What happens to Hillarion after his encounter with the wilis? When he is pushed backstage by the 2 wilis it's not clear whether:

a) he is released

b) his dance-torture will continue backstage until death by offstage wilis

c) his pursuit by the wilis is accidentally cut short when the wilis find Albrecht and Giselle loitering backstage

d) nobody knows

Can anyone familliar with the libretto shed light on this?

in advance!

He is pushed into the lake and drowns. Or if the Trockaderos are doing it, he falls into the orchestra pit!

Cute, chrisk217! :rolleyes:
When you are watching Act II Giselle, there is no "backstage" -- at least not if the company dancing it has successfully transported you into another world! The Wilis, as cargill said, propel poor Hilarion to his death in the lake. The Wilis are in a forest glade (conveniently located next to a lake), turned eerie at night by their ghostly presence.

Wilis are spirits of women who have been betrayed by their lovers before their wedding day. They are not gentle sprits, but vengeful ones. Their very unearthliness, with no room for compassion for their unfortunate male victims makes them even more interesting.

The most chilling Wilis I have seen are portrayed by the Kirov/Maryinsky Ballet. Their turning, one by one, to swifty consign Hilarion to the lake is guaranteed to make one shudder. Myrthe, their queen, is implacable when Giselle pleads for the life of her love, Albrecht....when this role is done appropriately it is immensely powerful and a great vehicle for a strong and dramatic dancer.

This post of yours, Juliet, led me to do a search until I found a 3 year old thread on great Myrthas. I picked it up with a new post and hope others will continue to contribute to it. It's a very interesting subject.
Here's the link:
Great Myrthas

Yes, I remember this thread--we got quite involved!!!

In Gautier's description of the libretto, he says, "Good riddance, Hilarion. May the fishes eat your eyes." Makes Myrtha sound sort of like The Godmother.

I just thought that the lake was background decoration! (and I have a tape of ABT/Fracci/Bruyn that very clearly shows H. rolling on a slope and then a shot of willis reflected in the lake!!!) Thanks everyone

Perhaps, in one of the future egregious attempts to make Giselle accessible to a modern audience, there will be sound effects for the imagination-challenged like myself: a big "Splash" in the lake and then gurgles as Hillarion sinks... One shudders at the thought...

Now there's a thought! In a "rethinking" of Giselle, maybe myrtha and the wilis could be seen giving him cement overshoes??

:shhh: Shhh...we don't want to give anyone any ideas...

When you think of it, it's already there. She makes both Hilarion and Albrecht "offers they can't refuse"!

so in act one, albrecht could be a dashing young 'made man' who hits the village up for protection money?
(stop me...)

And then the local consigliere shows up in his armored Cadillac....

and albert's (he has to be albert) moll with the platinum hair and floor length fur coat gives giselle a ten carat tennis bracelet?

Yep, after the Mafia Rigoletto the Mafia Giselle...
Giselle caught up in a mob war...

Hillarion: He's lying Giselle ... Look at his Thomson machinegun, look at the blonde...
Giselle: Oh!
Albrecht: That's my family Giselle, it's not me.
Giselle: I know it was you Albrechto. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!

Then Hillarion goes off to sleep with the fishes...

i see it now, act 1 is set in brooklyn and act 2 in .....

..... Newark, New Jersey, on the banks of the lower Passaic River, which everyone knows is contaminated with hazardous substances including dioxin, PCBs, DDT, heavy metals and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which render a heavy, ominous haze to the atmosphere. Mercifully for Hilarion, he dies the instant he hits the water (making the cement shoes totally unnecessary).

Gee, I better move quick!

Living in horrible Newark, NJ, I may start to glow in the dark.

Folks, my neighborhood, in Newark, has been granted Historical Landmark status
for it's beautifully perserved early 20th Century houses. And it is backed by Branchbrook Park, designed by the the guy who designed Central Park in NYC.
It's a much smaller prototype.

The park also sort of competes with DC on the Spring Japanese cherry blossom
displays. While it doesn't approach DC in the number of trees, it does have more varieties, so the display lasts longer than in DC. So we are even sort of famous here.

If Hillarion gets tossed into Forest Hill, he might even want to stay. It';s not exactly a fate worse than death.


Look, I know the whole scenario is just a whimsical thing and isn't serious (I hope)
but getting where I live picked on all the time gets old.

Richard

Sorry, Richard.
I used to drive the New Jersey highways and was hit in the face with the industrial pollution and awful smell before I even passed the "Elizabeth" sign. Now, of course, that's not Newark, but no one out of area knows anything about Elizabeth, New Jersey. Newark is close enough to warrant a cigar. I know parts of Newark are as beautiful as most of the state is. Indeed, a large part of my family lives in Jersey and it is a state I love for the childhood memories it gave me.

In keeping with the theme, Newark was a natural choice since a notable Mafia family is/was located there. The pollution info came right from a Newark internet site -- I always do my research! Let me ask you -- do you ever take a dip in the Passaic? I have lived near the shores of beautiful Lake Ontario for over 3 decades and Hilarion wouldn't fare too well were he tossed in that toxic tea either!

I hate having to explain my banter .....

ok ok, how about we send hillarion to the pine barrens and make myrtha look like the jersey devil? i found this description of the area:

"It is a haunted place where the blood red waters of the Mullica River rise in the bog of a New Jersey town.... The cedars that line the river banks stain the waters their deep color. Stunted pitch pines stand motionless, their shallow roots anchored precariously in gleaming white stands. Silence reigns."

No, no, no.

I really knew it was just in jest. The Passaic River really used to be horrible. I've lived in this area my whole life. I grew up in a small town on the east side of the river and as a kid would go to the river bank, you could see huge pipes coming out of the factories dumping this horrible looking fluid into the river. This was the 60s, a whole different era.

Honestly, no I wouldn't go into the river even today. But it is largely cleaned up.
There are fish in it and fishermen actually fish off the piers. It's been many years since the last three headed fish was spotted (joke).

Again there are still bad sites along the river, the worst ones are in Belleville, but like Elizabeth, no one would recognize that.

As an alternative to the Pine Barrens, we could keep Hillarion in NJ, and have Myrtha have her minions push him into a cranberry bog

of course we could make the wilis teamsters and myrtrha jimmy hoffa...then the location, hmmmmmmmm

Thanks everyone - this is fun!

how about the Central Park reservoir?

Well, it couldn't be any worse than the first Giselle performed in Havana, where the Wilis, when not dancing, strolled around the stage, sat on the scenery and lit up their cigars.

Born near the ancient shores of New Jersey's Great Swamp, I just may be the Jersey swamp devil... come to think of it, I think my high school's teams were named it... But I'm sitting here trying to picture what the traditional ballet pantomime for "May the fishes eat your eyes" would look like.... Personally, I'd like to consign "I did it My Waaaaaayyyyyy" to someplace the egrets can't peck at.

But back to old Hilarion... I was searching for info on different productions versions of that diagonal line... having recently been quite taken with St Petersbufg Academic Ballet (oh.. drat... I just give up on the company name thing...) Petukov's St. Petersburg company.... version of it... so dreamlike, slow-motion, special-effect-ish, dizzy distortion aura for Hilarion... Where is this from? Rehearsal coaches were listed in the program: E. Sherstneva, I. Kirsanova, D. Vovk, V. Sergeeva, P. Stalinskiy, L. Leontyeva. Do those names ring a bell for anyone? Is it quite common to do it this way?