Of course, his gothic ballet was choreographed long before his fall from grace. One can only ponder the tragic irony that it was his ballet about an outsider that would be (in both the literal and cultural manner) “canceled” and that Scarlett would, whatever the veracity of the allegations, find himself an outcast, branded in effect as a “monster.” 

Perhaps simply enough time has elapsed for the affair to have conveniently faded, but Tamara Rojo’s San Francisco can be lauded for resurrecting this masterful dance translation. Only a few years ago, its return would be harder to imagine. 

As for the monster in Scarlett’s ballet, his chances at redemption are more complicated. He wants a mate or else threatens to take the life of Victor’s wife-to-be, Elizabeth Laventa, played by the angelic Sasha de Sola. Victor refuses and the Creature shows up at his wedding, killing first his friend Henry Clerval and then Elizabeth. In a departure from the book, Victor, realizing that thanks to his scientific obsessions he has lost everyone he loved, takes his own life, leaving the creature alone in the world. Unlike Scarlett, the creature lives on. 

It’s difficult to imagine another company pulling off a story ballet better than this. San Francisco Ballet, known for its crystalline technique, which de Sola especially exemplifies, has mounted a production that is almost wonderfully old fashioned. With striking set visuals and choreography that straddles classical and contemporary, the production also features a moving score by Lowell Liebermann, who channeled the story's romanticist roots. 

Perhaps the raucous applause from the audience came from a relief that a ballet adaptation of a classic novel actually made the story more interesting. The sets, the character studies and the emotion place the audience within the gothic strangeness of nineteenth-century Geneva, at a moment of reckoning for a scientific revolution. Like any classic story, it did not need updating or deconstruction, because the themes speak for themselves and speak to us just as clearly. Scarlett may now be gone, but he leaves behind the ballet he created, and like the Creature standing at the edge of the sunset at the end of the ballet, perhaps it too can have another life.