Mayerling

To mark the entry of Mayerling into the Paris Opera Ballet's repertoire, Stéphane Bern offers us qa number of keys to understanding the appeal of royal families. Kenneth MacMillan's ballet, created in 1978, is based on the true story of Rudolf, the crown prince of Austria-Hungary. Stéphane Bern discusses the symbolic role played by kings, queens, princes and princesses in our culture, from an early age through children's stories. Royal families, mirrors of everyone's families, offer everyone a common base, between political reality and mythology. Royal figures, which have become archetypes, continue to fascinate and keep alive a certain imaginary of the monarchy.

There are the historical facts and beyond their resonance, their impact. The Mayerling tragedy is therefore open to all manner of interpretations. Here is an heir who is unhappy in his domestic life, who has made a marriage of reason. Here is his lover Mary Vetsera. Both are found dead in the hunting lodge at Mayerling. Is this a romantic drama, an impossible love that ends in a double suicide? Does this suicide conceal a political drama? Rodolf frequented progressive circles, unlike his father. Was he murdered? All hypotheses are possible.

If this personal and family drama is of universal appeal, it is because these are emblematic figures who speak to our subconscious. As children, we are told stories about kings, queens, fairies, princesses... As Bruno Bettelheim said in Psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales, this takes us back to our collective imagination.

Rudolf represented more than his own self. He was meant to prolong a dynasty that drew its history from the deepest roots of an immense empire. For a time, his suicide overshadowed the future. Only at a symbolic level, of course, because there is always another heir, and others took his place. The death of the Hapsburg heir affected not only the Austrian people but all peoples. A whole mosaic of nationalities saw in him the bearer of the future. Rudolf no longer belonged to himself.

Kings and queens are historical figures who transcend themselves. In so doing they become symbolic. These characters believe they are human beings, but are in fact personalities who have sacrificed their personal lives in order to live a collective adventure. They are not always aware of this and do not necessarily accept it either. We saw this in the British royal family with Diana. She desperately needed to be happy, but we don't ask symbolic figures to be happy... They are sacrificial figures.

They hold up a mirror in which everyone reads what they want to read: ancestral virtues, for example, aristocratic values. Kings and queens are of a different essence, they rise above us mere mortals. This is what we want to believe, of course, but all operas, books, films, novels and all mythology have been made up of this, since the beginning of time. These personalities are above the human condition, halfway between the agora and Olympus.

We need these figures. They come from elsewhere, they bear the patina of time, they have a stronger historical heritage than we perceive in our genealogy and our own history, they live over a long period of time, whereas today we live in the immediate. This is what the Queen of England represented, for example.

Royal families are bearers of history but also of identity, even national identity, since they generally bear the name of the country over which they reign. This is why they bring us together, symbolically, over time. These families offer us a whole palette of colours. Theodore Zeldin said: "If you take the royal family of England, you have every palette of society, everyone feels represented by one of the figures." So you have the supporters of Kate Middleton and those of Meghan Markle, the flawless or the rebellious. There's the black sheep, like Harry, and the "perfect boy", William. Of course, they are often neurotic figures. This family holds a mirror up to you, they are archetypes. That's what makes the myth.

Many works of art are inspired by the world of the monarchy and its imagery. How does a French observer feel about them? There is undoubtedly a bit of nostalgia, a bit of guilt too, because let's not forget that we cut off our King's head. The act of regicide is similar to parricide, which we can see in novels and operas. The father has been killed. There is something quite violent about it. Tragic. There is also a nostalgia for a golden age. There is something sacred about it, both mythological and religious. It touches on something that makes sense, and that makes a nation. In the United Kingdom, we recently saw a whole nation gather around a coffin. It is a very powerful image. We couldn't transpose that to France. It's becoming complicated to unite around a common value. All this fuels a kind of sweet nostalgia, an unfulfilled dream. De Gaulle said: "The French have a taste for princes and they go abroad to find them." Great Britain and Monaco are our substitute monarchies. We had the Sun King, they only have the Sleeping King: a symbolic figure, who doesn't do much, but as long as he's there, we can sleep easy. These figures anchor us in history and give us a sense of permanence.

I was lucky enough to see Nureyev and Baryshnikov dance and it was an unforgettable experience. I also remember a Swan Lake I was lucky enough to see at the Mariinsky. And what about the Paris Opera's Défilé du Ballet, with all the dancers, from the Étoiles to the pupils? It is a magnificent moment, showing off the Palais Garnier in all its depth. We were talking about the Sun King. It was Louis XIV who created the Royal Academy of Dance, the ancestor of the Paris Opera, and organised dance in France. It is both a very free and a very disciplined art. I have always been fascinated by the talent of dancers, the way they express with their bodies the emotions conveyed by music. Dance expresses all human passions, which can be personal, intimate, like Giselle, and at the same time historical, like Mayerling. These great dramas are the common basis of mythologies that move us all and bring us together.

^{Interview by Antony Desvaux (September 2022)}