Vienna State Opera

State Ballet: When Rügen was still in Sicily

Bohemia's shepherds in a blaze of color

(Bild: Staatsballett / Ashley Taylor)

Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" as a full-length ballet? Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon dared to set it to music by Joby Talbot. The whole thing has now landed at the Vienna State Opera.

It's better to leave your mind and taste buds at the checkroom. With "The Winter's Tale", the star Christopher Wheeldon has choreographed one of the weaker Shakespeares into an evening filler. Perhaps because it features two angry fathers? One king in Bohemia, the other in Sicily.

The movements and steps are brisk, with fingers stabbing the air with jealousy. Is it a special passion for feet that the pointe shoes have to stilt and splay around in grotesque contortions? So it goes through the dark family drama with a conciliatory ending.

It only becomes cheerful when the royal children and the Bohemian shepherds celebrate the spring festival. In its unabashedly colorful folklore mix, however, it looks like Kirtag in Calcutta. And it sounds more like it, from Joby Talbot's score, which moves routinely between minimal and film music and which Christoph Koncz and the orchestra execute in exemplary fashion.

The fact that C. D. Friedrich's "Chalk Cliffs on Rügen" then descends over Sicily as a serious prospectus only brings a smile.

The wonderful dancers such as Brendan Saye (Leontes), Hyo-Jung Kang (Hermione), Ketevan Papava (Paulina), Davide Dato (Florizel) and Ioanna Avraam (Perdita) could have done with better winter material.