Wulff

I phoned the Friends who asked the box office to call me back, which they did - eventually.

Booking today has been an absolute nightmare with a whole host of problems including: - difficulty entering the site - difficulty signing in - only headers shown for individual events - an announcement that the site is closed for maintenance and would we please return on 20th June I was able to book online for only half a dozen events. The rest of my booking was done on the phone. I was told that there was a problem with the servers. I had thought that the site's previous problems hab been fixed and that it was now pretty robust. However, this appears not to be so and bodes ill for the basic Friends and public booking.

I remember the days when the Sadlers Wells (Royal Ballet) always performed a curtain raiser prior to Giselle. If I remember rightly it was usually a short ballet not requiring a large cast, something like Les Patineurs or Les Rendezvous. I'm not sure when the RB ceased this practice, but I have always felt that when the Bolshoi at their historic 1956 season at the ROH performed Giselle "unaccompanied" this set the tone for future practice. As for performing another ballet after Giselle, I really can't see how this could ever work. Curiously enough, the first performance of Fille mal Gardée was followed by a performance of Façade which proved to be a major programming error.

I have heard from a very reliable source that Leanne Cope has an excellent singing voice, so with that together with her undoubted dancing talent she should be all set to make her mark in a musical. In addition, I remember from an interview she had with the Ballet Association that she saw herself more as an all round performer and that her ambitions lay beyond the world of classical ballet towards that of of musicals.

You can find the complete orchestral score on www.musicclassical.com/composer/work/1149/8623 The timpani enter on page 136 first as a single line to be played by 3 players on high pitched drums of different pitches. Then on page 149 the 3rd player moves to a low field drum introducing a lower line of timpani playing a different rhythm to the upper line. The upper line also appears to change rhythm from time to time. All very complex and it may be this that produced the out of synch effect. Also, as you say, your position with regard to the timpani might possibly have given rise to an aural trick.

There have been some criticisms of the orchestra's playing of the score for DGV, eg one part of the orchestra playing faster than the other part, trumpets skipping notes, and timpani being out of synch, and I wonder whether these are simply subjective judgements or objectively based on a knowledge of what is an extremely complex score, all 168 pages of which can be viewed on the web. Now I am in no way capable of reading a full orchestral score although I have some inkling of what is supposed to be happening and I note that among other things this work is scored for both a main and small orchestra within it. So I do ask myself whether the above criticisms have any validity at all in the context of a work of this nature. However, if they come from professional musicians then I must bow to their superior judgement.

Reference the engagement of Pavel Sorokin as conductor for this triple bill, the thought has occurred to me that he might be conducting the company's performances in Moscow and these current performances may be to familiarise him with the company, and in particular the score for DGV which I don't suppose has ever been performed in Russia. Just my guess.

As well as being Natalya Osipova's birthday, today is also Margot Fonteyn's - 18 May 1919. Her memory lives on.

Matthew Golding is certainly not the first, nor will he be the last dancer to have developed the unfortunate habit of dancing with his mouth open. I can think of quite a few other dancers who have had this habit of "goldfishing", or, what Madam is said to have described it as "catching flies". Eventually most seem to have been able to correct this fault, but if it is due to asthma or some other breathing problem, then they deserve our forbearance.

[ I've always thought one of the reasons I love Manon and Mayerling so much is because they are so short and easy to follow. Not short enough for some. I've seen suggestions that a lot of those tiresome dances for the ladies in the second act of Manon should be cut; and in addition at one revival of Manon the group dances for the men at the quayside in the last act were cut only to be restored later. And then there was the jailer's mistress. She disappeared many years ago.

I sometimes wonder why some members ever bother to come out to the ballet seeing that they seem to spend quite a lot of time thinking about the journey home; and as for some of the choreography being "dross" I don't think that Frederick Ashton would have agreed with you seeing that he considered SB to be a lesson in choreography. I think that in this age of hour long TV programs, soundbites, and short attention spans it is difficult for some people to focus on a work which was made for a more leisured age and a very different social milieu. I very much deplore the current craze for cutting the 19th century ballets as if cutting would somehow make them better rather than rob them of structure and drama. Actually, from the very beginning even before it got on stage SB was being cut. Petipa found that Tchaikovsky had written too much music and the original working score is full of his notes like "trop longue, il faut couper". Even so the original version lasts well over three hours and the RB version is cut in a number of places. Some of the musical repeats for the lengthy processions that were a feature of some of Petipa's ballets have been cut and the mime scene for the King and knitting women has been considerably shortened. One of the worst of the RB's recent cuts IMO occurs in Act 2 where all the court dances - except one - and the farandole have been cut to make way for the interpolated adagio solo for the Prince to the music of the Act 3 sarabande. In Act 3, as has been remarked, several of the fairy-tale characters numbers have gone missing, so no Cinderella and her Prince and no Tom Thumb and the Ogre. The current RB version has restored the Panorama at the end of Act 2 which used to be played as an entr'acte and which in times gone by was considered one of the more charming features of the ballet. It is one of the oddities of the ballet world that Petipa is regularly hailed as the greatest 19th C choreographer, yet today's custodians of his work constantly cut and revise it and insert their own choreography. Do we subject great works of literature and music to the same treatment?

Good though Melissa is in MacMillan roles, from what I have heard she would prefer to be a "tutu" ballerina. It is noticeable how much her technique has improved over the past couple of years - the result of hard work - and I thought that her Lilac Fairy variation at last Saturday's matinee although not perfect - whose is except for Marianela? - was very creditably performed and better than that of the evening's dancer who unfortunately was not at the top of her form. I also liked the combination of sweetness - without being saccharine - and authority Melissa brings to the role, a perfect combination.

While I have no complaints whatsoever about Matthew Golding's dancing and partnering which I thought were first class and fully justify his engagement as principal, I did feel that for much of his time on stage he looked distinctly ill at ease. In act 2 his mime was sketchy and in both acts 2 and 3 his mouth was half open most of the time and as far as I could see - and I have quite a powerful pair of binoculars - he never smiled once, despite receiving many dazzling smiles from Lauren. Only at the end of his variation and of the pdd and finally at the curtain calls did he relax and smile. I can only assume that he was nervous, as well he might have been, having been catapulted into a new (for him) production at short notice and with a new partner. No doubt things will improve as he settles into the company.

I personally have no problem with a 30 minute interval as it gives (just) enough time for all those who want to buy food and/or drink to do so. 20 minutes or less makes the whole process of emptying the auditorium and getting service at the bars a terrible rush, and in fact many people might not get any service at all if they are slow or impeded by others in getting out of the auditorium. Then, of course there is the whole matter of giving the dancers enough time to change costume, make-up etc. Even with a large company like the RB it is not possible in every case to have a completely different cast and corps for each ballet - or act in a full length ballet - nor IMHO would it enable the audience to see the best possible cast in each ballet since there would always have to be a compromise in the availability of individual dancers for particular roles. Finally, because of union rules RB ballet performances - barring accidents - never last longer than 3 hours. On the other hand Russian companies do not operate under such restraints and their performances often last for longer.

She has blood on her arms and hands as a result of stabbing herself, surely, rather than just playing with the sword. When drawing the circle round herself with sword at one point she moves the sword from side to side rather than keeping the line continuous. I have always understood this as a reference to the mime for snake.

The original "book" of Giselle as quoted by Cyril Beaumont in his book "The Ballet Called Giselle" makes it quite clear that Giselle's death is suicide while the balance of her mind is disturbed. "She seizes Albrecht's sword still lying on the ground, and at first plays mechanically with the weapon, then she falls on its sharp point just as her mother leaps upon her and drags it away." There is also a gesture in the mad scene when Giselle finds blood on her hands and arms and attempts to wipe it off. This was made quite clear in Sarah Lamb's performance when she also wipes her hands on her skirt. Finally, the fact that Giselle's tomb is in the forest shows that as a suicide she has had to be buried on unhallowed ground and not in the village cemetery. A further aspect of this scene which I recall reading somewhere is that when Giselle first picks up the sword she does so by its point rather than the hilt and proceeds to draw it in a circle around herself indicating at one moment that she thinks she is holding a snake. The bystanders all recoil rather than trying to intervene because she has drawn a circle around herself with a reverse cross - the hilt - a procedure that has power in witchcraft and creates a line which they dare not cross.

I personally found the Bolshoi Jardin Animé set looked OK at the Coli and even better at the ROH where the stage now has much greater depth than it did before the refurbishment, but I have to admit that I cannot think of any other theatres which could accommodate this set. The Mariinsky version did not have quite so much scenery but did find room for a couple of fountains as I recall.

Petipa liked to create "architectural" groupings for the corps de ballet in many of his more spectacular ballets. Hence the flower baskets etc as well as dancers arranged on the ground and sometimes on steps and stools. It may not be to 21stC taste nor practical in a touring production but to my mind their absence detracts to some degree from the charm of the original concept, however beautifully painted the scenery or colourful the costumes may be. And incidentally, the costumes for the Jardin Animé scene are not particularly colourful being mainly white and pink as is appropriate for a rose garden.

I went to the performance of Corsaire at the Coli last Thursday, and while I was impressed by the standard of dancing and by the sets and costumes I was distinctly underwhelmed by the production. It seems to me that Anne-Marie Holmes has tried to get a quart into a pint pot with the result that some parts of the ballet are overloaded and other parts lacking in substance. My previous experiences of this ballet have been the Mariinsky production and the Bolshoi reconstruction, the latter being probably the nearest we can now get to the original, even though there are some parts where Ratmansky had to provide his own choreography. Yes, I know that the plot is not one of the greatest, but both these productions seemed to make more sense of it than ENB's, and of course both productions lasted longer - some 3 hours plus. In particular I thought it was a mistake to transpose the pd3 for the odalisques to actI and I felt that the "Jardin Animé" sequence was nothing like as effective as the Bolshoi version which was derived from what I understand is the best notated section of the Sergeyev manuscript. I realise that ENB's is a touring production and therefore some of the more "architectural" effects - flower baskets, parterres etc - could not be realised, but nevertheless I missed them. Much as I admired Alina's performance there was one aspect that concerned me in that she tends to force her arabesques. Her 90 degree arabesques are always about 10 degrees higher and her penchées invariably at 180; none of which IMHO look good in a classical ballet.

I think that the ballet world is pretty cavalier in its treatment both of original orchestra scores and choreography - at least for the 19th C ballets. Would it be considered acceptable to dish out the same treatment for Ashton, Balanchine or Cranko? I think not: all three of those choreographers have "guardians" that try to preserve the original integrity of their ballets. Some conductors have been known to "improve" details of orchestration of Beethoven symphonies, and Shakespeare's language has been simplified for TV - I followed a TV production of Lear once with the original text and was surprised to find how many changes had been made, not only cuts but the actual words. Are such practices really OK if they are willingly ( and sometimes unwittingly) accepted?

Shouldn't the four posts above be on the Jewels thread rather than Don Q?

Many of the 19th century ballet scores have been subject to numerous revisions and interpolations. When Acosta and Yates first went to work on the Don Q music they could find no complete original orchestral score, so they went back to the piano score and worked from there. I would imagine that the Bolshoi orchestration is the work of several hands and some of the interpolations in both the Bolshoi and Mariinsky versions, eg the "Apache" number and the "Oriental" solo are pretty certainly not by Minkus. I believe that Lanchberry orchestrated Nureyev's version of Don Q as he did Makarova's version of Bayadere. As for the version of Swan Lake which we know and love, that is full of cuts and interpolations and pieces that are not by Tchaikovsky. Drigo, Petipa and Tchaikovsky's brother Modeste gave the whole ballet a thorough working over both as to plot and music when the 1895 version was produced. Sleeping Beauty was subject to cuts from the outset and the RB version sets some numbers to music intended for other different numbers. The RB's Giselle does not use Adam's original orchestration since apparently the original was not judged "exciting" enough, and as for Corsaire that score deserves to win prizes for being the ultimate "dog's breakfast", although the Delibes section is probably the most musically satisfying. So it is more than likely that the versions that some members find more "exciting" are simply beefed-up versions of the original orchestration.

I agree that Kitri's entrance in the RB version has less impact than the Bolshoi's. On the other hand it could be argued that the RB entrance is more logical. Kitri is the innkeeper's daughter, and she enters from the inn rather than off the street.

From RBS Friends circular.