David

I had the privilege of sitting next to him at the RSC many years ago. I don't remember the play but I do remember that he quietly slumbered through the bulk of it while I sat hardly daring to breathe, for fear of disturbing the great man. His contribution to theatre in this country is so beyond calculation but as MAB says above, he was also a superb opera director, often with his then wife, Maria Ewing leading the cast. Their Salome and his Glyndebourne Midsummer's Night Dream and much else besides are preserved on disk but sadly all too little of his Shakespearean productions and it is for those that I shall chiefly remember him. We were truly blessed.

We're lucky to have them! Alberto Remedios as Siegfried and Rita Hunter as Brunnhilde - the glory days of the ENO! Still one of the finest Rings on record - though I still find the English text off-putting. Solti gave up conducting the Ring coz he said there were no more great Wagnerian singers available. But having heard Nina Stemme singing the T&I Liebstod last night I'm determined to get tickets for next year, even if I have to buy returns individually. But back to ballet, hopefully there are sufficient performances in the main works in the Winter Season to ensure a good chance of getting seats this time round.

I gave up hoping to get the tickets I want when Friends booking opens quite a while back, and have come to rely almost entirely on returns/late releases. The only reason I have retained my Friends membership is that the ROH has been my premier cultural home for over 60yrs and old habits die hard. I shall see how I get on when booking for the Winter Season and especially for the Ring open; but I don't have high hopes!

I am surprised that Scottish Ballet’s revival of MacMillan’s “Le Baiser de la fée”, based on Han Christian Andersen’s 1861 fairy tale - “The Ice Maiden”, has not raised more excitement amongst Forum members and, since it’s a quiet time I’m being cheeky and uploading some extracts from my own notes, gleaned from many sources in an attempt to whip up interest! It was in April 1960 that Kenneth MacMillan made his first attempt, choreographing his own version for The Royal Ballet with Svetlana Beriosova as the Fairy, Donald MacLeary as the young man and his own Muse, Lynn Seymour as the bride. “He made melting, skimming steps that showed off her fluid movements and luscious feet … she was adorably soft and spontaneous … Beriosova was a grandly fluent fairy”. By then he was the eighth choreographer to tackle the Hans Andersen story! Both Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine had warned him of the difficulties, arising chiefly from the lack of obvious relationships between Stravinsky’s score and Andersen’s narrative. This was Kenneth MacMillan’s third Stravinsky ballet, the previous two being Danses Concertantes (1955) and Agon (1959). He had no time for Stravinsky’s identification of the Fairy with Tchaikovsky’s Muse, or indeed for fairies of any kind: “I’m sick to death of fairy tales” he told The Times in December 1960. But like Ashton he was drawn to the music. For Ashton the instant of the kiss is the climactic ecstatic moment in the young man’s life. But MacMillan had a darker story to tell. “His instinct was for the bride betrayed. His narrative was one of good and evil - of the abandoned bride (“She is the one who is lost”) and a young man in the grip of everlasting darkness.” Most critics at the time reviewed MacMillan’s 1960 version favourably, singling out Lynn Seymour and for special mention: Richard Buckle: a “tremendous success - MacMillan, with his ear to the ground, has perfectly translated into movement the filigree of shimmering insect splendour which is a feature of this score”. Of Lynn Seymour as the Bride, he wrote that she “skims and flits like a happy gnat through her lovely allegretto variation: she has the priceless gift of lending to art an air of spontaneity, and without question makes a triumph of her first created role. Of Svetlana Beriosova as the Fairy. “Her swooping boreal gestures and Alpine style point the difference between god and human”. Alexander Bland (The Observer) wrote: “It is not until the pas de deux that interest quickens, the high point of the evening being soon reached in the fiancée’s solo, a delicious drifting rubato affair, which Lynn Seymour will make into a winner, when she has grown into it”. And so on ….. But despite the positive reviews the ballet did not survive. The reasons were partly that the musical demands of Stravinsky’s score were impractical for a touring company but primarily because of Kenneth Rowell’s set designs. In place of the traditional images of fairyland Macmillan had his designer, Kenneth Rowell, fashion a threatening landscape in dark colours, “an abstract world of rock, gorges, caverns and ominous icebergs” … described by Clement Crisp as “arguably the most beautiful and poetic designs seen at Covent Garden since the war.” These were so complex that, at a time when the Company could call on sixty other works in the repertory, there were only six other ballets with which Le Baiser de la fée could, for technical reasons, be programmed. Of those six some were not compatible on the same programme. MacMillan’s Le Baiser de la fée proved a nightmare to schedule. At a disastrous performance at the Edinburgh Festival the following August the scenery collapsed nearly braining one of the dancers. The ballet was mothballed after only 33 performances. However Le Baiser de la fée continued to fascinate MacMillan and 25yrs later in 1986 he revisited his 1960 original work making changes for a new generation of dancers: Fiona Chadwick, Sandra Conley and Jonathan Cope. He kept most of the choreography he had made for Seymour, but changed the Fairy’s role considerably, “making a new intricate solo for Chadwick, showing off her sense of anger and wilfulness”. It is this production that Scottish Ballet are reviving. In his earlier production, MacMillan’s preoccupation had been with the betrayed Bride, the figure in the ballet truly left alone after the fairy entices her husband away. But in the revised 1986 version, his focus was on the Fairy’s pursuit of the entranced young man, thereby returning to Stravinsky’s original intention: the work as an allegory for the artist’s dilemma, that ordinary happiness must be sacrificed to the muse. “It was the music that naturally attracted me”, he told Clive Barnes, “certainly not the story. I realise that the story is not altogether convincing. But I also found the theme, or, if you like, allegory, extraordinarily interesting.” Barnes commented: “MacMillan cuts to its heart - the artist in society, the man marked out from his fellows, unable to join in their life and dedicated to suffering”. To Mary Clarke of The Guardian who had seen the original ballet in 1960 it seemed that MacMillan had “retained much of what was written for Lynn Seymour – those swirling, circular lifts, those limpid descents when the foot melts into the ground above a bent knee, the sorrow of her exit after desertion. And how marvellous to see MacMillan writing again in a purely classical style.” John Percival of The Times also noted the close resemblances to the 1960 version. “I cannot understand why the earlier version was unsuccessful … it was blessed with superb performances and one of the most beautiful decors ever created for the Royal Ballet, a set of marvellous abstract landscapes by Kenneth Rowell.” Kenneth Rowell’s designs had been destroyed and were replaced with designs by Martin Sutherland but they did not find favour with the critics. In The Observer Jann Parry dismissed the set as unimaginative: “He succeeds in evoking neither the Fairy’s ‘Land beyond Time and Place’, nor the village from which she claims her initially reluctant hostage.” Though seen as Kenneth MacMillan ‘at his most exquisitely classical’, his 1986 production like its predecessor failed to hit a popular chord and once again it shortly disappeared from the repertoire. MacMillan’s original 1960 production was clearly too much, both orchestrally and with its intricate designs, for the Royal Ballet at the time but would probably have fitted well into the Company today in its present home. One would have expected the Royal Ballet to be the Company to revive it now, particularly since they still have several of the 1986 cast including Jonathan Cope among their ranks. However twice bitten, thrice shy and it is Scottish Ballet that have picked up this daunting challenge. They have enlisted the Benesh Notator Diana Curry who worked with MacMillan in the 1980s: “Although the technique was quite new in the 1960s Sir Kenneth always worked with a choreologist and much of Le Baiser de la fée had been recorded. However there was a significant lacuna and that was the solo where the bridegroom, danced by Donald MacLeary in 1960 and Jonathan Cope in 1986, goes looking for his bride and finds himself waylaid by the fairy. Fortunately that scene had been recorded on film which Ms Curry has analysed and notated”. The tricky problem of the design has been entrusted to Gary Harris, I understand at the personal wish of Lady MacMillan. Gary has an hugely impressive CV. “He has worked the world over as a dancer, teacher, repetiteur and designer … in 1991 he joined the Royal Ballet as notator and repetiteur, working with choreographers such as William Forsythe and Kenneth MacMillan and re-staging the works of Fredrick Ashton … He was Associate Artistic Director of the Hong Kong Ballet and then of the Royal New Zealand Ballet until December 2010 … Since returning from New Zealand, he has continued re-staging the works of Kenneth MacMillan and in 2013, designed Christopher Hampson’s Hansel & Gretel for Scottish Ballet.” One has to applaud Scottish Ballet. I have hopes that their revival may prove to be a significant event. Presumably, that is why someone (hopefully the BBC?) has undertaken to film it! Meanwhile I would welcome comments from the more knowledgeable members of the Forum, some of whom I’m sure will have seen one or both of the original productions.

Actually they seem to be the complete works - I see the Zakharova is on 4 disks - in which case they represent a very real bargain!

Bel Air Clasiques have listed three disks scheduled for release on 13th Oct: “The Art of Svetlana Zakharova at the Bolshoi”; “The Art of David Hallberg at the Bolshoi”; and Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote with Maris Yakovleva and Denys Cherevchko as Kitri and Basil with the Wiener Staatsballett, all three on both DVD and Blu-Ray. The first lists Swan Lake, La Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty and Fille du Pharaon,; the second Mareo Spada and Sleeping Beauty – from which I assume these are mostly if not wholly extracts from earlier releases that are well known and probably in most people’s collections. I don’t know anything about the Don Quixote performance.

No mention of Project Polunin then?

Difficult for me to get to venues on the dates specified - Northern Ballet usually bring their productions into Sadlers Wells so I guess me and mine will have to hold out till then and hope The Little Mermaid will also find its way there? If so I assume it won't be till the end of their tour season?

My copy of Anastasia popped through the letter box an hour or so ago. And yes, I too am really excited!

Are you referring to the cinema relay with Bonelli back in Sept 2014? Were there plans to release it on disk? I haven't heard anything.

Answering my own question, I have just had confirmation that The Nutcracker will be released on the 29 September, and that Sleeping Beauty will indeed follow in April next year! Verily, my chuff cup overfloweth!

Looking beyond Anastasia and Woolf Works, does anyone have any info re possible subsequent releases? I was told quite a while back that Opus Arte would be releasing a new Nutcracker this coming Xmas – presumably the Cuthbertson; Bonelli; Hayward; Campbell; Avis cinema relay from last year since the cinema relay this coming Xmas would surely be too late for an Xmas release. Also that this would be followed in April next year by the Nuñez; Muntagirov Sleeping Beauty. Haven’t heard anything since but I live in hope.

As far as I can see Presto Classical remains the best deal, even allowing for the Friends 10% reduction at the ROH shop.

Or is the ROH planning even more alterations?

Sorry to appear so ignorant but why can't it be before 2020 please? I've been assuming that it will probably be the Bolshoi again in 2018 and then the Mariinsky in 2019?

That's interesting Petunia. Thank you. About the same as the highest UK prices quoted here! It would be interesting to hear the prices charged in other countries.

Great new! Thank you Fiz.

I agree. Sometimes, sitting in a pretty well empty cinema watching one of the 'non-traditional' Royal Ballet shows I wonder how on earth they can make this pay or indeed how long it can continue. Obviously the RB has a vested interest in getting their stuff out there and they don't want their relays priced out of the market. Equally the cinema networks need to show a profit. It is of course a world-wide initiative and I don't know how far it is justifed by results in other countries. On the other hand, the 'traditional' RB and RO relays are often completely sold out and they have to arrange repeats so there must be a market of sorts here in the UK. The comparison is made with the cost of tickets at the ROH itself but for me, living 200 miles away from London, that is not the real problem. It's the add-ons - public transport, particularly rail fares and, when there isn't a matinee, the hotel costs that ratchet up the prices for me and make a trip to the cinema the only viable alternative. And it's when there isn't a matinee performance OR a cinema relay as is happening too often this season, that I am really miffed!!!!

As the prices seem to be consistent between the performing companies, both here and world-wide but vary between the various cinema networks, I suspect these are commercial decisions largely determined by the cinema networks and that the performing companies pretty well well have to take it or leave it! The same applies to the commercial theatre transmissions where similar pricing patterns obtain.

I apologise if I misunderstood your meaning Kat_N. I think most of us assume that when a Company speaks of a "live" transmission, they mean that they are actually filming and transmitting the performance as it is taking place. Obviously it is not the same as being there but still the next best thing. Indeed while it is a different experience it is often very illuminating as one sees so much more detail than one does in the theatre - as of course one does if a DVD is eventually issued, though that doesn't always happen. I

I think we can take the assertions by the various companies on trust. After all if they falsely claim a broadcast is live it's easily disproved! Royal Opera and Royal Ballet are live transmissions unless clearly labelled "Encore". They do tend to have an earlier filming of the same cast but I assume that's to resolve any technical filming difficulties and to have a back up if transmission on the designated night fails. When that happens, my experience is that they make an announcement. It also enables them to iron out any problems for the eventual release to DVD by slicing in a cut from the earlier recording. Bolshoi transmissions sometimes are live, sometimes are repeats but it's easy to check - here's one convenient link: http://www.pathelive.com/programme/the-bolshoi-ballet-2017-2018-1#programme National Theatre show a lot of repeats but since they hardly ever transfer to DVD it's often one's only chance to see a favoured broadcast again. The Met broadcasts are live but inevitably subject to transmission delays in the UK because of time zone differences. Generally speaking I find repeat showings tend to be cheaper! I agree prices have risen but it's still an amazing deal - particularly for those of us who can't afford to get to get to London to see the shows live.

I'm told Woolf Works will be released later this year by Universal Classics. I assume that means under the Decca label since they have issued Royal Ballet recordings in the past. I haven't heard anything about a release date as yet. I thought the BBC broadcast was really good - and with a late night repeat the same day which meant that I was able to record it twice as a fail-safe so I was well-chuffed!

In what is becoming a familiar marketing ploy, Opus Arte are re-packaging two previous releases – Dutch National Ballet’s Cinderella with Anna Tsygankova and Matthew Golding and the Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Lauren Cuthberton and Sergei Polunin – under the rather clever title “Two Ballet Favourites by Christopher Wheeldon” - due for release on 1st Sept on both DVD and Blu-ray. It’s a good deal as it works out as two for the price of one but I guess most will have acquired one or both already!

OK Jules - have sent you a pm..

Amazon have not yet listed their prices for Anastasia but at £21.50 and £25.50 for the DVD and Blu-ray respectively including postage, Presto Classical may well prove to be the best deal. Unless anyone can suggest a better source?