Geoff

In the unlikely event that there are people who haven't noticed the other thread, sadly the ROH technical problems are continuing (and there now seem to be some truly awful new issues), see for example this post and the discussion which followed:

5 hours ago, miliosr said:

we may see a situation where the San Francisco Ballet in the 21st century evolves out of the New York City Ballet's orbit. 

What an interesting comment. Might you expand a little on this point?

With regard to asking ROH ushers to intervene, who then do not do anything, I had an interesting conversation with a member of ROH staff recently. Apparently the ROH is still understaffed. They lost a lot of people (Brexit followed by lockdown) and have been crewing up again recently but are not yet back to full numbers.
 

This would seem to explain the many comments about no staff at certain entrances, tickets not being checked and so on. It could also explain the recent reports of ushers not intervening. I can imagine it is the more experienced staff who are more likely to feel confident enough to tackle those potentially belligerent ticket holders who feel entitled to eat, drink, talk, type etc etc etc (as above).
 

A newly employed usher might understandably prefer to stay out of harm‘s way. I am sympathetic and hope staff training helps explain how best to handle these situations.

Copying an important post here to give further publicity to the ongoing problems. As I have suggested repeatedly (see above) these issues should now be raised at board level. Given the astonishing amounts of money one understands have been spent on the website so far, this is a disgrace:—-

https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/19491-new-roh-website/?do=findComment&comment=375313

23 hours ago, capybara said:

Madison Kessler 

Keesler

On 09/04/2022 at 12:59, Timmie said:

Any thoughts on Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci for a newbie? I’d love to see Ermonela Jaho so I’m thinking of booking this.

Go. The productions are excellent and Jaho is a wonder.

On 27/03/2022 at 14:02, Lizbie1 said:

Mrs Sedley to be a recognisable Hyacinth Bucket type.

 
Glad to see you noticed that performance Lizbie1. Fiona Maddocks in her review in The Observer included Mrs Sedley in a list of those who managed “to be more than caricatures”. Not on the night I went, she wasn’t, when her strutting and gurning was straight out of amdram pantomime. I suspect the director - who overall did a wonderful job teasing good and thoughtful performances out of singers not all of whom are known for their acting ability - just couldn’t get what she wanted from that particular performer. 

As to wider questions about the production (which I thought was marvellous), some interestingly nuanced comments have come in a review and then a blog from the experienced music critic David Nice:

https://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/peter-grimes-royal-opera-review-impressive-not-quite-devastating

http://davidnice.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-greatest-grimeses.html
 

Might I revive this thread? Given the relentlessly awful news at the moment, here is some family entertainment with a Swan Lake theme:-

Looking for a single SCS or similarly affordable ticket for the Osipova performance on Monday 22nd. Please PM if you have a spare. 

Any chance of correcting the spelling of Darcey’s name in the headline? 

Did anyone here see the show by the junior company of Nederlands Dans Theater this week? Debra Crane in The Times gave it four stars. I went last night, pretty much sold out, somewhat younger crowd, three works:

The Big Crying by Marco Goecke from Germany

Simple Things by the veteran Hans van Manen from the Netherlands

Impasse by Johan Inger from Sweden

I am a fan of van Manen's work so perhaps it was natural that I would like this piece the most. The overall feeling was that the three works, made at different times by different people, had more in common with each other than not. Maybe a reflection of the company, of a unifying choice of repertoire, or just chance. 

In any case I would be interested to know what others thought. 

11 minutes ago, Fonty said:

 Complain, complain, complain.  

Indeed. As suggested above, those who happen to have high-level contacts should use them. For the rest of us, we were assured that this is the right place to write to but I don't know how well this email address has been working recently:

customerservices@roh.org.uk

On 05/02/2022 at 18:11, Emeralds said:

 

I’d say about 30% of the original Petipa is preserved. Thankfully the 70% or so cut includes the worst bits. Maybe Jonathan Gray thinks 30% is “little remains of”.  

 

Thank you very much for your most informative and detailed reply Emeralds. Much appreciated. Things I asked earlier are now getting clearer.

As you corrected me for referring to a 27 minute video as “half an hour”, you obviously think accuracy is important when it comes to numbers. So it’s likely you thought carefully before suggesting this production retains “about 30%” of the original Petipa. That is less than a third and maybe explains why I raised the question at the outset.

Sorry for not posting a link to the video, by the way: this can get one’s posts deleted from here, in a somewhat unpredictable way, so I didn’t want to risk it. In any case I would encourage people to view the whole La Scala recording, as well as others. 

On 05/02/2022 at 08:07, Geoff said:

Past experience shows that however carefully and courteously we complain, the website only changes, it does not necessarily get any better. I know this business is tricky but the ROH has been spending millions on so-called professionals to get it working properly. Maybe someone on here who is friendly with a member of the board could have a wee word?

Just to add, this Forum attracts many readers, some of whom may know people who can help with this. Here are a few names who perhaps could usefully be made more aware of what has been going on. Just in case someone here knows someone:-
 

Board of Trustees

Chair

Sir Simon Robey

Zeinab Badawi

Tim Bunting

Lord Browne of Madingley

Kirsty Cooper

Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE

Dame Vivien Duffield

Lady Heywood

Susan Hoyle OBE

Julian Metherell

Paul Morrell OBE

Indhu Rubasingham MBE

Chris Townsend CBE

Roger Wright CBE

Danny Wyler

Recent booking experiences have reached new lows, which deserves a new thread. Those who have long memories of booking online for the ROH will remember previous, seemingly terminal, issues with the booking process, to the extent that people would come on here to post their astonishment that it worked ok for them this time round. The sums the ROH has spent over the years building the current website have been rumoured; certainly the companies involved have earned very well off the back of a state-subsidised business that clearly does not have the in-house competencies to manage a web-design and ticketing process properly. One wonders who does this work for other theatres, where problems, if and when they emerge, seem not to return again and again over years.

I am a Friends+, so fall between higher-paying supporters, and ordinary Friends and the general public. I had been tipped off by higher-level supporters that the "new" system being introduced was causing problems, but if given the choice, to select the "new" system. Don't know whether that was the best advice as things turned out, but it was certainly logical advice (one can assume that if a "new" site is being introduced, that must be because there are unresolvable problems with the old one - we could have told ROH that, by the way, but of course they presumably only speak to people who tell them what they want to hear).

Needless to say it took me over two hours this week to book a few tickets for the next season, using two different laptops and an Ipad. My heart goes out to those using, say, equipment in a public library, or those whose eyesight or fine motor skill challenges them to locate tiny dots on screen and click with accuracy. This new thing has been terribly designed and, at the risk of stating the obvious, did not work on a day when more than a couple of people wanted to buy tickets at the same time.

This morning the Friends office sent out a poorly timed and somewhat patronising email instructing people to use the following tricks when trying to send money to the ROH:

- Signing out of your online account and back in again
- Pressing the Ctrl and F5 keys on your keyboard together to refresh the webpage
- Clearing your browser cookies and data
- Using an incognito browsing window

Well, ROH, I tried the first three of those suggestions at the time, and they didn't work for me. But no doubt the wizards responsible say such things to subtly imply that any problems with the website are somehow the fault of us technically-challenged customers, rather than their design. 

If you had a good and easy time, that's grand to know, but this is the first booking period in decades of being a Friend which has resulted in every single person I know who was also booking had similar (or worse) problems. I just tried writing a reply to the Friends email but got a standard response which says, first:

Our normal opening hours are 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, excepting Bank Holidays. This inbox is not monitored outside of these hours.  

This is reasonable enough except why have they sent out an email which begs for a response first thing on a Saturday? Pity the poor staffer who opens the in-box on Monday morning. But then it says, and this might be interesting for everyone, not just Friends, to note:

For any ticketing queries, please email boxoffice@roh.org.uk. Due to the current high volume of enquiries it is taking up to 10 days for the team to respond.  

I think we can take it from this that the normally super-efficient and friendly box-office staff have been inundated with complaints this week. As management clearly does not see fit to put in short-term contract staff to help break a log jam, we paying punters are not only treated as badly as a booking website knows how, but are expected to wait a long time before anything can be put right. 

What can we do? Past experience shows that however carefully and courteously we complain, the website only changes, it does not necessarily get any better. I know this business is tricky but the ROH has been spending millions on so-called professionals to get it working properly. Maybe someone on here who is friendly with a member of the board could have a wee word?

On 24/01/2022 at 14:00, Emeralds said:

I’ve addressed all your Raymonda questions and others have added a few other useful pointers - you might have to scroll back a bit to find these points. 

Now that the new issue of the Dancing Times is out, may I respond to this? First of all, thank you so much for all your comments, they are really helpful. And also, just in case people think my questions are somehow about whether to see the show, I heartily encourage everyone who has not yet seen it to try and catch this show on its tour: it was designed to tour (there was a comment early on about the set which may relate to this) and it is certainly a good night out in the theatre.

But to come back to choreographic questions, would it be fair to sum up your view as, this production has, like the old Morecombe and Wise line, just about all the original choreography but not necessarily in the original order? I see that Jonathan Gray, the editor of Dancing Times, in his not really very positive review of this Raymonda just published, writes "Little remains of Petipa". The two points of view don't really seem to be reconcilable, yet you are both experts.

So, might I draw attention again to the 30 minute set of extracts from the La Scala "authentic" (or whatever) production which I linked to earlier in this thread, and ask again, where did all that Petipa choreography go?

46 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

Geoff, I think you just hit the nail on the head - “something useful”.  It wasn’t useful! 

11 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

the Bolshoi version, pretty as it is, is certainly not anything like the original. 

@Emeralds I hope you don't mean that you feel my posts are not useful. I am asking basic questions about how this show relates to the Petipa "original" (to use your word). You have indeed given your answers, for which I thank you even though I am still not quite sure what exactly has been saved/changed/abandoned etc from what you called "Raymonda doing a marathon of lots of technical solos and duets" (this question based on my seeing the ENB show three times and going through the La Scala recording quite carefully - I don't remember the Bolshoi, which I've only seen once - so if you can spare any more expert time that would be great). 

However tracking back I suspect it might rather be the online conversation between Alastair Macaulay, Doug Fullington and Sergey Konaev posted earlier by @Sebastian which you do not find useful. As Fullington was actually employed by Tamara Rojo on this production, I would have thought that anything he had to say might be useful. On the point that seems particularly to have met with your disapproval - the brief discussion on the handclaps - I note that Fullington has a different preference to the ENB production. That in itself is (a little bit) interesting but is perhaps also an indication that Tamara Rojo did not find it "useful", as is her right. Academic research can only get us so far. 

2 hours ago, bangorballetboy said:

Do you question why Matthew Bourne's reworked Swan Lake doesn't contain much of the usual steps from Petipa's Swan Lake?

That's a good comparison. So, how many of the "best bits" of Swan Lake does one get when seeing Bourne's show? And how many of the "best bits" of Raymonda does one get with the ENB show (Act 3 aside)? 

A discussion around what is included - and what is missing - would be informative and useful. As I originally asked:

On 22/01/2022 at 00:14, Geoff said:

how much of Raymonda’s choreography - the character, I mean, not the ballet generally - has been cut / shortened / simplified?...Any choreological tips very welcome!

On 22/01/2022 at 00:14, Geoff said:

And how much of Raymonda’s choreography - the character, I mean, not the ballet generally - has been cut / shortened / simplified? I have only seen the full-length ballet on stage once (a few years ago in Vienna) and the technical demands made of the eponymous heroine seemed even greater (relentless in fact) compared to what I saw at the Coliseum this week.

I apologise that my original post accidentally set off a discussion about the ENB programme, which is a perfectly nice complement to the show but ducks around an important question for a ballet which is called Raymonda. Here’s another way in to the issue. Might I suggest searching the internet for this video (see below).

This shows around half an hour of “best bits” of Raymonda, taken from La Scala’s allegedly authentic production. More to the point it contains much of the dancing one associates with the lead character Raymonda from other productions which have been recorded (and as it happens also from the one time I saw the full ballet in Vienna).
 

So far as I can tell barely any of this dancing appears in the West End ENB show also called “Raymonda”. Which to me seemed something that would have been worth discussing in the programme. After all, it seems ENB’s Raymonda dances little of what she usually dances in “Raymonda” so why has no one mentioned this?

9 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

About Tchaikovsky and metronome markings: I don't want to sound facetious but they might actually be of more value to dance historians than they are to musicians. Early recordings of piano music - not so long after Tchaikovsky's death - suggest a a wide latitude afforded to the performer, extending to changing the notes themselves. (While I don't recall studying examples of Tchaikovsky's own piano works I don't think it's unreasonable to extrapolate across from other composers' works.)

You’re not being facetious @Lizbie1, I failed to explain the point properly. Tchaikovsky’s working metronome makings on the rehearsal score of The Sleeping Beauty are invaluable. These date from the period leading up to the first performance when Petipa, Drigo and Tchaikovsky were working with the original cast. This is not like questions of pianistic (say) interpretation, it is how a complex stage work was intended to go by those who created it.

For what it’s worth, the filmed record shows the Royal Ballet broadly dancing at those speeds up to the 1970s. As you probably know the Forum has discussed what happened then.

1 hour ago, Emeralds said:

Imagine trying to tell Martha Argerich or Bryn Terfel how long their quavers should be according to historical notes on how it was performed in Tchaikovsky’s  or Mussorgsky’s time- you’d get a frozen stare of death and probably banned from the concert hall. 

I only had professional experience of working with one of the two artists you name. But in this person's case (as with others in the performing arts over my career) questions of historical performance practice, academic research and discovery, and a commitment to honouring the original creative intentions have been a significant part of their working life. So if you had something useful to say about quavers, this would be taken seriously.

By the way, as you mention Tchaikovsky, research on his use of the metronome (and therefore "quavers") has been very useful to professionals. Although, as is sometimes discussed here, there are ballet companies known to ignore his metronome markings as their dancers can't handle the original tempi. 

Anybody see the show this afternoon? I heard Erina got a present.

Just read the programme, which is somewhat (and repeatedly) evasive on exactly how much Petipa is in this show. It would be great to have a guide from Forum experts who have seen Rojo’s Raymonda. 
 

As a guess, would it be right to say that most of the solo variations are authentic, whereas most of everything else (PDD, character dance, Corps etc) is not? 
 

And how much of Raymonda’s choreography - the character, I mean, not the ballet generally - has been cut / shortened / simplified? I have only seen the full-length ballet on stage once (a few years ago in Vienna) and the technical demands made of the eponymous heroine seemed even greater (relentless in fact) compared to what I saw at the Coliseum this week. 
 

Any choreological tips very welcome!
 

(Added my tuppence to the other thread where this question was identically posed)

On 08/01/2022 at 17:46, art_enthusiast said:

Slightly unrelated (but not sure if there is a thread for this yet) - does anyone think the Marriage of Figaro performance next week on the 13th Jan, at 11.30am, might be cancelled? Because I wanted to book for it, but I see there are many empty seats so not sure if it's going ahead?

Never heard of ROH cancelling a poorly selling show. The Covid risk is of course unpredictable, however. I'm not up to date with their current rules on refunds but perhaps it would be worth calling the box office to discuss options. The relatively unknown, and relatively young, case, presumably approved by Pappano, is a draw.