barton22

Salonen is going to be interesting as composer - I like NYX and he can be quite atmospheric which might be perfect for Frankenstein, but he has also written stuff that makes me want to renounce music for good. If Scarlett's Frankenstein is as involving (and creepy) as his Hansel and Gretel but suitable for the main stage, I'll be very very happy. If it's more on the lines of his last RB offering I'm less likely to be enamoured.

Frankenstein has a new score from Lieberman.  The Salonen is being used by McGregor (and the season guide says Salonen will conduct some of the performances).

I think two pigeons is being run first with Monotones and then with rhapsody.

 

 

That's right, LinMM.  A late November/early December run with Monotones then a late January run with Rhapsody.

Wow, we actually get a slightly mixed bill in the cinemas?  Marvellous!  I suppose the Acosta name will help sell the Viscera bill.

And hopefully the broadcast will be of Osipova dancing in the Tchai pdd - that would be a big draw.

Or maybe the management will try to get more casts in - I hope this ballet doesn't limit the leading roles to principals. 

 

 

I wonder what will be cinema broadcast this season. I dearly hope it is not limited to R&J, Nutcracker and Giselle - I guess Frankenstein might be likely?

I meant dancers of the principal roles and wasn't assuming they would be dancers of "Principal" rank with the company.  I agree it would be great to have some of the junior dancers in principal roles in many of the pieces next season.

Live cinema broadcasts seem to be R&J (Sept 22), the Viscera mixed bill (Nov 12), Nut (Dec 16), Rhapsody/2Ps (jan 26), Giselle (Apr 6) and Frankenstein (May 18).

This is all very interesting and thank you for posting Barton22.

 

The Friends Office told me in writing that the Magazine would only issue after the Press Conference on Wednesday and the Season Preview event for Patrons etc on Thursday. Makes a bit of a nonsense of things if some of us know the repertoire in advance. Although  I suppose that there may be some interesting revelations to come about dancers to be featured :-)

 

It looks like being an inexpensive season for me too - perhaps influenced more by who is dancing than the programme itself which really doesn't grab me. Of course, the repetitions may have resulted from management feeling that the Company has been a bit overstretched this year.

Maybe someone pulled the trigger on the mailing sooner than they should have.  I think it is almost always the case that come the season previews the information is already out there.  I no longer bother attending them as the Clore is agonizingly uncomfortable and one learns little in addition to what the rep will be.  Hopefully if casting info becomes availabe at the previews someone will post on here.

the big surprise is Frankenstein which I presume will be on the main stage, Wayne Eagling's wasn't bad, but Liam Scarlett's could be really scary!

It does seem to be on the main stage.  And it is a co-production with San Francisco Ballet.  They have commissioned a new score for Lowell Liebermann, whose first piano concerto Liam used for Viscera.

Whose Afternoon of a Faun is it? If it is the Robbins one again I might sell my ticket for the mixed programme including it this season. I think that Connectome/Raven Girl might be quite hard to sell (I'll be giving it a miss). As Dave said, it's annoying that the same ballet appears in two mixed programmes. That makes me buy less rather than more, unless it's something that I love.

It is Robbins.

Connectome/Raven Girl sounds like an utter nightmare.  I think Connectome with Osipova is just about worth seeing for her.  RG has no redeeming features for me. 

I agree about the repeating of a ballet within a season.  I don't think this applies to Song this season, but can see that with Two Pigeons the work has been out of the rep for so long it might make sense to try to get it into the memory of several casts so that, say, four principal casts have it in their bodies.

I think it will be an inexpensive season for me.  There is some really good material in there but it just doesn't seem like a well composed season.  Far too much of the in house choreographers.  I just can't understand yet another McGregor commision (and another to excuriciating music - the music will be Esa-Pekka Salonen's Nyx) and the absence of anything new from outside the Royal Ballet club.

Looking at the dates, it seems we have pure Nutcracker over Christmas and New Year; no alternative as they have provided in recent years.  Romeo and Juliet stretches from September through into the very beginning of December and the Monotones programme goes into early December, too; but then the Rhapsody programme doesn't start until mid-January.  Elizabeth is throughout January, but in the Linbury.

Never ceases to amaze me how info gets out there!

 

It arrived in the mail from the ROH, Bruce.    

Continuing the season:

Will Tuckett's Elizabeth in the Linbury

Rhapsody/Two Pigeons (again) - 7 performances

After the Rain/New Wheeldon/Within the Golden Hour (all Wheeldon programme)

Giselle - 16 performances

The Winter's Tale - 15 performances

Frankenstein (Scarlett) - 10 performances

New McGregor/The Invitation/Within the Golden Hour (again) - 6 performances

That seems to be it unless I missed anything rushing through it.

Looks like the in house choreographers are strengthening their grip on the repertoire.  Nothing recent or new here from an outsider.

Hang on.  I just found the whole season guide buried in the magazine packaging.  Will post the rest shortly.

TWENTY FIVE Nutcrackers!! Blimey - much as I love it, that does seem excessive, even though it was awol last Christmas

I think I miscounted; it looks like it is actually 26!  On the plus side, as a friend just said, it is a ballet that gives some of the promising younger dancers an opportunity to take on a principal role and so with luck we may see Matt Ball as the prince.

Hopefully there will be an alternative programme over Christmas, as there has tended to be recently.  We shall see when the whole season gets announced.

I didn't realise the Acosta Carmen was going to be a one-act ballet, though: that bill sounds a bit odd to me. 

 

The blurb says of it "here his approach is more abstract, paring the narrative down to its dramatic essentials of love, jealousy and revenge, and framing the action within a minimalist stage design."  They say that Acosta will appear in the roles of Don Jose and Escamillo at different performances.

My ROH magazine just plopped through the letterbox and the start of the season is:

Romeo and Juliet (which we knew already) - around 18 performances

Connectome/Raven Girl - 7 performances

Viscera/Afternoon of a Faun/Tchaikovsky pdd/Carmen (Acosta's) - 8 performances

Monotones I and II/Two Pigeons - 7 performances

The Nutcracker - around 25 performances

There are Insight Evenings on Two Pigeons, Carmen, Romeo and Juliet as well as several "Royal Ballet in Rehearsal" evenings.  There is even a session in the Clore with David Pickering where you can "Dance with The Royal Ballet" and learn some of the Romeo and Juliet choreography.

There is no casting announced at this stage.

Watson was dancing Palemon while he was still a First Soloist, though.

 

Have I got this wrong? I thought Golding was hired at the end of Mason's directorship?

 

I think FLOS's point re Watson is that he may have been given the role of Palemon as a first soloist at least in part to tick the Ashton box in preparation for his promotion.  (And I think he was promoted immediately after a performance of the role, wasn't he?)

Golding joined just last year (he gets rolled out so often that it sometimes feels like he has been here longer).  You may be thinking of Kish, who joined a couple of years before (2010) Mason's directorship ended.

(Sorry; I haven't yet figured out how to multi-quote.)

Well, they really are completely different, aren't they? http://www.stuttgarter-ballett.de/spielplan/2015-04-03/hommage-macmillan/bilder/

In the link to the MacMillan website which Ian posted earlier, it talks about the change in colour schemes - and also refers, obliquely at least, to the lack of designer.

Jann Parry talks a little about the design change in her biography of MacMillan.  She says regular MacmIllan collaborator Nicholas Georgiadis was the original designer for Stuttgart and was behind the change of the colours for London.  She also says that the original costume idea was for floating chiffon garments and MacMillan found them "vomit-making" so they were changed for the more simple costumes that were finally used at the Stuttgart premiere.  

Yes, particularly after the criticisms that were levelled at management after Polunin left re: overburdening promising young dancers.  I would take fewer performances of higher quality over seeing Muntagirov rushed into everything.

And he may be a bit less used to juggling lots of different roles (particularly new ones) in a single season than someone who came up through the ranks at the ROH, given the much more limited rep/programming at ENB.  I haven't looked back at exactly what roles he danced each season he was there, but given how few ballets they dance in any given year it is hard to believe he had to prepare more than three or four principal roles a season.  If they "did a Polunin" on him it could push him too far and at the very least make him unnecessarily stressed and unhappy.  (I am not suggesting he couldn't cope with it, as he is extremely talented and seems to be very level headed; but why take the risk?)

Working under the assumption that most ROH audience members don't speak german, it would probably help the piece enormously if the lyrics were provided. Perhaps they are included in the programme, but I think it even a short summary of each song on the cast list would help a lot. The cast list is particularly unhelpful by calling it song 1 through to 6.

 

The programme does provide translations of the text for each of the six movements.  I agree that it would be great if they could be included on the cast sheet, but perhaps there is a cost issue as presumably whoever the translator is would be owed some royalties and/or the cast sheet itself would be longer and thus cost more to produce.  I suppose the ROH might be able to do a deal with the translator that allows for the translation to be used on cast sheets for no extra cost over the cost of including it in the programme, and then the cost to the ROH is just for those instances where someone would have bought a programme but then does not because they get the translations free (plus any additional production costs relating to a longer cast sheet).  As you have found, it is quite easy to find translations of the German on the internet, so it isn't hard to prepare ahead of the performance.

The blu ray and DVD are now physically available.  My blu ray pre-order from Amazon just arrived this morning even though the website still says it is a pre-order and not available until tomorrow.  Amazon is about a third less expensive than the ROH pricing at the moment.

Not every time, but it seems to be happening more often.  The performance featured on the current release Royal Ballet Fille (Acosta and Nunez) is from just over ten years ago, so I suppose it is possible they will release a more recent performance.  I am just not sure whether it will sell enough copies to be worth it for them.  I doubt that dvd and blu ray sales of ballet are huge and I have heard from the company that the costs of taking these to dvd/blu ray are larger than one might imagine given it is all in house and the ROH has a stake in Opus Arte.  My guess is that Fille is just not mainstream enough to justify the expense of a new release, although the Osipova star power might justify it.

I don't think it has been danced here since.

By the Royal Ballet, I meant.  I think there may have been a guest company performance (SFO?) since then.

My real beef with the singers was their position on stage, I'd like them further to the side (or in the pit) but I accept that I can't have everything I want....

I know what you mean.  I may be forgetting, but don't remember them standing quite so far out into the stage in prior runs and they lurked a little closer to the side and were less visible in their black outfits against a black background.  I also think Soares and Acosta ended up a little closer to the wings than I think they should have at one important stage in der Abschied and were visually blocked by the mezzo for a while even when viewed from a fairly central seat.

You know it makes sense!  :-)

It would be great if a few more Balanchine pieces could be added to the rep (or they would revive some that have not been danced for a while).  Has anything been added in recent years other than Ballo della Regina?  I wish they would revive Bugaku.  i remember seeing that back in 1988 and being fascinated by the extraordinary movement Balanchine created.  I don't think it has been danced here since.

Ed Watson was an absolute wonder to behold, and I wish he could be preserved in his current stage for posterity so he'd never need to retire.

 

I loved untouchables for its organic movements, dancers moving like shoals of fish with an innate sense of being part of the group. 

 

The odd shrill note didn't help either. For disclosure, I voluntarily attend lieder recitals, so didn't expect to feel annoyed at the singers for distracting me.

Agree about Ed.  Such a special dancer and I doubt we will have another quite like him.  Really looking forward to him in Song of the Earth as he is superb as the Messenger of Death.

For the organic, shoal of fish/flock of birds-like movement you mention, do try to see Crystal Pite's Polaris if Sadler's Wells manage to stage it again (I believe they plan to try despite the difficulty of doing such a short piece that requires so many dancers).  It was quite extraordinary and in a different league to Hofesh's effort.

I thought the Mahler well sung.  Maybe I missed something when i was focused on the dancing, but the tenor role in Das Lied von der Erde is written to sound like that and it is a piece that can take a while to grow to love.  (It is my favourite piece of music.  Period.)

 

Untouchable, I went in with low expectations for this and they were not met, not a ballet, can’t be bothered to comment. I do not want to see this again. This is the worst thing I have seen at the ROH to date (and I’ve seen Raven Girl). 

Oh I think Raven Girl was worse/more boring!     I ended up with my head in my hands (literally) towards the end of the opening night performance of that.  I suppose RG did at least make some use of the different skills/abilities ballet dancers have compared to a purely contemporary company's dancers.  I am pretty sure Untouchable would have looked exactly the same on Hofesh's own company.  (He popped in a couple of token balletic arm positions when some of the dancers were static but that is all.)

On the plus side, at least some of the dancers enjoyed the experience of working on Untouchable.