Paul Arrowsmith

I have always found Jane's descriptive abilities second to none. From her elegantly spare evocations you really got a sense of what a piece - which you may not have seen - really looked like in performance. For the historian, Jane's writings are a rare source. Where criticism was called for Jane's steel fist was clothed in the subtlest of velvet gloves.

No - that doesn't make sense to me, even for format issues. Both leads in Rhapsody had been credited before - we seem to have lost various halves now - I think?!

The Rhapsody triple bill casting - as currently displayed on the ROH booking page - is very inconsistently presented - and has a fair few TBCs, which I don't think were there before. Does anybody have a word to the wise whom we might expect when?

What!? Is The Carmelites so popular?!

Has anybody any advice on where best to sit in the Milton Keynes theatre - this for opera not dance? Many thanks.

Hristov is not a showy dancer - he shows you the choreography and the character, which is what I like. As Romeo he was ardent, presenting his Juliet beautifully.

I recall that BRB triple bill - and overhearing some Royal Ballet School students who had been shipped up to Birmingham to see Orpheus <<We've come all this way to see that?>> My own reaction wasn't much different, but strangely, it i sonly Orpheus that I remember from that programme.

Not for use in theatres, but for more general use - if anybody has recommendations for portable or foldable, robust but lightweight, shooting stick type devices, that would be most useful. Thank you.

Many people in the UK can read Russian - very helpful to have these Russian sources sourced. Thank you Clarissa.

Apologies if this is posted already - but just seen this cast change on the ROH web-thingy: For performances of Hansel and Gretel on 8, 10 and 11 May (evening) James Hay will replace Paul Kay due to injury. For performances on 9 and 11 May (matinee) Ryoichi Hirano will replace Zenaida Yanowsky as the Witch while, due to injury, Johannes Stepanek will replace Thomas Whitehead. The rest of the casting remains the same.

But this is all self-perpetuating. Although speaking about New York audiences, as Christopher Wheeldon said when I interviewed him for Dancing Times (January 2013 edition), "audiences are a product of what they see." That's equally true here - I'm not at all convinced Corsaire is any longer a saleable title. I'm fortunate that when I started watching ballet in the 1970s, seasons by Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and London Festival Ballet in Manchester and Liverpool were usually of two-week duration, offering full-length productions but also a mix of triple bills - mix being the important word. The rep was built both on classics and newer works. Audiences were very healthy - and that is not a rose-tinted youthful memory. The difficulty now is that working practices and contractual requirements mean that such labour intensive touring patterns are unaffordable. ENB isn't even attempting to tour its most recent and forthcoming triple bills - a very unhealthy situation. As others have remarked elsehwere on these pages, even the balcony was taken off sale for the Coliseum season. In contrast, a familiar title like Romeo and Juliet at SWells did good business. The role of any artistic director these days is not to think up tantalising programming, to be a media pin-up, to preside over branding flim-flam, to choreograph even - but to raise money. I hope Tamara Rojo learned well when she shadowed Karen Kain. But again, National Ballet of Canada's touring footprint in Canada is much reduced - as was the number of works originally scheduled for their London visit. The omens are not good - and that's before we consider Maria Miller's philistine 'economic case' requirement announced today.

I was struck again at SWells last Saturday that the audience there is distinct - very largely not an audience you see at dance performances elsewhere.

Maureya Lebowitz as the prncess had true ballerina grandeur - catch her where you can.

Definitely staying away - to indicate my opposition to Putin's regime that allows such lawless tyranny to flourish.

With confidence, perhaps? Since I first saw Apollo at the RB 30 years ago the muses have usually had a blank terror and no sense of character about their performances. This revival (I saw the "second" cast) there is more individuality and wit to them. The ballet gains greater character as a result. And the ballet is much more coherent and impressive when we get to see the prologue and birth of Apollo. The shorter abstraction is more arid.

I can't think of a higher compliment to Alexei Ratmansky than to say 24 Preludes has a wonderfully improvisatory feel to it - as though there was no choreographer responsible. Here was a group of folks naturally interacting with each other. (Dances at Gathering?). More than that Ratmansky presents his dancers most flatteringly - even those among the cast about whom usually I find too personally showy at the expense of their choreography. Here was a meeting of equals. I loved the utterly un-Chopinesque Francaix score - highly effective as theatre music. But ... ... ... the costumes by Colleen Atwood were over-glassily bright so that they distracted the eye from the choreography. Likewise the overly-assertive lighting by Neil Austin. And 24 preludes in anticipation of what? There's dramatic developement in Ratmansky's use of the score from the combative quartet mid-way through - but we never really develop beyond buttoned-up Lilac Garden repressed emotion. Beautifully musical - but a superficial. Utterly astringent was Balanchine's Apollo - the best performance in 30 years I have seen at this address (or elsewhere). I am lost in all the variants of the ballet - staging, choreograhy, design - but Apolllo the ballet makes so much sense with its prologue. Federico Bonelli and his muses - Melissa Hamilton, Hikaru Kobayashi, Yuhui Choe - all had a fearless Balanchine physicality - combined with a rather more English characterful wit. A delight.

Some thoughts from 23 Feb performance: What a delight La Valse is when so crisply danced. At last I can understand why the ballet is revived.The dancers for once looked as though they were enjoying themsleves. Equally joyful was Voices of Spring. This little gem rescued a very stodgy production of Die Fledermaus when new - and though it would be good to see it performed in the cod-Grecian costumes as orginally done the duet responds well to the youthful casting of Yuhui Choe and Alexander Campbell, compared to the more senior partnerships we sometimes see. Thais pas de deux was never going to ignite with the glassy Sarah Lamb and distant Rupert Pennefather - the perfume here looked long evaporated. Monotones I with Yasmine Naghdi, Romany Pajdak and Tristan Dyer was very convincing and beautifully poised. I was even reconciled to the dirtily coloured costumes. Monotones II lacked stretch and sinew. Both trios struggled with the muddy lighting. Zenaida Yanowsky and Federico Bonelli gave good, honest accounts of Marguerite and Armand - but the ballet did not move me at all.

I see today that theartsdesk.com is referring to Marguerite and Armand as a tragedy. Is it? Do you feel any connection with Marguerite - as Verdi intended we should for Violetta in La traviata. I ask the question only having seen the ballet in the Fonteyn films - where artifice of effect was dominant - and onstage in 2000 when Guillem deconstructed the character so that any trace of emotion - and audience empathy - was expunged.

Valeri Hristov told me he had been cast as Onegin for a previous revival on the strength of his physical appearance - only being moved to Lensky after the Stuttgart people actually saw him dance.

As usual - now, on the day after public booking opens, there are more seats showing as avaialble than yesterday when the scrum to fill your shopping basket means many seats are out of circulation. I have managed to book for Don Carlos anyhow!

Has anybody read this book - if so any feedback/ observations?

The scholarly articles in the programme for The Royal Opera’s revival of Robert le diable make a persuasive case for Meyerbeer – far more so than the cartoon of a production by Laurent Pelly. Faust and Hoffmann kept springing to mind when watching this Robert – but a hero’s search for his self goes for nothing with Pelly. Choruses of chainmailed soldiers, wimpled women and day-glo plastic horses are pure Spamalot. Meyerbeer the meanderer fatally never gets to the point – but he is a better composer than Pelly credits. The scenery wobbled as Isabelle lent on the toy town castle – indication enough of a lack of dramatic weight. Famous by repute and the Degas painting, the ballet of the nuns provided a rare moment of conviction. Gilbert and Sullivan clearly knew the scene – the nuns rise from their tombs to a melody we now recognise from Ruddigore as the portraits step from their frames. With their cropped heads and hanging shifts these nuns echo the ghostly women in MacMillan’s Gloria. Their abandon is Duncanesque with the odd spasm of McGregor. The Royal Opera went the long way round to secure Patrizia Ciofi as Isabelle – three cheers that they did, she illuminated the stage. Not quite on her level but very impressive were a saturnine John Relyea oozing malevolence as Bertram and the ringing Jean-François Borras as Rambaut. Apart from some yelped high notes Bryan Hymel was an ardent Robert, far more heroic than in Les troyens last summer. Orchestra and augmented chorus were hugely alert. An operatic curiosity – but curiosity not satisfied by the staging that short changes Meyerbeer.

From the comments here, interesting that viewers are looking past the designs and able to concentrate on the choreography.

Janet - wondering whether you were sitting in your preferred location at the front of the stalls? Wondering how intrusive - or not - you found the design in Infra?

Thank you - that certainly sounds better than the golden jubilee gala. I wonder whether HMQ will give Gloriana another go when it returns next year?