RuthE

Absolute music to my ears, this. I’m especially pleased to note a Sunday-afternoon Beginner class from Hannah Frost (and it doesn’t hurt ONE BIT that the new Central premises are extremely easy for me to get to and from). https://www.centralschoolofballet.co.uk/adult-classes-to-recommence-on-19th-september/

yep… and factor in hayfever while walking to the venue, and it’s a choice between whether the pollen goes in my eyes or my throat!

I can’t help, but would like to report a successful nabbing of a pair of returns this morning. I bookmarked the page and have been checking back a couple of times a day and (as usual) it paid off eventually!

Sending it back to the box office now.

I’m selling Amphi C80 for tonight’s 7pm performance if anyone is in need of it. It’s a bit restricted view, but on the end of the row so very easy to get in and out of. £9 - please PM me if interested.

I quote from the draft letter: ”It should have been immediately obvious to everyone that the social distancing requirements of the past year would temporarily greatly increase the proportional demand for single tickets for any live performance, even among people who may usually book as one of a pair. For anyone who is the only member of their household wishing to attend a performance, the choice has been to go alone or not go at all, and while this should become easier in Step 3 of the Government roadmap, it will not cease to be a problem until the vaccination programme is far closer to completion.”

The letter makes this point very clearly!

I don’t think that contradicts anything I said, does it? I know that Glyndebourne for one opened their whole season for booking on that basis. If the show is on, it’s up to you to risk-assess who your +1 is.

Anyway, letter is drafted and will be circulated today to those who’ve asked.

What we’re awaiting for confirmation of, post-17-May, is if we are going into Step 3. This allows (a) 50% capacity audiences, and (b) household mixing indoors. If they can open at all, it’s (legally) OK to go with somebody not in your bubble.

Actually, not necessarily. It’s up to the venue to sort that out to their satisfaction if they give a certain seating layout to your group. If you all skooch up together, you may no longer be compliant with distancing from the people in front and behind.

Having now drafted the letter, I’ve acknowledged that any “chessboard” pattern would need to have designated areas to accommodate people whose groups include young children or a disabled person. Other than that, I’m sure families can survive sitting with one seat empty between members for an hour and a half at a time. (As one of my friends said - she’s been with her husband virtually 24 hours a day for over a year, so is quite sure she won’t miss him unduly while sitting a metre apart while watching a show.)

Or perhaps not. A friend of mine (who could have booked as a Friend yesterday but forgot) reports that the best she could do this morning (following public booking opening) for any performance of Don Giovanni was a £184 stalls seat.

Perhaps they release a new allocation for general public? It’s always (in recent history) been a requirement of their funding agreement, though I don’t know if this is currently waived.

I don’t have the info to comment further on Sadler‘s Wells. However, I challenged the Southbank Centre about the lack of singles in the RFH seating plan, and was told that there was flexibility available - a single booker could call the box office and be allowed to book one of a pair, with the other removed from sale. So their initial optics were poor, and they weren’t transparent about how they could accommodate people, but they *were* - like just about every other org I’ve heard reports about - able to find solutions where necessary. In contrast, the ROH has taken a blanket “computer says no” attitude, which has resulted in the ridiculous scenario whereby people paying £1260pa in membership - that’s a Premium 1 subscription - were in some actual reported cases unable to access a seat anywhere in the Stalls Circle or Balcony as a single, while a member of the general public who’s able to book as a pair can go in later this morning and have a good choice of seats throughout the house. I’m sure that as lovers of the arts we all appreciate the decisions that will have had to be made about how best to use the available capacity. But telling members who complain that they can’t “leave a gap in the seating plan” (I’ve now seen emails from 2 members who’ve been told this) is not acceptable. We are all individual members, not awkwardly-shaped jigsaw pieces that can be slotted in to fill in the corners. Our money and loyalty was good enough for the ROH when they were taking our membership money, and if their seating plan fails to cater for such an enormous subset of us, they need a new (or more flexibly-managed) seating plan.

At least from 17th May it’s *legally allowed* to mix with somebody indoors from outside your household. So most of us *could* help solve the problem by accepting the temporary inconvenience and lack of spontaneity of having to find a friend to go with. What’s been extremely galling over the last few months, especially when theatres were briefly open around November - and this isn’t a ROH problem - is the fact that for anyone who doesn’t live with someone with identical interests, we had three choices: book a single, book a pair for just ourself (and pay double), or don’t go at all. Which to be blunt was like a kick in the teeth from those companies which offered seating only or mostly in pairs - having been stuck alone in my flat for several months, longing to go to the theatre.

I’m not familiar with how Sadler’s Wells or Birmingham Rep has handled it, but of the other venues you mention, the need for a fully one-at-a-time booking system hasn’t come up, because they’ve been pretty fair in how singles and pairs have been distributed in the first place. The SBC had terrible optics but did say when asked that a single booker could take one of a pair and have the other put out of commission. The biggest issue I spotted at Glyndebourne was that the second price up from the bottom (covering much of the Upper Circle) was double the bottom price (covering restricted view), and there were no singles at bottom price - however as they acknowledged that Step 3 permits indoor mixing as well as theatres able to open at 50% capacity, I at least knew that I could attend with a +1 of my choice! So this didn’t affect me personally. OHP’s seating plan had seats arranged in various groupings including many singles, and lots of choice, as well as an overt instruction that if you couldn’t find an appropriate bubble size you should contact the box office to get it sorted. (The ROH has been 100% unhelpful and unwilling in this regard - I acknowledge that OHP now has more flexibility in where it physically puts the seats, but still...) And the Wigmore Hall has, from Day 1 of socially-distanced audiences, invited applications in 1s or 2s and I’ve usually got what I asked for!

Jan McNulty says they’ve managed it at the Leeds Grand. I’m also aware of several examples elsewhere in the world, including the Salzburg Festival, Royal Danish opera and I believe Bayreuth. These are places that have specifically done a “chessboard” seating plan. Other options include being allowed to book for a certain seating area (up to a total capacity), stating the number in your group, and having actual seats allocated later.

It is. But when it’s an organisation that’s had a large amount of my money (Supporting Friends membership renewal and a substantial donation of ticket refunds) in a year of almost no artistic output, and in which my own income has taken a bit of a hit as well, they need to know how much goodwill they’re squandering. People are going to choose not to renew, or to renew at the cheapest possible level, or to edit an intended legacy out of their will. They’re snubbing a huge proportion of their most loyal supporters. “Friendship” works both ways, and a friendship in which one side is doing all the financial and emotional investment while being ignored by the other, is what most of us would recognise as a toxic relationship.

Hi all! I’m formulating a letter to the Friends of Covent Garden, designed to be signed by as many Members as wish to, to make a group complaint about their continuing poor attitude towards people who need to book single tickets, at a time when the only way they could treat members equitably is to have a seating plan based on all seats being singles. If you would like to be a signatory, please drop me an email at ruth.elleson@gmail.com - I intend to have something drafted by tomorrow which will then be circulated for review.

Here’s the cast sheet link.

The cast sheet for tonight’s General Rehearsal is now online. Judging by the listed characters, it looks as though the Spanish and Arabian dances are out. Not sure about what’s gone from Act 1... we don’t seem to have a Dancing Mistress for a start.

I can't remember whether it had surtitles at the time, live at the ROH. What I DO remember, as somebody who at the time only ever booked for opera and wasn't into ballet at all, was that it was treated as a ballet rather than an opera in the sense that, for example, it went on sale on "ballet day" back when they used to separate out booking for opera and ballet. So, given that the ROH never uses surtitles for ballets with a sung score, it's quite possible that Dido/Acis didn't have any to begin with. (I mean, of course theoretically the singing should be understandable to an Anglophone audience anyway, but we all know that isn't always the case). I know I'm once again betraying my background as Not a Proper Ballet Fan, but I always long for surtitles when I'm at a ballet with sung words! Song of the Earth in particular, and... was it Yugen that had Chichester Psalms as the score?

I believe some of the Zoom-based, paid-for classes with limited numbers are interactive with corrections, though I agree it would be no substitute for a hands-on correction.

Having posted this in a different thread, I now see it hasn't been mentioned here, so: David Kierce has moved his regular classes online. They cost £7 and are at the same times as his usual Absolute Beginner and Beginner/Improver classes at Central School of Ballet. https://www.beginneradultballet.com/online-classes-1 I asked about the format of the class (bearing in mind I often attend his classes in person, but live in a small flat and obviously don't have sprung flooring or anything) and he said it's a barre and some stretching, and he's teaching from the corner of a tiny studio flat! I will definitely also look at Friday morning's ENB class with Sarah Golightly, as I was meant to be taking her Tuesday evening class starting from next week!