Princes don’t always get happy endings. This very adult ballet chronicles the lead-up to the mysterious death of a real-life heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, complete with lavish costumes, passionate music by Liszt and a central role that presents the ultimate challenge for The Royal Ballet’s great leading men.

From the outset Kenneth MacMillan pushed ballet beyond the boundaries of fairytale kingdoms. Nowhere is this more compellingly successful than in Mayerling. It achieves a nervous balance between sprawling grandiosity and choreographic invention, beginning with the pomp of a royal wedding for Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. MacMillan immediately plunges us into a sordid world of degenerate depravity where sex is both a weapon and a last resort. Rudolf’s bride (a cousin he neither knows nor loves), her sister, his mistress and his mother are all tangled up in his obsessions.

The ballet compresses the final eight years of Rudolf’s life into a relentless downward spiral of political intrigue, drugs and murder. It culminates in 1889 with the suicide pact at the hunting lodge known as Mayerling between Rudolf and his 17-year-old mistress, the fervidly neurotic Mary Vetsera.

Run Time: Two hours 55 minutes | 2 Intervals