Wronged women

A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden florists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez and bales of bouquets to mark major debuts by new(ish) principals Francesca Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi.

Giselle, the timid village beauty whose ghost returns to forgive her duplicitous lover, was never an obvious vehicle for Nunez’s sunny virtuosity, but she has always had absolute command of the role’s fiendish mix of crisp footwork and melting lines. Naghdi and Hayward both gave polished, intensely felt performances, their innate musicality enhanced by Koen Kessels’s responsive handling of the Adam score.

Hayward is marked for misery from the moment she opens the cottage door. Giselle loves to dance — she has a special mime that tells us so — but she isn’t a show-off and Hayward strikes exactly the right note of bashful bravura. Her exquisite feet frisk through the Act One variations with happy facility and her thistledown elevation makes her an eerily insubstantial ghost, wafting free of Alexander Campbell’s yearning arms.

Albrecht isn’t like other boys. Better bred, better fed, the slumming aristocrat in disguise observes the Act One peasant festivities with a sardonic, anthropologist’s eye. He learns their steps but he still has an alien glamour that sets him apart. This isn’t a crude matter of height — heroes come in a range of sizes — nor even mere grooming. The Royal Ballet’s lost star Sergei Polunin danced Albrecht in Moscow during one of his skinhead phases and still managed to convince as a posh boy on the prowl.

Alexander Campbell excels in comic roles but he struggled to convince as either the infatuated puppy or the broken-hearted lover purified by suffering and remorse. He partnered strongly but his gestures lacked emphasis and he gave Hayward little to work with.