France Roland Petit’s Notre-Dame de Paris: Dancers of Paris Opera Ballet, Orchestra of the Paris National Opera / Jean-François Verdier (conductor), Opéra Bastille, Paris, 7.12.2025. (JO’D)
Created on the dancers of Paris Opera Ballet in 1965, Roland Petit’s Notre-Dame de Paris takes its inspiration from the story of love and death in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. With costumes by Yves Saint Laurent, set design by René Allio and a percussive score composed by Maurice Jarre (played with vigour by the Orchestra of the Paris National Opera under Jean-François Verdier), the ballet does what The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet says Roland Petit, as a choreographer, did: combine ‘chic, sex and theatricality in his own unique way.’
But for all that, the audience at this matinee performance in the Opèra Bastille might not have been so attentive, so entranced, had it not been for the four dancers in the principal roles. Jérémy-Loup Quer, as the hunchbacked Quasimodo, constantly engages the audience, through his eyes, in his character’s feelings. Roxane Stojanov, the only dancer in pointe shoes, is a dazzling Esmeralda, supple and expressive. Antonio Conforti is physically well-suited to the ‘caricature’ role of Phœbus, Captain of the King’s Archers, the ‘blond, alpha male’. Thomas Docquir as Frollo, the murderous archdeacon of Notre-Dame, obsessed with Esmeralda, shows a tautness and tension in his body that reflects inner conflicts.
Around these four are the always active and energetic dancers of the corps de ballet. Their extended sequences of ensemble dance demonstrate Roland Petit’s skill at creating striking effects with groups of dancers. (This is also to be seen in his choreography for Hollywood films of the 1950s such as Hans Christian Andersen and Daddy Long Legs). Sometimes the sequences here seem to lead to climaxes that don’t happen; or their effects are weakened through repetition. Sometimes the ballet’s extreme stylization has negative consequences for the drama. It is a distraction, for example, that the costumes for the King’s Archers echo the Mondrian Dress in Yves Saint Laurent’s 1965 fall/winter collection. Sometimes the choreography itself, for a Mass, for the archers on horseback, explains why the word ‘slight’ has been applied to Roland Petit’s work.
Where Notre-Dame de Paris isn’t slight is in its pas de deux. It was with a piece for two dancers, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort in 1946, that this choreographer created ‘the archetype of French post-war ballet’. English National Ballet performed it at the London Coliseum in 2018. An intense pas de deux for men from Proust ou les Intermittances du cœur (1974) featured in Ivan Putrov’s Men in Motion at the same venue a year earlier.
Notre-Dame de Paris reaches a similar intensity, in Act II, when Esmeralda and Quasimodo discover a mutual affection. And when Frollo later tries to control Esmeralda, then ‘break’ her for rejecting his advances. It is in scenes which deal with emotions expressed through the body, rather than in its large-scale sections, that the ballet succeeds. Not that the latter could be said to fail. As the ballet progressed, the increasingly enthusiastic audience began to applaud every section as it ended. But it was through the more ‘intimate’ scenes, and the dancers in them, that this audience must have come to care so much; because of them they cheered and applauded so loudly during the curtain calls.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Image: Roland Petit’s Notre-Dame de Paris © Yonathan Kellerman/OnP
Creatives:
Choreography and Staging – Roland Petit
Music – Maurice Jarre
Libretto – Roland Petit after Victor Hugo
Set design – René Allio
Costumes – Yves Saint Laurent
Lighting design – Jean-Michel Désiré
Ballet restaged by Luigi Bonino
Cast:
Esmeralda – Roxane Stojanov
Quasimodo – Jérémy-Loup Quer
Frollo – Thomas Docquir
Phœbus – Antonio Conforti
With the étoiles, premières danseuses, premiers danseurs and the corps de ballet of Paris Opera Ballet