Review: CLEVELAND BALLET'S GISELLE at Connor Palace

Cleveland Ballet – Giselle
Connor Palace at Playhouse Square
Cleveland, Ohio
October 24, 2026

Not since the prodigious productions of Dennis Nahat's Cleveland Ballet of the 1990s has a company bearing that name presented a ballet of such grandeur as this past weekend's Giselle at Playhouse Square's Connor Palace.

Yes, it was that good.

Saturday night's cast, led by prima ballerina extraordinaire Svetlana Svinko as Giselle, brought their “A” game to a gushworthy performance filled with inspired, nearly flawless dancing and top-notch production value.

One of ballet's "Big Five" classic story ballets, Cleveland Ballet presented choreographer Marius Petipa's seminal 1884 version of Giselle. The 2-hour, two-act romantic tragedy was danced to Adolphe Adam's original score and included choreographic contributions from Cleveland Ballet Artistic Director Timour Bourtasenkov. It told the story of Giselle, a peasant girl with a weak heart who falls in love with the charming but deceitful Prince Albrecht and dies of a broken heart. In death, she forgives and saves him from being danced to death by the Wilis, a group of ghostly, betrayed brides-to-be with supernatural powers she has joined.

Set in a small 19th-century German village in the fall. Act one begins with Hilarion, a gamekeeper with unrequited feelings for Giselle, bringing flowers to her cottage in the shadow of the Duke of Courland's castle. Hearing Prince Albrecht (disguised as the peasant Loys) and his squire Wilfred (Vadim Slatvitskii) approach, Hilarion ducks out of sight as Albrecht hides his sword in a nearby shed.

Emmanuel Martirosyan, as Hilarion, delivered his best acting performance to date, bringing life to his character's love for Giselle and his wariness of Loys.

The quaint love story between Albrecht, as Loys, and Svinko as Giselle begins when she answers his knock at her door. Instantly the pair fall for one another. Johan Mancebo as Albrecht/Loys was every bit the dashing prince to Svinko's endearing village girl. Petipa's old-fashioned courtship choreography, infused with playfulness and the "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not" daisy-petal picking, was delivered sweetly by the pair, whose onstage chemistry matched their brilliant acting and dancing.

A confrontation with a jealous Hilarion over his courting of Giselle follows, in which Loys grabs for the sword he no longer has and reveals to Hilarion that he is not who he claims to be. As Loys departs, a Royal hunting party arrives with the Duke of Courland (Damien Highfield) and his daughter, Bathilde (Alia Federico), Albrecht's fiancée, who befriends Giselle over their mutual engagements to marry.

The village celebrates Giselle's happy news with several balletic folk dances performed by Giselle's friends and other villagers. The traditional choreography is lively and well executed.

The ballet's "Peasant Pas de Deux" highlighted the celebrations. Nashializ Gomez Orengo and Aleander Guzmán performed the challenging choreography with crisp tandem hops, leaps, and elegant partnered steps.

Events then came to a head when Hilarion, torn over whether to expose Loys' deceit, showed Giselle Albrecht a sword (a sign of royalty); when Bathilde corroborated that revelation and Albrecht chose her, Giselle went mad in one of ballet's greatest scenes.

Svinko nailed the dramatic scene to end Act One with a nuanced performance that was revealed in emotionally expressive facial expressions of crazed stares while dragging Albrecht's sword round in a circle, causing village onlookers to recoil from her, and in a blank-faced, distant expression as she relived and mimed her courtship with Loys/Albrecht in her mind before suddenly snapping out of her trance with a manic laugh and frantically running into her mother's (Lily Hehr) arms and then into Albrecht's where she died, collapsing to the stage floor.

Beyond the cast's fabulous performances, the production's quality traditional costumes and sets from Sarasota Ballet, along with expert atmospheric lighting by Dennis Dugan, enhanced its charm and grandeur. Nowhere was that more prevalent than in Giselle's eerily beautiful second act.

Act Two opened on a dark forest scene, with a distressed Hilarion bringing flowers to Giselle's grave and being driven away by an ominous, unseen presence.

Soon after his departure, on a blanket of stage fog, Madison Campbell as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, appeared and danced across the stage, tossing aside flowers possibly left on the graves of her ghostly brides-to-be. The statuesque Campbell moved with a queen's regal bearing and the cold determination of a scorned woman. As with all the ballet's featured roles, Campbell was at the top of her game, with adroit technique and a masterful embodiment of Myrtha.

The breathtaking entrance of 24 veiled Wilis moving in horizontal lines onto the stage, and their subsequent unison dancing, was magical, as was Svinko's dramatic introduction, hopping on one leg in arabesque in a rapid, tight circle.

After a solemn Albrecht brought flowers to Giselle's grave, he and the ghostly Giselle engaged in several moving pas de deux. At first, Albrecht could not fully sense her, but their transcendent love soon reconnected them spiritually across the living and nether planes.

Mancebo once again danced and performed adeptly as the heavy-hearted Prince. Russian-trained Svinko brought veteran stage presence and supreme grace, balance, and skill to her performance as the phantasmal Giselle, absolving Albrecht of his guilt over her and pleading with Myrtha to spare his life.

The spellbinding ballet concluded with the Wilis dancing Hilarion to exhaustion and death, and Albrecht nearly meeting the same fate, if not for Giselle and daybreak, when the Wilis must return to their graves. In the final scene, Giselle and Albrecht dance one last time, embrace, and then she drifts slowly backward from him, drawn to her resting place, leaving a dispirited Albrecht alone with his broken heart.