In Royal Ballet’s New ‘Swan Lake,’ It’s the Hero’s Tragedy

LONDON — A prince. A prospective wedding. So much pressure.

Except it’s not the woman he loves, but her evil double. Deception, betrayal and loss are at the heart of “Swan Lake,” perhaps the most romantic, wrenchingly sad story in ballet. And inScarlett’s version, which had its premiere at the Royal Opera House here Thursday, the hero’s tragedy is paramount. In dooming his beloved to remain a swan forever, he has lost not only the woman he loves, but also the search for transcendence that his love represents.

Scarlett makes this clear at the end of the ballet when — spoiler alert! — Prince Siegfried (Vadim Muntagirov on Thursday) carries the body of Odette (Marianela Nuñez) from the lake in which she has drowned. She and her fellow swans may be free from the magician’s spell, but the prince remains mortal and suffering, understanding that he has brought about his own loss.

This touch is just one of several new ideas that Scarlett brings to his “Swan Lake,” which replaces the 1987 Anthony Dowell version last performed by the Royal Ballet in 2015. It is a huge undertaking for Scarlett, 32, who is artist-in-residence at the Royal Ballet and has little experience of staging existing works. “Swan Lake” is special to British audiences: The Royal Ballet has performed the work more than 1,000 times since the 1930s, and the ballet is regularly staged by other companies in London and around the country. (The current production runs through June 21.)

Scarlett has produced a respectful, tasteful version of the ballet. It does not try for major conceptual shifts, and retains a good deal of the 1895 structure and choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. He has introduced a prologue that shows Odette’s transformation from princess to swan by the sorcerer Von Rothbart; added solos for Siegfried and his friend Benno; re-choreographed some of the ensemble and national dances in Acts 1 and 3; and reworked Act 4, adding a pas de deux for Odette and Siegfried, and incorporating music cut from the Dowell version. Most of the new choreography is tactfully house-of-Petipa. (The fourth act isn’t a noticeable improvement on Ivanov, but it works perfectly well.)

Designed by John Macfarlane (who worked with Scarlett on his “Frankenstein”), this new “Swan Lake” looks beautiful. Like the Dowell version, which had much-contested designs by Yolanda Sonnabend, it is set in the 1890s, but Scarlett’s production suggests a last gasp of European regal splendor.

The prince’s birthday celebrations in Act 1 take place in the courtyard of a royal residence with formal gardens extending into the distance. That setting transforms seamlessly into the lakeside where Siegfried discovers Odette. It is more sepia-toned and foreboding than serenely pretty, with jagged rocks and a huge moon partly masked by gauzy clouds. The ball scene is all rose-red marble and gilded surfaces, with a sweeping curved staircase: It’s very Palais Garnier, with a particularly resplendent Queen (played with scary grimness by Elizabeth McGorian).

So far, so good. But why does Scarlett introduce a mysterious new character who stalks on stage minutes into Act 1, like a cross between Rasputin and Professor Snape in “Harry Potter”? Identified in the program as the “queen’s adviser,” he reappears as Von Rothbart in Acts 2 and 4, and orders everyone around in Act 3. Are we to understand that he has plotted the whole thing in order to take over the kingdom? Bennet Gartside, a fine dancer-actor, did his best, but the character is peculiarly unbelievable.

Although the corps de ballet often looked ragged, the production was beautifully served by its principal dancers. Nuñez, the Royal Ballet’s reigning prima ballerina, has a pure line, a melting plasticity and a smooth legato quality. Her Odette was lyrical and sorrowful; her Odile steely and sexy. She is impeccable, perhaps too much so — the even, perfectly modulated dynamics of her dancing (amplified by the oddly slow tempos of her solos), tamp down grander emotion and excitement.

She had a superb partner in Muntagirov, a sensational but often diffident dancer who came into his own here, showing an elegance of line, sparkling turns, soaring jumps and a physical and facial expressiveness that made every emotion and impulse transparent. (On Twitter, he has been given the suitable hashtag “Vadream.”)Looking convincingly young and gawky, with an innocence that made it clear that this was his first experience of love, Muntagirov humbly showed us the human longing for rapture and transcendence that is the real theme of “Swan Lake.”