Geoff

Not having yet made it to the new ENB on City Island I just checked on Google Maps. The website got confused (giving two different spots on City Island) but this seems to be the shortest route: https://goo.gl/maps/ncvcs7o8SaA7bkxdA Does anyone have any tips to stop one heading off in the wrong direction?

I have no idea what was said in the offending post (gone by the time I caught up with the thread) but at the risk of seeming self-promoting might I offer two previous remarks by way of comment? https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/20918-filling-in-the-gaps/?do=findComment&comment=294680 https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/17345-apologies/?do=findComment&comment=237921

As can - to labour a previously discussed point - the conducting (slower is usually worse imho).

Thanks Sim! Is she on a wire? Or up on a rostrum behind a gauze? Or something else?

The same thing happened to me a couple of years ago with Jewels. Never liked it, then one night, having decided to give it just one more go, my eyes opened during Emeralds...and I went out afterwards and got tickets for the rest of the run. So one never knows.

Can someone explain what happens on stage at the end? From my - slightly restricted seat at the top - I didn’t see this.

Just want to echo the other comments on last night. An excellent performance. Also, to build on discussions elsewhere, the music was indeed well played, and at what seemed to be authentic tempi: it tends to help an evening when that which should be played briskly, is indeed played to time. Also, the general point has been made before: the high quality of the overall performance reflects on the benefits of touring (as has also been remarked upon at performances of the ENB). Compared to the Royal Ballet company, often forced to throw works on to the stage after perhaps not quite enough rehearsal time, while also performing other works (in sometimes very different styles) in the same week, we see the benefit of a troupe comfortable with a work they have performed in many different venues over an extended period. Practice makes perfect, was my overriding feeling last night.

Many thanks Lynette: sad to see so many tickets as yet unsold but the discounts should help. I picked up a good £10 seat at the top for a performance I had not originally booked for.

I have also had the privilege of watching this important recording. As a result I would like to add a comment based on the timing of it. Last night was my second time at this triple bill and, wonderful as some of the dancing was, it gave me the opportunity to test something which concerned me when I saw the show last week. Some commentators have been less than excited by Enigma Variations but are they currently seeing the work as Ashton intended? The original cast danced it in more or less exactly 29 minutes (counting just the music from start to finish) whereas last night's music ran for 31 minutes, which is some 7% slower. There were no stage waits nor interpolations of new music so the only explanation is that the conducting was significantly slower, and therefore, by extension, so was the dancing. There are various possible reasons for this. This particular conductor is not my favourite - my view is that he has the ability to render masterpieces uninteresting by conducting too slowly - and this may simply be his view of Elgar's music. Alternatively (as has been argued elsewhere on this Forum in the past) he is taking account of a cast less drilled in Cecchetti than the original Royal Ballet troupe Ashton created the work on, so perhaps less eager to dance this at the intended speed. This is not to denigrate any specific dancer - Morera, for example, was beautiful last night - but to explore the often disregarded connection between faulty conducting and the subjective experience of a work. I have my fingers crossed for next week's Sleeping Beauty, hoping that the conductor will heed Tchaikovsky's markings and conduct the work to speed, not as we had for so many years (until Koen Kessels put things right). The sluggish pace in the past may have been one reason for people to feel this magnificent classical ballet is "too long", "slow", "boring", and so on.

Indeed! +1

Following an exceptionally sour review from Hugh Canning in last week’s Sunday Times, I wanted to put in a word for the new Don Pasquale, which I saw at yesterday's noon matinee. Despite the unpromising critical context; the unpromising slot (sad to say but weekend matinees can often be slack, for whatever reasons); and the unpromising opening stage image (fashionable neon paired with fashionable Italian working-class design) we had a great time. My companion - a musician visiting the ROH for the first time in 45 years - agreed on the following: * Bryn Terfel has not been so good in a long time. This role seems to suit the current state of his voice. * All the cast did well, and often exceptionally well. * Pido kept things going and together (which is not always easy in this rep) * The production worked and made us laugh (even the fashionable video was - at least in the first half - used to good effect) Well worth a punt, if one is undecided about going. And of course the work is - arguably - Donizetti’s masterpiece.

In case it’s useful here is a discussion thread about the full-length Raymonda from a couple of years ago:

John, Sim, you probably noticed at the time: in the June edition of Dancing Times Clement Crisp was invited in interview to compare todays’s dancers with the great names of the past he saw in his very long career as a critic. He chose...Morera, who is, he said, “someone in whom the music lives, it is a nurturing liquid for her and it is wonderful to behold”.

The troubles of the ‘new’ ROH website (see discussions elsewhere on the Forum) are not helping matters. This morning - using super-privileged, elite, Friends membership - I have just checked on the ticket situation. At the moment (just past 7am) every performance except one shows some (limited and expensive but still) availability on the main page for this production: https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/fidelio-by-tobias-kratzer-dates But clicking through to buy tickets reveals that no tickets at all are available for any show in the run. Not for the first time, the ROH website is contradicting itself.

Something similar applies when booking packages in the Amphitheatre: one gets a discount but on higher priced seats.