The Last Bow: Dorothée Gilbert’s Farewell
Dorothée Gilbert’s final performance at the Paris Opera (Palais Garnier). Manon, 15 October 2026. © Julien Benhamou, Paris Opera
22 October 2026
I have never been so glad about buying a ticket in advance. I confess, I often sin by buying tickets at the last minute, sometimes the very last, on the day of the performance itself, since this is common practice in French theatres. But this time it wouldn’t have worked.
A couple of days before the anticipated show, I was at the Opéra Garnier library, and on my way out, passing the box office, I asked out of curiosity whether any tickets were left for October 15. The lady rolled her eyes in a very French way: ohlàlà, no, everything was snapped up back in the spring. On the day of the show, she said, we’d sell tickets two hours before curtain, but, she warned me, the line would form by noon, if not earlier. Spoiler: it did. The huge queue nearly wrapped around the building.
Photos by Victoria Grigorenko
Luckily, I had my ticket, and I arrived half an hour early to wander through the splendid grand foyer and people-watch on this very special day. Ballet lovers in Paris and well beyond had awaited it with bittersweet anticipation: Dorothée Gilbert’s farewell to stage.
The rules of the Paris Opera Ballet are uncompromising: at forty-two, a dancer must officially retire. Dorothée Gilbert joined the company in 2000 at the age of seventeen and rose through the ranks from the corps de ballet to étoile by the age of twenty-five. Gilbert actually celebrated her forty-third birthday on 25 September 2026, but it had been agreed with the management of the Paris Opera that she could leave at the beginning of the 2026/27 season. She chose to close her twenty-six-year career, marked by leading roles in the classical and neoclassical repertoire, with Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. It was in this very ballet, back in 2015, that she first danced with the then-very-young and as yet unknown Hugo Marchand, now a star dancer himself. The stage partnership that started there became, over the next ten years, one of the most praised by audiences and critics alike, making the evening feel all the more moving.
Dorothée Gilbert as Manon and Hugo Marchand as Des Grieux, 15 October 2026. © Marie Helena Buckley, Paris Opera
Contrary to ballet etiquette, the first wave of applause crashed down right in the middle of the act, at the ballerina’s first entrance into the bustle of the town square. After that, everyone watched, spellbound, as the story of Manon and Des Grieux unfolded, a tale of love and betrayal that I won’t retell, since you surely know it. The audience knew it too, but it’s remarkable how your perception of something seemingly familiar, the plot, the choreography, changes when you think you’re witnessing it for the last time. A special kind of sensitivity emerges, a subtlety of perception. You catch every movement, every gesture, every emotion, which the star duo was particularly generous with that evening, to the point that it was sometimes hard to tell the character’s feeling from the performer’s.
Dorothée Gilbert as Manon and Hugo Marchand as Des Grieux, 15 October 2026. © Marie Helena Buckley, Paris Opera
After the final scene, with Des Grieux carrying Manon’s body in his arms, the curtain came down and immediately flew back up. Dorothée Gilbert, in tears, Hugo Marchand holding her tightly in his arms: the first bow. The standing ovation went on for some twenty-five minutes, and the curtain rose and fell countless times. I kept wondering what it must be like to stand on that stage at such a moment, to live through emotions in front of an audience that aren’t a character’s but your own, and surely mixed ones. What I knew for certain was that I was very grateful to myself for buying that ticket in time. Besides Manon, I got to experience the closing of a chapter in the personal story of one of the brightest dancers of her generation.
The performance was also shown as a livestream, a first for an étoile’s farewell performance. You can watch the recorded performance until 14 November 2026 on Paris Opera Play.
The final ovation. Note how little stars are raining on the étoile (French for “star,” the highest rank at the Paris Opera Ballet). Photos by © Maria Helena Buckly and © Julien Benhamou, Paris Opera