MAB

Seems i enjoyed it more tthan others here.  My companion wasn't impressed when he first saw it from the stalls but claims the staging  works better at a distance.  The sound is better in the amphi anyway.  Not a great production, but how often do we see one of those at Covent Garden?  I thought it wasn't bad at all considering it isn't actually an opera.  The choruses are in my opinion among the best Handel wrote.  A terrific role foe Allan Clayton.

I vividly remeber Giselle as part of of double bill.  Not just more value for money but extra opportunities for dancers to perform for their audience.  Agree that intervals were far shorter back in the day.

2 hours ago, Fonty said:

I hope the film has been speeded up, it looks way faster than any performance I have seen live.  

All recordings and concert performances I've heard have been sinificantly faster.

Opera Massimo, Palermo.   Muti was to have conducted.  Refunded the ticket, but not the booking fee. Didn't get a refund on the hotel.

Earlier this week the opera I was seeing in Italy was cancelled due to a musicians strike, when we arrived the taxi divers were on strike too.  The cost of living crisis is hitting Italy hard, so bear this in mind when you book 

7 hours ago, FionaM said:

From the POV of the audiences in Russia … they won’t want to see anything by Ratmansky even if the production licences haven’t expired.  He made it very clear that he denounces the Russian state and disassociates himself from his previous directorship, training and productions at Bolshoi and Mariinsky.  

And good for him!

1 hour ago, FionaM said:

Therefore all the current generation of dancers will have been influenced by this version as the pinnacle of achievement.  
 

I remember similar discussions around 180 degree leg extensions when Guillem, Zakharova, Bussell took ballet to those new extremes.  Now it’s normal to expect every dancer (male and female) to be able to do those.    

And we have a thread about audience numbers falling at ROH.  Could a reason so far unmentioned be the vulgarity rhat is creeping into the art of dance?

20 minutes ago, FionaM said:

I can think of many technical feats (going en pointe is one) that we could choose to veto.

Now that is absurd.

I detest the entrechat six in Giselle with a passiion, it is a nothing but an invention of Rudolf Nureyev's to show off his technique and seems to have become standard.  It is many years since I last saw the Bolshoi dance Giselle, but they used to adhere to the oeiginal choreography,  It is nothing but an ugly interpolation and if a repetiteur had any basic taste at all they would veto it altogether.

MdGegor's  L'Anatomie de la sensation played at the Bastille to scores of empty seats.  They learned their lesson, Dante Project was shown at the Garnier to full houses.    

3 hours ago, annamk said:

A friend pointed out that the first two programmes at Paris Opera Nallet seemed to sell out. The top price tickets are the same as the RB so I wonder why this is: is it the ballets themselves, are there fewer seats to shift overall, are there more cheaper price tickets, do people in Paris have more money, are there fewer alternatives ? 

As a rule of thunb the Garnier always sells out because it is such a tourist attraction., I've occaasionally seen empty seats at the Bastille, but it depends very much on the programme.

Royal Opera audences are shrinking too.  

At one time there were at least five of his ballets performed by the RB, so they were popular back in the day.

Once again, this is NOT about politics, it is about morality.

And are the above performances sponsored by an oligarch?

It will end when Russia pulls out of Ukraine.

Bedbugs have been a problem for a long time, staying in a hotel anywhere is really a kind of insect Russian roulette.  I stayed in a budget hotel in Paris right by the Opera Bastille in May and survived unbitten.  On the other hand I found myself sitting next to a woman at ROH who was constantly scatching, as I left the building my ankle was itching.  One of her damn fleas had gone walkabout.  Life is full of hazards.  I wouldn't cancel a trip out of fear of mere bedbugs.

The Gramilano review sounds like a whitewash, are any other reviews available?

Not gruesome at all.

As I've not seen all the dancers named I don't feel qualified to vote, however of those I'm familiar with Guillaume Diop gave the finest performance I saw in the past year in songs of a Wayfarer.  Not a showy role, it was his expressiveness and sensitivity that made such a deep impression.

Just one dancer or are there male and female categories?

I once watched a Maryinsky rehearsal in Baden Baden.  The Medora was so perfect I actually felt shaken, even the orchestra applauded her.  Sadly the lady in question couldn't replicate that perfection in performance.

Wagner was somehing I had to grow into, but I fell in with a gang of hardcore Wagnerites at ROH.  So smitten am I now I trail around Europe after my favourite helden tenor.

They didn't appear to have enough dancers for Sylphides.  However according to the programme they do have a dancer called David Wall (!?)

Hansel and Gretal?  I loved the fairytale characters living in the woods.   Sadly the ROH has some truly awful opera productions so do ask about them here before you book.  The Cav and Pag is quite good.  

Perhaps someone should start a favourites thread.  Definive means to me getting so near to perfecyion in one particular role that you've never seen that role bettered.  After giving it a great deal of thought I was only able to name three damcers that gave such benchmark performances that I very much doubt they will be bettered in my lifetime.

The fact is with most of the great ballet roles you will see far more than one interpretation in your ballet going lifetime that will knock your socks off, it that wasn't the case there would be little point in keeping going.