Jane S

The French paper Le Figaro offers a 2hr 15 mins video: 'Guided tour with the star ballet dancers! Star Dorothée Gilbert takes Thibaut Gauthier and Riadh Bekir into the night at the Opéra Garnier. A new episode of Figaro La Nuit, absolutely unique, between the mazes of the legendary Parisian building, from the roofs to the basement, including the stage and the dressing rooms.' (Google translation) (Thanks to Dansomanie for the link)

Maurice Bejart's 1992 version was probably the best known but it hasn't been done in the last 10 years or so - details here including some video. There were earlier versions - Todd Bolender's, Flemming Flindt's - and Alfred Rodrigues made one for the RB in 1956, with Michael Somes in the leading role. The new Somes book says that at the first London performance 'a stunned silence lasted for several curtain calls before the applause mingled with hisses began'. (Can this really be true? - must have seemed very strange for the dancers.) Daily Mail readers thought it 'more suitable for Soho, not a Royal Opera House'.) It only lasted 10 performances. Scenario inlcuded in this account, (Absolutely nothing to do with this but 2 things that amused me when checking Dance and Dancers account of the RB version - the opposite page has an article on the British dance scene by 'David Vaughan, a young dancer and choreographer', and in the next issue, covering the Bolshoi's first appearance in London, they quote this from The Times's personal column: Bolshoi - Single ticket wanted, swap two good tickets Liberace.)

Medici TV is showing Ratmansky's Coppelia on Sunday 17th December

There's a long and interesting interview with her on BachTrack, too.

The mention of Les Sylphides led me to find my DVD of the 1953 performance, with Markova, Elvin, Beriosova and John Field - it's lovely, even though they're dancing in a studio about the size of a shoebox. And it has the unique advantage of an introduction by Tamara Karsavina - unmissable, and the only time you're likely to hear someone saying "I danced it with Nijinsky". I seem to remember it is one of the ballets that the RB got to dance too slowly and reverently and it could look a little dreary.

(Though some may not realise this was just its ROH premiere - it was already 10 years old.)

Video of the RDB's Joseph Aumeer on youtube, courtesy of Scandinavian Vogue Aumeer is cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy's Cavalier in the RDB's Nutcracker next month

And Will Mossop (Hobson's Choice) - wonderful!

I was puzzled by the Symphonic Variations programme you linked to, and wondered if the Symphonic Interlude it mentions was an additional orchestral piece rather than another ballet - so looked on eBay and found this one, which clearly shows an extra bit of music, rather than an interval, between SV and Facade - and I also found another which had an extra bit of Stravinsky played before Scenes de Ballet and one which had an extra bit of Meyerbeer before Les Patineurs. It presumably had something to do with the lengths of intervals or the overall length of the programme but seems quite random from such a small sample! Anyone remember this happening more recently?

I think the RDB's last performance is the same day as the RB's opening night. Good to read such a detailed review, Estreiiita, and especially to learn the casting of some of the smaller roles. Was the theatre full? There seemed to be a lot of unsold seats the last time I looked but maybe perhaps the reviews and word of mouth will sell more tickets.

Yes - and I was really pleased to see the two dancers in the last section: Stephanie Chen Gundorph is a near-contemporary of Ida Praetorius but she had to wait a lot longer to reach the top: I think she's lovely. And Ditte Baltzer was still just an apprentice when I last saw the company but was already known as one to look out for.

They only did 3 performances, plus a gala - blink and you missed it. (Or in my case, have flu and you missed it.)

Well, it's quite complicated to work out, partly because they didn't do 'runs' in those days - more 'clusters', where SB would be seen most seasons, but it would be half a dozen performances over 3 or 4 weeks, and then a few more a couple of months later etc etc. But yes, for a long time Fonteyn got more performances than anyone else - it was her ballet, the one she was most associated with. Otherwise the performances were split amongst the ballerinas who did Aurora (more or less all of them), but there was often a newbie, who would get maybe a couple of shows in her first year and then gradually get more - or in some cases, would disappear after only one or two seasons. As a rough guide, in the production first given in 1946 and last seen in 1967, Fonteyn did 112 and the next most seen ballerinas did something in the range 40 - 60 each. (you need the Royal Ballet - the first 50 Years book if you want all the details!)

Casting now announced: In order Dante/Virgil/Beatrice Nov. 4/8/11/16/18 Ryan Tomash/Alban Lendorf/Astrid Elbo Nov. 5/9/14/17 Gregory Dean/Alexander Staeger/Holly Dorger

Baryshnikov's performances were in April 1977 - two with Jenner and one with Collier. John Percival, writing in Dance & Dancers, mentioned that Baryshnikov had danced Colas in the ABT production ("a version of such banal choreography that the leading dancers have to impose their own personality and camp everything up if they are to make any effect at all") and thought that experience might have been responsible for MB making Colas "just a little too self centred" for Ashton - but that was "the only tiny flaw in a performance that was otherwise a sheer joy to watch". He also thought Jenner went slightly better with MB than Collier, who he thought went better with Nureyev. (That we should have had such a choice!)

Just to squeeze in one more - yes, it was Collier - I saw them! Edited to add: But I think he did a couple with Jenner too

The RB has done at least two runs of Illuminations - with Ashley Page in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s.

No - they don't normally announce casts till quite near the opening night - or, one occasion I remember, after the opening night! However I just noticed, elsewhere on the theatre's website, that Alban Lendorf is cast as Virgil! It wasn't selling very well last time I checked. even with an offer of a 40% price reduction for under 25's.

Though the story at the time was that Park said she only did Swan Lake because she was tired of people asking her why she didn't!

Just finished it - 300 pages in rather small print - a lot to take in! Will comment later when others have read it.

I ordered the book from my local bookshop ( small country town) on publication day and they told me it should arrive by the end of this week - and they were right: I picked it up this morning.

The final is being shown live on medici.TV - subscription needed.

The second part, broadcast a week later, was called 'Diaghilev, The Years in Exile', and dealt with the last 10 years of his life. The format was the same, with some additional contributors. (Did Jane Pritchard show one or both of these in one of her wonderful NFT series? The second one isn't on I player but I'm sure I've seen them both a lot more recently than 1968.) John Drummond's book contains transcripts of all the interviews - fun to see how responsive different people were - some give brief, paragraph-long answers to Drummond's questions, whilst Serge Lifar talks for 2 1/2 pages of small print before needing another prompt. There's also a long and wonderful introduction about how he met the people he interviewed, including stories about how Anton Dolin left him to pay a huge bill in a bar in Cannes, how Alicia Markova was incapable of telling any story in less than 15 minutes, etc etc - it's fascinating and I confess that though I've had that book for years, I can't remember ever actually reading it before - so thank you for reminding me of it, jm365!

I think even 'perfect' is subjective, unless you are only talking about technique - and even then personal preference will influence you even if you don't know it. 'Definitive' for me means a performance which may have been far from perfect but which I never expect to see bettered. Many I would describe like that were in ballets created for them - Haydee and Cragun in Taming of the Shrew, Lynn Seymour in any number of things - but my own most definitive ever was really pure accident. (Long story, skip if you've heard it before) In the 1990s the Friends of Covent Garden ran what they called the Come and Risk It queue for dress rehearsals - you could turn up without a ticket and if you were early enough - 7.30 a.m. say - you could be fairly sure of getting something, and most often in the Stalls Circle rather than in the Amphi so it was a good deal. They never announced the casts in advance, so there was I one morning queuing up for a Bayadere rehearsal, and thinking quite contentedly that we'd probably get the first cast - Yoshida and Mukhamedov - when a whisper came down from the front of the line: 'The Japanese girl is off and a Russian girl, who's done Nikiya here before, is flying in to replace her'. Could it, could it possibly be Asylmuratova? Surely we couldn't be that lucky.. maybe there's been some other Russian I'd forgotten about? Hours of suspense - but then the announcement from the stage and yes, it was her. (I think the people around me could tell that I was pleased.) She had come to the theatre straight from Heathrow and presumably had spent any spare minutes in warming up - so she wore a dark blue unitard throughout, with a white tutu over it for the Shades, her hair was pinned up anyhow and she had street make-up at best; and as it was some time since she'd last done the role here, she occasionally had to stop and ask Mukhamedov what came next, and they laughed and went on with it - and she was so wonderful that I remember thinking that if Terpsichore herself were to whisper in my ear that this was the greatest performance of this role, ever, I would easily have believed her. I was there on my own and was so excited that I was practically running round the theatre in the intervals looking for someone to talk to, and when I met an acquaintance who was doing the same thing we almost fell into one another's arms. I guess AA felt she had absolutely nothing to lose and just went for it - it was so alive and emotionally truthful, as if it was all happening to her for the first time - just astonishing, it brings tears to my eyes just writing about it now. And Mukhamedov was pretty good too (But despite all this, I can imagine someone else there thinking it was fine but nothing special, and I wouldn't argue - above a certain level of competence it really is mostly subjective.)

A propos absolutely nothing: I just came across a mention of a performance of Ashton's Tweedledum and Tweedledee at an ROH gala or something a few years ago, which said that the Tweedles were Bennet Gartside and Ricardo Cervera - for some reason just thinking about this (which I didn't see) makes me laugh! Lucky Alice, too, whoever she was.