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Mayerling concerns itself both with the public and the private. It is a world of spectacle, with grand scenes at court with the stage crowded with courtiers, functionaries and flunkeys. But it is also about the intensely private and personal anguish of its anti hero. MacMillan needs to show us the public world and spectacle to show us the pressures that Rudolf is under, the hypocrisy and double standards of the court, but choreographically, his heart isn’t in grand massed scenes or work for the corps. Sometimes the point is made better by Georgiadis’s designs than by MacMillan’s steps: the stuffed dummies of the guards over the stage in the opening wedding scene, and the costumed mannequins in the Empress Elizabeth’s bedroom tell us more about the exquisitely dressed but faceless and dehumanising nature of court life than do MacMillan’s dancing maids or ladies in waiting.

It is the private, not the public, which interests MacMillan as choreographer, and how character is revealed, rather than clear exposition of plot. Rudolf’s character is conveyed through his interactions with the women in his life: his rude and crass flirting with his wife’s sister at his wedding ball: his desperate and unsuccessful appeals for understanding and affection to his glacial mother, the Empress Elizabeth and his callous and brutal treatment of his terrified wife, Princess Stephanie. (And that’s just the first act). Despite this being a huge three act ballet with a massive cast, the core of the work is these pas de deux, increasingly frenzied and passionate as the ballet progresses. In the last duet with Mary Vetsera, the dancers hurl themselves through the air at each other with a wildness and abandonment that it seems almost indecent to watch.
 

Carlos Acosta in Mayerling
© Bill Cooper

At times, there is a conflict between the scale at which MacMillan needs to operate and his desire to show us the finest nuances of human reactions. For example, consider the scene at the firework party where the imperial family are listening to the emperor’s female friend sing. Empress Elizabeth has effectively condoned her husband’s affaire with the singer – after all she is having an affaire of her own and is at that moment being watched by her lover, and her increasingly disaffected and disgusted son, plus his concerned but scheming ex mistress. If this was a film, you would have wanted a close up of each of their faces in turn, as internal misery wars with protocol, rather than having to contemplate them in the distance of Covent Garden’s auditorium. Instead Macmillan has to rely on the ability of his performers to project powerful emotion while barely moving. Time spent watching Yanowsky as Elizabeth at this moment is well spent.

There were strong performances among the four different casts. Kobborg’s degeneration was subtle and detailed. Watson’s Rudolf was clearly a deeply damaged human being from his first entrance. Acosta was much more cool and introverted at the beginning. It’s difficult for a dancer with a stage personality normally so strong and confident as him to crumble successfully before our eyes.

There are far, far too many individual performances to comment on here, but a few things do stick in the memory particularly: an outstanding confrontation between Cindy Jourdain’s Elizabeth and Sarah Lamb’s Larisch, Soares as the lead Hungarian officer, Cutherbertson’s Mitzi Caspar, and Roberta Marquez as Princess Stephanie, being handed Bratfisch’s hat and holding it at arm’s length with the very tips of her fingers as if someone had just given her a dead rat. It was an outstanding achievement from the company to produce so many fine performances from four different casts. They gave MacMillan’s work the commitment and strongly delineated performances that it needs to make Mayerling deliver its huge emotional punch.