Delibes Sylvia

Lavish, Splendidly Danced and Very Pretty

This is Ashton's Sylvia as a Second-Empire entertainement, magnificently danced and sumptuously staged. Darcey Bussell and Roberto Bolle are flawless in roles that are quite difficult yet ironically not showy. They make excellent partners. Soloists and Corps dance in exhuberant good form. The Covent Garden Orchestra sounds primed for Delibes marvelous score, one of the very, very few musical masterpieces to be found among ballet scores. Ashton's choreography is very pretty even if never quite reaching heights of beauty or originality he showed elsewhere, e.g., Symphonic Variations or The Dream, not to mention his re-castings of Petipa.