tal on ours. but for a single crystalline moment remembered magie was back on the stage of the Met. A la ter and younger pair brought youthful ardor to the leads: Mauri/io Bellezza looked charmingly boyish and part-nered well. but seemed to flag in en-ergy before the finał scene; the Juliet of pretty Anna Maria Razzi, vital and sweet, was danced with a musical awareness which madę her the one hitherio unknown dancer of the season worth remem beri ng. Inex-plicably. on perhaps an off-night, Razzi also danced a thoroughly sec-ond-class Giselle, outshone by Renata Calderini's Mvrta.

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“(iiselle”

^T^he La Scala Giselle had going for 1 it Fraccrs meticulously planned and carefullv danced lieroine—what-

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ever the technical deficiencies. this was a major performance—and Alcx-andre Bcnois' muted. fairy-tale-illus-tration sets and subtlv coordinated

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costumes. Davide Bombana revcaled a well-molded jump in the “Peasant” pas de deux (the solos revised out of all recognition); the vivacity of his alter-nate, \ escovo. did not conceal liis lack of linę.

Both men partnered Anna Maria (irossi, a dancer of sufficient technique but undependablc linę. Mietto’s Hilarion was mank and

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well focused in Act I. but was so de-tached in his Act II execution by the ghostly Wilis that he seemed to be on stage only because it was expected of him. As Hilarion, Nureyev’s personal “touches”—his interpolarion of solos for himself with heavy emphasis on exploding pas de chals so sharply exe-cuted that he looked as ihough he'd been goosed. and his distracting ad-ventures with any cloak he happened to be wearing—madę him less bear-able in this role than in others. Nowa-days, it seems that only wnen he part-ners does he reestablish contact with the artist within who right fu I ly słiared the stage with Fonteyn in the 1960s.

“Mandarin”

Besides the full-evening works, the company presented a program of sevcral short ballets, including Glen Tetley’s Sacre du Printemps (Stravinsky), which has been in the Continued on page 20