Led by Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis, they target Albrecht when he comes to mourn at Giselle's grave, but her great love frees him from their grasp.

They gain their power in numbers as they effortlessly move through dramatic patterns and synchronized movements and control the stage with their long tulle dresses and stoic expressions, creating an ethereal atmosphere that builds as they gradually close in on Albrecht.

The traditional choreography that has been passed down to the present day derives primarily from the revivals staged by Marius Petipa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg.

With the help of his squire, he hides his fine attire, hunting horn, and sword before coaxing her out of her house to romance her as the harvest festivities begin.

She discourages a relationship between Giselle and Loys, thinking Hilarion would be a better match, and disapproves of her fondness for dancing, due to the strain on her heart.

In the original version, taken up again recently by a production of the ROB, Giselle stabs herself with Albrecht's sword, which explains why her body is laid to rest in the forest, in unhallowed ground, where the Wilis have the power to summon her.

Late at night, Hilarion mourns at Giselle's forest grave, but is frightened away by the arrival of the Wilis, the ghostly spirits of maidens betrayed by their lovers.

The other spirits return to their graves at daybreak, but Giselle has broken through the chains of hatred and vengeance that control the Wilis, and is thus released from their powers and will haunt the forest no more.

He had read Heinrich Heine's description of the Wilis in De l'Allemagne and thought these evil spirits would make a "pretty ballet".

[13] Gautier thought Heine's Wilis and Hugo's fifteen-year-old Spanish girl would make a good ballet story.

[22] Grisi danced Giselle with Lucien Petipa as her lover Albrecht, Jean Coralli as the gamekeeper Hilarion, and Adèle Dumilâtre as Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis.

[23] Typical of the theatrical practices of the time, Giselle was preceded by an excerpt from another production—in this case, the third act of Rossini's opera, Mosè in Egitto.

He thought the flute and harp music accompanying Giselle as she disappeared into her grave at ballet's end "full of tragic beauty".

Gautier praised their performance in act 2, writing that the two dancers made the act "a real poem, a choreographic elegy full of charm and tenderness ... More than one eye that thought it was seeing only [dance] was surprised to find its vision obscured by a tear—something that does not often happen in a ballet ... Grisi danced with a perfection ... that places her in the ranks between Elssler and Taglioni ...

Souvenirs were sold, pictures of Grisi as Giselle were printed, and sheet music arrangements were made for social dancing.

One dance historian wrote:By no stretch of the imagination can the score of Giselle be called great music, but it cannot be denied that it is admirably suited to its purpose.

It is danceable, and it has colour and mood attuned to the various dramatic situations ... As we listen today to these haunting melodies composed over a century ago, we quickly become conscious of their intense nostalgic quality, not unlike the opening of a Victorian Keepsake, between whose pages lies an admirably preserved Valentine—in all the glory of its intricate paper lace and symbolic floral designs—which whispers of a leisured age now forever past.

Immediately following the first répétition générale of Giselle on the stage of the Paris Opéra, the danseuse Nathalie Fitz-James used her influence as the mistress of an influential patron of the theatre to have a pas inserted for herself into the ballet.

[36] For Carlotta Grisi's performances as Giselle with the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Perrot commissioned the composer Cesare Pugni to score a new pas de cinq for the ballerina that was added to the first tableau.

Marius Petipa commissioned an additional pas de deux from the composer Ludwig Minkus for the choreographer's 1884 revival of Giselle for the ballerina Maria Gorshenkova.

The second variation was added by Petipa to the first act of the ballet for the ballerina Emma Bessone's début as Giselle at the Mariinsky Theatre in September of 1887, and for this occasion the composer Riccardo Drigo wrote the music.

[40] The music was never used again after Bessone's departure from Russia until Agrippina Vaganova added it to the Peasant pas de deux for the Kirov Ballet's production of Giselle in 1932.

[41] The inclusion of this variation in the Peasant pas de deux remains part of the Mariinsky Theatre's performance tradition of Giselle to the present day.

This variation, sometimes dubbed as the Pas seul, was arranged 1887 for the ballerina Elena Cornalba's performance in a revival of Saint-Léon's Fiametta.

There was much confusion at that time as to who was responsible for composing the music, leading many ballet historians and musicologists to credit Ludwig Minkus as the author, a misconception which still persists.

He wanted to revive the costumes of the original production but dropped the idea, believing the critics would charge him with a lack of imaginative creativity.

The gas jets of the footlights and those overhead suspended in the flies were turned low to create a mood of mystery and terror.

[59][60] In January 1911 Nijinsky danced in Giselle at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet, with the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna in attendance.

A 2012 novel by author Guy Mankowski entitled Letters from Yelena follows the journey of a principal dancer as she performs the role of Giselle in Saint Petersburg.

The 2019 South Korean TV series Angel's Last Mission: Love features a blind ballerina who is to play the title role of Giselle in a production staged by the Fantasia Ballet Company.