By Gary Smith With his 1978 Mayerling, English choreographer Kenneth MacMillan went to some very dark places to tell a historic story of love, lust, and troubled politics, played out against a fever-pitched passion that threatened a kingdom. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, his mistress Countess Larisch, his wife Princess Stephanie of Belgium, and young
The cemetery at Heiligenkreuz before dawn: this is where Kenneth MacMillan’s narrative masterwork, Mayerling, begins and ends. A coffin lies upstage, rain pours down, and Bratfisch, a popular entertainer and cab driver for Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary, droops in grief. The coffin is for Baroness Mary Vetsera, the young mistress of Rudolf, the caddish anti-hero