Just reading this little preview paragraph by Judith Mackrell in The Guardian started Haglund's spine tingling, his limbs shaking, and his breathing, well, heavy:
The Royal opens its new season with a nod to the 80th anniversary of Kenneth MacMillan's birth, reviving the choreographer's 1978 ballet Mayerling. It's a work that's at the core of the MacMillan canon, mixing his gift for large-scale ballet spectacle with his willingness to push the form beyond its comfortable boundaries. Telling the true tale of Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro- Hungarian Empire, the ballet explores a weak personality warping under the pressure of a dysfunctional family and a paranoid political situation. Rudolf's violent, ambivalent relationships with women are charted by MacMillan in a series of shockingly charged pas de deux, culminating in his death by suicide at the Mayerling hunting lodge, along with his 17-year-old mistress Mary Vetsera. Opening cast is Edward Watson reprising his manic, febrile interpretation of Rudolf and Mara Galeazzi as Vetsera.
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