Alessandra Ferri returns to the ROH to play Juliet in place of Darcey Bussell:
Romeo and Juliet By Judith Mackrell for The Guardian
The last time Alessandra Ferri danced Juliet at Covent Garden she was counted one of the Royal's three ballerinas most likely to succeed. Yet, while her fellow starlets (Fiona Chadwick and Bryony Brind) stayed at home, Ferri took her chances abroad, where for the past 18 years she has danced with American Ballet Theatre and La Scala. On Wednesday night she was back at last, replacing a convalescent Darcey Bussell. For much of the first act, however, she looked as if the experience was terrifying her.
Ferri is as physically mesmerising now as she was at 20. Her haunted eyes, far too big for her face, and her legs, extravagantly long for her tiny body, promise intensity the minute she walks on stage. But on Wednesday, her natural edginess and fervour were exaggerated by nerves, and at times the rhythm of her dancing, as well as her acting, seemed thrown off balance.
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Romeo and Juliet By Clement Crisp for The Financial Times
Ballet is an art obsessed with youth. Teenagers acquire stardom; fans - and directors - will give students the close attention usually reserved by racing trainers for promising colts; the glue factory looms for artists as their third decade closes. And yet . . . some of the greatest dancing I have seen came from ballerinas and premiers danseurs in middle life. All of which serves to celebrate the return to the Royal Ballet of Alessandra Ferri as Juliet on Wednesday night. Not that Ferri is an antique but, a leetle ungallantly, I record that she joined the Royal Ballet in 1980, and for five years her performances - notably in the MacMillan repertory - were as beautiful in style as in emotional force.
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Romeo and Juliet by Allen Robertson for The Times
NOT only has Alessandra Ferri been dancing Juliet for more than half her life, she has also played the role twice on film. The performance she gave at Covent Garden on Wednesday, the opening night of the Royal Ballet’s two-week run of Kenneth MacMillan’s staging of Romeo and Juliet, illustrates how an artist and a role can fuse into a single ravishing entity.
Ferri, who turned 40 last month, left the Royal for American Ballet Theatre in 1985. She’s back as a guest artist, substituting for Darcey Bussell, who has just undergone an operation on her ankle.
Her performance is a near miracle of emotional legibility, particularly in the final act as Romeo flees Verona and Juliet is left to cope on her own with a hostile, grown-up world closing in.
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Back to beguile Ismene Brown for The Daily Telegraph reviews Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden.
We go to see Romeo and Juliet again and again and again, jumping onto the emotional roller coaster thrillingly created by Shakespeare, Prokofiev and MacMillan, like addicts ever seeking that buzz. A love that we wish we could feel, that consumes the world, that has no future other than the present mind-sozzling ecstasy.
Twenty years ago, following the initial impact of the Seymour/Fonteyn generation, it was the 19-year-old Alessandra Ferri whom MacMillan seized on as the embodiment of Juliet - tiny, alabaster-pale, intensely solemn and explosively passionate. He chose her to make the Royal Ballet video in 1984, and the celluloid positively crackles with excitement whenever she appears.
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