Alicia Markova

摘要

The story of Giselle is a simple one. A country girl falls for a.prince who has come to her village in disguise. When she finds that her Albrecht is a poseur, actually betrothed to a princess, she goes mad and dies. He visits her grave, penitent. Giselle, now a spirit, is commanded by the queen of the spirits to lure Albrecht to death by her dancing; instead, she rescues him before returning to her grave. It is all in the best early 19th-century German Romantic taste: jovial peasants, gloomy forests, simpering maidens dancing in a line, and a dreadfully sentimental score. Or so it appeared to Alicia Markova when, at 18, she began to hear suggestions that she should dance the role. The world, surely, had moved on since then.