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The Royal Ballet: Mayerling, London, April/May 2017


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In the hypothetical situation that they HAD filmed it, there were some significant mishaps along the way (Romany Pajdak's costume incident on first night... somebody's train getting trodden on tonight at the very opening of Act 1 and nearly causing a pile-up... and did I imagine that Osipova briefly slipped tonight during the scene with Larisch and the cards?) so there might have been a little patching required from alternative filmed performances! I don't recall anything too memorable going wrong with the middle one.

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Osipova was staggeringly tragic today. The third performance of this cast was not just their best but truly outstanding. Already in the first act all scenes with other characters were not just masterfully performed but set pulse racing. Watson excelled in portrayal of human anxiety and hopelessness. He and Natasha so gave themselves to each other, clung to each other and created a great depth of feeling. A stunning duo!
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What a night. Osipova was magnificent and having seen all three performances, this was a fitting finale.  She showed love and passion tonight as well as obsession and I couldn't take my eyes off her. Ed, well, he is Rudolf and tonight he was just off the scale wonderful.

 

There was a wonderful moment in the third act when all you could hear was Ed and Natalia breathing, that's how quiet the house was.  

 

I hope I see it's like again but somehow I doubt it.

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5 hours ago, balletyas said:

The atmos in the Theatre has been electric and I get a real sense that the audience is loving a proper narrative ballet to get their teeeth into after months and months of plotless triples.

 

Surely, balletyas, you jest - or - in any event - exaggerate.  The last RB Sleeping Beauty (the king of all narratives) was on Tuesday, 14th March of this year and the first Mayerling (and some have argued - even here - that its narrative is over-stuffed) was on Saturday, 1st April.  By my calculation that is less than two and a half weeks apart.  Moreover, there are those I believe who would argue that there are narratives (i.e., "meaningful tales of human interaction") aplenty carved into Balanchine's Jewels.  It's just that they are not stitched in a strictly linear fashion so as to demand a page and a half explanation in the cast sheet.  

 

Agree Osipova incandescent last night.   The searing spectre of her rolled back 'Willi' eyes at the tag end of the penultimate scene had the shutters of  my own fluttering.  Not soon to be forgetten.  Watson went out in glorious style - and I thought I caught a flash of understandable relief at the rise of his own solo call.  Cowley, Campbell, Nunez, Yanowsky and all four of those obstinately dogged Hungarian officers cauterised the imagination in their vividly dramatic goosing of our heart ducts. Hayward and Avis went beyond that admirable marker in giving even fuller and eloquent flesh to their stated character's skeletons.  In all: HIGHLY memorable.  

 

Edited by Bruce Wall
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Agree with everyone about the amazing show last night. But just checked Twitter and found a different opinion:-

 

>>Loved bits of #ROHMayerling tonight, but definitely not a fan of the Watson/Osipova partnership. It left me cold. Thought there was more passion in the wedding night scene than act 3. Normally I think Rudolf is Ed's greatest role.

 

Don't blame the messenger, I just think it's interesting how people experience things in such different ways.

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Just to throw in a contrary opinion last night didn't do it for me at all. It was my first time seeing this cast and possibly if I hadn't such a recent memory of those two searing Morera/Bonelli shows I'd have felt differently. I found Yanowsky exceptional, what a star she is and how we will miss her.  Osipova was crazed in the final pdd in a way I haven't seen anyone do before but it mostly fell short of my expectations. 

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2 hours ago, Bruce Wall said:

 

Surely, balletyas, you jest - or - in any event - exaggerate.  The last RB Sleeping Beauty (the king of all narratives) was on Tuesday, 14th March of this year and the first Mayerling (and some have argued - even here - that its narrative is over-stuffed) was on Saturday, 1st April.  By my calculation that is less than two and a half weeks apart.  Moreover, there are those I believe who would argue that there are narratives (i.e., "meaningful tales of human interaction") aplenty carved into Balanchine's Jewels.  It's just that they are not stitched in a strictly linear fashion so as to demand a page and a half explanation in the cast sheet.  

 

Agree Osipova incandescent last night.   The searing spectre of her rolled back 'Willi' eyes at the tag end of the penultimate scene had the shutters of  my own fluttering.  Not soon to be forgetten.  Watson went out in glorious style - and I thought I caught a flash of understandable relief at the rise of his own solo call.  Cowley, Campbell, Nunez, Yanowsky and all four of those obstinately dogged Hungarian officers cauterised the imagination in their vividly dramatic goosing of our heart ducts. Hayward and Avis went beyond that admirable marker in giving even fuller and eloquent flesh to their stated character's skeletons.  In all: HIGHLY memorable.  

 

Yes Bruce I was indeed exaggerating - of course we have just had the marvellous SB but its narrative is hardly very intricate and doesn't give that much scope to the great dance actors in the company although it does of course demand the finest dancing.  I suppose my mind was wandering back a bit to what has felt like a slew of beautifully danced, very contemporary but slight one acts that don't engage the average non balletomane in quite the same way as Mayerling.

I just felt that the audience was genuinely excited and that has to be a good thing. 

 

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7 hours ago, RuthE said:

In the hypothetical situation that they HAD filmed it, there were some significant mishaps along the way (Romany Pajdak's costume incident on first night... somebody's train getting trodden on tonight at the very opening of Act 1 and nearly causing a pile-up... and did I imagine that Osipova briefly slipped tonight during the scene with Larisch and the cards?) so there might have been a little patching required from alternative filmed performances! I don't recall anything too memorable going wrong with the middle one.

Yes I think they would obviously have had to film it twice in the usual way - partly because of all those dress hazards and yes Osi did slip...

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Don't they film a lot of performances for RB use anyway? or did I imagine that? in which case, I like to think that when I am very ancient I shall be able to watch it ALL on the equivalent of youtube that will then be available- perhaps in amazing 4D, so it will be like being on the stage (not sure I fancy that so much in Act 3 Mayerling)

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Geoff said:

Agree with everyone about the amazing show last night. But just checked Twitter and found a different opinion:-

 

>>Loved bits of #ROHMayerling tonight, but definitely not a fan of the Watson/Osipova partnership. It left me cold. Thought there was more passion in the wedding night scene than act 3. Normally I think Rudolf is Ed's greatest role.

 

Don't blame the messenger, I just think it's interesting how people experience things in such different ways.

 

That is true Geoff - it does seem to be the case that people simply react differently to different people. We're all different after all, and the way we react must be made up of endless complicated elements. And sometimes we ourselves change, and begin to appreciate performers who have previously left us cold (and perhaps vice versa). I suppose we should always aim to be open to new appreciations and feelings, and to acknowledge quality even if it doesn't personally move us or appeal to us. But there will always be differences. Which is all fine and good!

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Have seen three casts - Soares to come tomorrow. For me the stand out  cast was Bonelli/ Morera. I think they seemed more attuned to Macmillan's roots in classical ballet. Badly explained, I know, but a look at the David Wall version might show what I mean. I love the Ed Watson DVD and in fact got to know the ballet from that before I saw it on stage, but to me his interpretation,and sometimes movements, seem more rooted in contemporary dance. I would be more than happy to see either performance at any time and I suppose it's really just a matter of taste. Haven't seen many, if any, comments about McRae. I felt it was beautifully danced, but a bit manic, even for Rudolph!

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2 minutes ago, ninamargaret said:

Have seen three casts - Soares to come tomorrow. For me the stand out  cast was Bonelli/ Morera. I think they seemed more attuned to Macmillan's roots in classical ballet. Badly explained, I know, but a look at the David Wall version might show what I mean. I love the Ed Watson DVD and in fact got to know the ballet from that before I saw it on stage, but to me his interpretation,and sometimes movements, seem more rooted in contemporary dance.

 

That's very interesting, ninamargaret. I was actually wondering on the way home last night if Watson was really always more of a contemporary dancer, because his movement is rarely pure classical (and less so as time has gone on, I think). But I concluded that if he had taken that route, he wouldn't have danced Mayerling... So I'm very glad he didn't make that choice.

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33 minutes ago, bridiem said:

 

That's very interesting, ninamargaret. I was actually wondering on the way home last night if Watson was really always more of a contemporary dancer, because his movement is rarely pure classical (and less so as time has gone on, I think). But I concluded that if he had taken that route, he wouldn't have danced Mayerling... So I'm very glad he didn't make that choice.

I think it's a question of two different interpretations. You're quite right - if Watson had taken the purely classical route I dread to think what we'd have missed out on!  I just thank my lucky stars that I've been able to see two such marvellous performances in this run. Just out of interest, we talk about the Ashton or Balanchine styles,  is there such a thing as the Macmillan style?

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5 hours ago, Geoff said:

Don't blame the messenger, I just think it's interesting how people experience things in such different ways.

 

The above posts and our varying views are fascinating. I was standing to applaud Watson at his second performance but, last night, despite his amazing Act 3, I felt emotionally less involved.

 

I don't know whether Ed has actually said that this run will be his last as Rudolf? Mayerling will certainly not be the same without him.

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1 hour ago, capybara said:

 

The above posts and our varying views are fascinating. I was standing to applaud Watson at his second performance but, last night, despite his amazing Act 3, I felt emotionally less involved.

 

I don't know whether Ed has actually said that this run will be his last as Rudolf? Mayerling will certainly not be the same without him.

I was wondering the same.  Perhaps we are all just assuming?

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First time of seeing this - first thoughts are that it is non stop action and very disturbing subject matter.

 

The whole cast was magnificent. Watson and Osipova gave a shocking and visceral performance. Where Osipova was dancing with the skull she could have been Salome dancing with the head of John the Baptist.

 

How privileged I felt to be in the presence of such artists, their commitment to their art was absolute. Watson was epic. 

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I've seen Ed Watson dance this role on several occasions and have always admired.  Last night was my first viewing of this cast, having already seen 3 other performances from other casts.  So, we had 7 Principals on view, which in itself is astonishing in 1 ballet, plus the incomparable Olivia Cowley, Gary Avis and Bennet Gartside.  By default therefore,  it was going to be high class.  As an aside, I'm wondering why this cast was so heavily weighted with Principals. Discuss. As we have seen, each cast brings its own joys and different interpretations, which don't necessarily match up with the dancers "status" in the company. That being said, all dancers definitely lived up to their ratings!     

 

Having seen Ed before, I'm convinced that it was Osipova who made the ultimate difference here, particularly as we progressed through acts 2 and 3.  The pdds were just something else and Ed's interpretation/passion/ acting changed from anything I had seen before. It was on another level. I feel so lucky to have seen such a performance. 

 

Everyone else was more than superb but a special mention for Olivia Cowley who replaced Sarah Lamb and gave Larisch her own personal touch. She was bewitching, alluring and also desperate.

 

An epic.  Such a shame it was not filmed  

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2 hours ago, JennyTaylor said:

As an aside, I'm wondering why this cast was so heavily weighted with Principals. Discuss.

 

Yes, you'd have thought they were going to film it, there were so many principals involved.

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Can someone help out with the Mayerling chronology? I don't mean what actually happened - the historical dates - but how much time elapses in the course of the ballet?

 

I have looked through various programmes quite carefully, including the programme from when Mayerling was taken up by the ballet company of the Vienna opera (a company one can assume cares rather more than most about the events depicted). Nowhere can I find any indications of how much time passes between the individual scenes of the ballet.

 

Yet recent comments on this discussion thread (see above) about Rudolf changing facial hair from scene to scene, and Stephanie going from wedding night to heavily pregnant in the course of the show, suggest MacMillan and Freeman had a clear time line in mind. Anyone know what it is?

 

Incidentally, apologies for adding unnecessary confusion earlier: I mentioned that depending on which version of the history MacMillan / Freeman were working from, Mary Vetsera is either 14 or 17 when she is first seen. An article by Gillian Freeman which appears in the first RB programme in 1978 suggests 17 (although even here there is some ambiguity as regards the first scene, which leads back to my question about the time line). 

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Yes, this is a tough one.  I think at the time of the wedding Mary is supposed to be 13, but I could be wrong - I just think I remember it from somewhere.  The final act must obviously be January in whichever year it was the suicide took place, when she was 17, but before that?  Stephanie only had the one child, a girl, and my impression is that she couldn't conceive after that because she'd contracted syphilis from Rudolf, but I don't know when the child was born.  Can someone else fill in the blanks?

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23 minutes ago, alison said:

Can someone else fill in the blanks?

 

Well, actually, it turns out (at least some of) the answer is on my shelf! I just had a brainwave and checked the 1994 RB performance as commercially released (the wonderful Irek/Viviana recording). This tape/dvd has captions, so one has to wonder why these have never made it into the programme:

 

Act I is set, unambiguously, in 1881. It says so onscreen. Historical note: 1881 is indeed the year of the actual wedding, when Mary Vetsera was however only 10 years old (!)

 

Act II is set "a few years later". So we still don't know how old MacMillan/Freeman intended Mary Vetsera to be at the start of the affair.

 

Act III starts in "January 1889" - i.e. in their last month - and goes forward to January 30, the date of the tragedy. So the hunting scene - which if my memory is right is drawn from an actual incident, though I can't remember who was involved - is set only a week or so before their deaths.

 

Although this does not answer everything, including these dates in the synopsis in future programmes might do a little to help straighten things out a bit. At least that seems to be what was decided when the ballet was televised in 1994.

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Geoff, I think the events in the ballet take course over a period of eight years which would make Mary about 10 in Act 1. so you are correct. Stephanie was 16 when she married Rudolph, who would have been aged 22 when he married and 30 when he died.

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2 hours ago, Geoff said:

Act I is set, unambiguously, in 1881. It says so onscreen. Historical note: 1881 is indeed the year of the actual wedding, when Mary Vetsera was however only 10 years old (!)

 

Act II is set "a few years later". So we still don't know how old MacMillan/Freeman intended Mary Vetsera to be at the start of the affair.

 

Act III starts in "January 1889" - i.e. in their last month - and goes forward to January 30, the date of the tragedy. So the hunting scene - which if my memory is right is drawn from an actual incident, though I can't remember who was involved - is set only a week or so before their deaths.

 

Although this does not answer everything, including these dates in the synopsis in future programmes might do a little to help straighten things out a bit. At least that seems to be what was decided when the ballet was televised in 1994.

In the scene in which Mary is first introduced to Rudolf at the wedding, it seems to me that the style and length of her frock and the style of her hair are intended to suggest she's a "child" or "early teen" - or at least not yet an adult. She has a similar "look" to that of the Archduchess Marie Valerie, Rudolf's sister, who runs on in that scene and jumps into his arms - intended, I think, to suggest family closeness and childishness. (In 1881 Marie Valerie was 13). 

 

When Rudolf meets Mary again, after the Tavern Scene, her hair and dress suggest greater maturity. In the 1978 programme note (reproduced in 2009) Gillian Freeman says "For some time, [Mary], then only 17, had been importuning [Countess Larisch] to be her emissary...it is widely reported that Mary had earlier sought an introduction to Rudolf at the Prater racecourse..." (This would accord with "history" as many writers agree that they first met in the autumn of 1888, whether at the Prater or not - according to some, a very perfunctory introduction was made there by Edward Prince of Wales -visiting Vienna- who knew Mary's uncles from England).

 

If Freeman's timeline places the hunting incident in January 1889 it seems another bit of "dramatic licence".  (In "The Road to Mayerling" Richard Barkeley, who is usually fairly scrupulous about sources, places it in 1886 - he says it was only revealed in the 1928 biography of Rudolf - the biographer having heard about it from a gamekeeper and recorded the evidence of two surviving witnesses).  

 

It may be that putting precise dates in the synopsis has been avoided because it would give an impression of greater historical accuracy than is justified. The costumes, hair styles, beard/moustache and the way those dancing Mary display greater "knowingness" in "adult Mary", all make it fairly clear that "time passes"; and perhaps for the "world of McMillan" that's enough.

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Mary was no blushing innocent when she met Rudolf. She had already been sent home to Vienna in disgrace by her family who had found out about an affair she was having on a tour of Egypt, I think it was. Vienna was a veritable hot house for precociousness.

 

Edited by Fiz
Missed out a bit.
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2 minutes ago, Johnpw said:

The costumes, hair styles, beard/moustache and the way those dancing Mary display greater "knowingness" in "adult Mary", all make it fairly clear that "time passes"; and perhaps for the "world of McMillan" that's enough.

 

Just to be clear John: I was not suggesting putting dates into the synopsis for reasons of (partly spurious) historical accuracy, but in order to help people make sense of the story while they are watching. Every time Mayerling is revived, people get confused, sometimes very confused - see earlier postings on this thread in relation to this run -  so I assume this is why the tv people took the decision in 1994 to include dates. In any case from where I sit, it can be hard to spot things like changes in hair styles etc, unless one knows to look for them!

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Yes, Sim, I will!

 

She was fragile, fearless, sensual, and above all young .... The Act 3 pdd was very moving indeed - that sounds too English... trying again : it was wild and emotional, and I had something in my eye for most of it.

 

On another note, who was the very first Bratfisch? I keep thinking Michael Coleman, but I am sure the dates don't work. Anyone help?

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4 hours ago, simonbfisher said:

 

 

On another note, who was the very first Bratfisch? I keep thinking Michael Coleman, but I am sure the dates don't work. Anyone help?

 

Graham Fletcher was the original Bratfisch.  I saw him do it when the ballet had its New York premiere - with some of its original 1978 cast still about in various cast sheet permutations I think - (I remember seeing both Wall and Eagling as Rudolf and Ferri as a particularly daring Mary and Park who was mesmeric as Larisch) at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1983.  Here is an overall positive NYT review of that same which both (i) praises Mr. Fletcher's input and (ii) gives a very apt precis of both the work's strengths and weaknesses.  

 

Edited by Bruce Wall
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Had an unexpected double day at Mayerling yesterday and will write at greater length in due course (still collecting thoughts) but, to answer Sim's question, Takada was outstanding: I had no idea she could dance in such an uninhibited, passionate manner and even under the circumstances of a last minute debut she built the character from infatuated girl to passionate death seeker with terrific precision dancing always with beautiful detail and mesmerising fluency. She absolutely seized the moment.

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I agree - Akane Takada was sensational as Mary Vetsera. Just lately, she seems to have the knack of turning everything she dances into a platinum rated performance. And she couldn't have gotten in that much rehearsal time after poor Sarah Lamb damaged her foot so recently.

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