I don't think I said it was Gillian Murphy's best Swan Lake, 'though I do feel it was one of her best, but rather that I admire her willingness, and generosity, to vary, and ultimately grow, her Odette/Odile. The partnership chemistry with Carreno is Swan Lake specific, perhaps springing from a Saturday matinee performance a few summers ago when a boy in the audience threw a temper tantrum just after the White Swan adagio began. I thought they'd stop the music and restart when the kid was removed (he did leave, kicking and screaming), but they continued. Carreno seemed to focus so intensely on Odette that they continued and built to an incredibly powerful connection. What "should" have been a memorably bad day at the ballet turned into a transcendent one. I grant that event may have imposed a partnership connection in my mind, but I think I'll keep it since I have been rewarded by seeing that pairing in Swan Lake every performance since! Credit that kid with selling some ABT tickets, I suppose.
Certainly no knock on Corella was intended. I was lucky enough to see his initiation into a lead role (Don Q!), brillianly partnered by Paloma, who'd been initiated into Kitri by Bocca the season before. Their electricity would have lit the city during a Con Ed blackout! And still will!