The world’s most prestigious ballet company brings its classic Giselle to Australia in 2013.

Paris Opera Ballet has announced its return to our shores in January 2013 for an exclusive Sydney season of Giselle at the Capitol Theatre.

The details of the tour were unveiled today at a launch hosted by critic Leo Schofield. Mathias Heymann and Eve Grinsztajn, two stars of the Ballet, flew to Sydney to preview the production in a special guest performance.

Schofield called France’s oldest ballet troupe the “Rolls Royce of dance”, praising the company for “cherishing its classical traditions while embracing the latest choreographic invention”.

Under the direction of Brigitte Lefèvre, with updated choreography by Patrice Bart and Eugène Polyakov, the Paris Opera Ballet will stage Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, one of the best-loved classic “white” ballets in the repertory.

The 2013 performances come six years after the Paris Opera Ballet made its Australian debut with Swan Lake and Jewels, also in Sydney. Two years later, the company returned with Minkus’s exotic La Bayadère exclusively for Brisbane audiences.

Giselle, first performed in Paris in 1841, represents the pinnacle of 19th-century French Romanticism with its tale of a young maiden who fights to save her noble lover.

The run of 13 performances...