Geoff

I raise you Ridley Scott’s film “The Duellists”. In my memory, the characters just fight one duel after another. Sometimes according to the rules.

Indeed. However did anyone - no doubt more politely than this - ask if the show has been changed since its first run? My wicked hope is that, given that the choreographer has been banned from the building, maybe people with skill and experience in putting on shows have been at work on this revival.

Thanks for the Pushkin update Anna. No card tricks in the opera!

Indeed. See here (pages and pages and pages): https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/19491-new-roh-website/ The figures I have been given as to the cost of the “redesign” have not been confirmed (I am working on it though) but they are astonishing, well over £1million.

Last night I saw Onegin - at least this is what it looked like to me - performing a card trick to Olga and Lensky during the family ball at the beginning of Act 2. I never noticed this before (my eyes are usually elsewhere during this music but Bolle kept me focussed) Does anyone know if this comes from Pushkin?

Love to know if it is worth the effort. We’ve never managed it yet. For an attraction which seems well suited to our technical minded teenager, their date schedule keeps skipping half-term.

Bumping this up, as I am planning what to try and book for the Heritage programme, which will no doubt be popular as well as needing good sightlines. As a year has passed since the last post, I wonder if the ROH is now better at designating seats according to how much one can see? And have people got more information on where it is good / bad to sit?

Does anyone happen to have friendly relations with the chap? Might it help to draw his attention to this discussion?

Thank you! My sense is he's been getting worse recently (even quicker off the mark, even less discriminating in choosing when to offer his comments)...

Has anyone else noticed a certain stern solo low male voice shouting bravo (sometimes brava, bravi) at shows in London this season? These sorts of signs of approval are not unusual of course - done it myself at great performances - but I have noticed this particular voice over the last few months, in both the ROH and (less frequently) the Coliseum. It seems to my ears to be the same person, which is why I am posting. The characteristics of this particular enthusiast are: - placed in lower sections of the house (maybe Stalls Circle in the ROH?) - shouts as soon as possible when the variation or aria finishes - shouts ahead of the audience’s applause starting, often while the music is still coming to an end - shouts even when things are not that special - and he is often the only person to shout out (in other words, the music is finishing, he shouts all by himself, and then perhaps the audience starts to applaud) It may be that I am imagining things. But if not, I wish this person - who has access to a lot of tickets and perhaps an unusual personality - could be helped to understand that it would be considerate to wait at least a few seconds before sharing his loud opinion. Some of us are still listening, watching, involved in what is happening on stage and in the pit.

Many thanks! Takes me back. I did this at a school show half a century ago, not nearly as well of course but we did have puffs of theatrical smoke at key moments.

When the show first came out, Stephen Jay-Taylor wrote: >>The outer acts set in the attic look like a touring production of "Oklahoma!" sponsored by IKEA, all blond wood, ridiculously brightly lit, and so shallow and squat in design that the cast have nowhere even to stand (let alone sleep four) other than to line up at the front, where they still can't be seen by anyone in the upper reaches of the house because of the set's low cluster of beams. Similar remarks appeared in a number - but not all - of the broadsheet reviews. Here is a review of the latest revival: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/what-to-see/la-boheme-royal-opera-house-review-one-ear/ But, as always, other opinions are available.

Yes, I saw some critical comment which suggested the show has somehow bedded down, so perhaps I should have gone back. Not sure that’s right. For a start, little of the production is very dimensional, which is what costs the money. It works on camera though, a criterion which is either the thin end of a dangerous wedge (in some people’s eyes) or a triumph of open access for the people (in the eyes of eg ACE).

Of course, silly me. This went out of my head as I won't be in the UK then, lucky those who will be there!

Lucky you! Any talk of them making it across the Atlantic?

Just checked, you are quite right Rob: that line about the “Website Redesign Team” has indeed disappeared now. This is hilarious. It seems these clowns can’t even do something this simple without messing up. Either they were not in fact supporters, in which case they put the line on there by mistake, which is a strange thing to do. Or they wanted to support in some way, but were told this was not legitimate. Or it was some kind of odd gesture by a rogue employee trying to make a point, whatever that might have been. Or some other equally idiotic mix-up, typical of the confusion they have put us through in this year (has it been that long?) of unintended “beta testing”.

I feel sorry for the son of the nanny, spending £30,000 on private detectives.

And here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0f10a62a-42e1-11ea-a083-1ec392b38124?shareToken=0ac6371331824d78c40e8954466ea253

In the unlikely event that anyone has not seen the latest, here is one of the articles: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7942703/Lord-Lucans-son-RUBBISHES-claims-living-Buddhist-Australia.html

+1 (and not just in Russia, nor only recently, this has rather a long tradition)

...whereas I, LinMM, am a sucker for them! I love the unpredictability, the often chaotic and under-rehearsed shows, the muddly programming, the unexpected surprises, the anticipated “surprises”, the one-up-personship between performers (once - no names - two people were booked who couldn't stand one another, so one appeared in the first half, the other carefully separate, after the interval, so that there was no risk of them running into each other backstage) - in short the sheer showbizzyness of it all. Often one sees amazing things that are new, or novel aspects of performers or works one knows well, perhaps simply because the context is so different. In any case some of the loveliest and most moving experiences I have ever spent in theatres have been galas (just recently and just at the ROH, I remember the Hvorostovsky tribute and the Fonteyn evening, for example). But it’s always pot luck, so overpaying may well be a foolish investment.

For those booking the Gala this morning, one special feature to note is that two "generous philanthropic" supporters are shown. The first is the Laidlaw family - but the second is, yes, the "Website Redesign Team". Maybe putting some money back into a show is their way of trying to make amends?

Here’s what someone else thought: https://www.thereviewshub.com/ballet-icons-gala-the-coliseum-london/ My question is - as someone who sadly has to miss the Bolshoi trips to London each year - what was Alyona Kovalyova like when she danced with the company? I was impressed by her last night.

Back in the 1960s, you mean? No, the impression created by what he said was that the recordings of the Royal Ballet from that era were amazing and impressive. Well, he certainly didn't criticise his own conducting! But it did seem to me that there was a certain discretion around his remarks: it would be interesting to hear what impression he made on other people who were there, anyone got a comment? No, I didn't get that impression at all. Rather that the issue of Tchaikovsky's metronome markings is not a concern for the Royal Ballet, at least these days, as neither Hewett nor Monica Mason mentioned them in their answers. I think what she meant is that the current ROH stage is larger than the stage of the Mariinsky theatre at the time of the first performance. But to be honest I wasn't sure what point she was trying to make at that moment, maybe a more general point about stages "these days" compared to stages "back then"? Not even sure that's true, looking at the splendid pictures of the first production in St Petersburg, crammed with so many people.

There was an interesting comment during a “Sleeping Beauty And Me” Insight evening before Christmas. Monica Mason was on the panel alongside the conductor Simon Hewett (one of two conductors who shared responsibility for this recent run). In answer to a question about Tchaikovsky’s metronome markings Hewett said he had recently watched recordings of the Royal Ballet from the 1960s and (I have just checked the note I made at the time) said he found the tempi “astonishing”. By which he meant, much faster than now. Monica Mason then offered various explanations (eg dancers are dancing in different ways so need longer to complete the steps, the stage is so much bigger these days) only some of which sounded credible. In any case considering Hewett’s response to the older recordings, perhaps it is too simplistic just to blame the conductor when things go slowly.