Discover what critics have been saying about the Royal Ballet’s revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling here: 

Financial Times: ***** “A tremendous ballet. A tremendous ensemble. Mayerling, Kenneth MacMillan’s study of the deaths of Archduke Rudolf and his mistress Mary Vetsera at the Royal Hunting Lodge in 1889, is a consummate theatrical machine.”

The Stage: ***** “With the cream of the Royal Ballet at the peak of its powers this is a night of stupendous, transcendent ballet whose delirious momentum leaves one breathless.”

Spectator: “A couple of Mayerling’s scenes feel like padding (dancing housemaids, anyone?) but few three-act ballets offer such a wealth of secondary roles and few companies have the strength in depth to cast them four times over.”

The Guardian: **** “it looks and sounds like a conventionally mainstream work, with its swags of period costume and lush Liszt score. Yet as it voyages into an emotional wasteland of sex, psychosis and addiction.”

The Independent:  ***** ” the Royal Ballet’s superb revival of Mayerling, Edward Watson and Natalia Osipova don’t so much goad each other to greater heights as to darker depths.”

The Telegraph: **** “An imperfect evening, but it still packed a punch.”

Bachtrack: **** “It is a work that gives full vent to the horror-laden darkness of MacMillan’s expressionism.”

British Theatre Guide: “A maelstrom of heated emotion, Mayerling is intense and absorbing with a paranoid narcissist as its beating heart.”

Exeunt Magazine: “The Royal Ballet is on mighty form in Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling, delineating the late choreographer’s dark vision of lust, morphine and mental instability with exquisite dramatic panache.”

Mayerling continues to play at the Royal Opera House until the 13th May. For more information and to book tickets visit: http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/mayerling-by-kenneth-macmillan.