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.
What's it going to take to make our home team bring this production to New York?