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From one of my regular spots in Balcony Standing you very much can see if somebody in an opposite-side Grand Tier box has their phone on - it happens frequently (presumably because the people there have no perception that they can be seen) and is very distracting. I also don't have a great deal of respect for anybody who hears the nightly pre-show announcement stating that photography is strictly forbidden and chooses to consider that that rule doesn't apply to them for some reason.

I've got a ticket for 15th for the same reason. I know she has a formidable reputation for basically being a machine who can do anything required of her and as often as necessary, but I'm quite sure she has human physical limitations at SOME point...

Agreed, MAB... I blogged about such things a few years ago. https://croceedeliziaalcor.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/perspective/

Totally agree! I'm not generally a fan of being surrounded by young children at a theatrical performance, but this is an exception. When the RB run it over Christmas I always like to try and make sure I get to at least one matinee on a Saturday or during the school holidays. Though the queues for the Ladies tend to be horrendous as a result... During the last RB run, I was standing at one such matinee behind a family - an aunt and adult niece, I think, with two very little girls who were really a bit *too* young for a full-length, and indeed the younger one (who must have been 3 at the most) was getting restless and quite noisy, and as a result the family decided to leave at half-time. There was a woman sitting a few seats along from them, though, who tutted and stared at them throughout, as if every noise or movement was a personal affront to her. Had it been a grown-up ballet (though I'm not sure who'd take a 3-year-old to, say, Mayerling) I would have understood and shared her frustration. But seriously, who books a Nutcracker matinee in the middle of Christmas week if they hate children that much?

That means Tamara is dancing on the 13th, 15th AND 16th... I hope she doesn't sustain an injury herself!

Even the Queen chooses not to. Doesn't she typically sit in the centre of the Grand Tier for galas?

This is an opera comment rather than a ballet one, but very relevant to the original topic of this thread... It's not just Covent Garden. Take for example four current examples of my own: my last two, and my next two, planned overseas opera trips. Trip no.1 last April: booked a trip to see a particular singer in Cast 3 of a show that was triple-cast. Let's call her Soprano A. At a month's notice, Soprano A's first-cast counterpart (let's call her Soprano B ) dropped out. Rather than replace her with new Soprano C, they moved Soprano A into Soprano B's dates and booked a new Soprano C to back-fill the vacancy, meaning that Soprano A was now not in a performance on any of the dates of my trip. Fortunately, though at not inconsiderable expense, I was able to extend my trip so I could still see Soprano A (without whom I wouldn't have booked the trip in the first place). Trip no.2 last July: booked a trip to see a particular singer. At a couple of months' notice it was announced that she was no longer in the show at all. Cancelled my whole trip as for various reasons (not that the replacement wasn't a good-quality one) it made it no longer worth my while. Ended up giving away my front-row seat for free. Trip no.3, end of this month: booked a six-night trip for a double-cast show in which both leading sopranos and one leading tenor were of particular interest, with the intention of seeing each cast twice. Last month, the interesting leading man dropped out. A couple of weeks ago, one of the interesting leading ladies also dropped out, and was replaced by somebody I'm not familiar with. Presumably because her replacement wasn't available for all of the necessary dates, they then also partially shuffled which nights the remaining leading lady from the original cast will be appearing (let's call her Soprano A again as it is indeed the same person named as such in Trip no.1), leaving only one night of my stay on which any favourite singer will be appearing at all. I've since done what I did with Trip no.1, above, and paid to go for longer so I at least get to see that person twice. Trip no.4, next month: this one's mainly a weekend to see a friend, but they've just lost their tenor as well... Then there was the occasion in 2014 when I lost basically the whole opera cast I travelled for. Between season announcement and the performance, five people pulled out, including all of the top three principals. I found out two weeks in advance, decided to go anyway, and it was OK, but you know... If Covent Garden is unlucky, so is everybody else - or maybe it's just me!

You get through the bag check queue much more quickly if you go through the Bow Street foyer rather than the entrance next to the box office! They do try and redirect people there accordingly when there's a massive queue at the latter, but few seem to take any notice... I was sorry to miss yesterday's matinee in favour of a family birthday (I passed the ticket on to somebody else) - I like Emma Maguire's Clara particularly. But I'm afraid I'm never sorry to miss Marriott's Drosselmeyer, which I've found in the past to be rather high on camp and very short on magic.

A point which Carmen Giannattasio made in a recent interview! https://t.co/nzQOFpv76p

That's bad luck. The ROH staff are usually really quick to crack down on this (much more so than at some other theatres)...

I saw it when Opera North did it at Sadler's Wells and remember it being a really fun piece I had no idea this production was happening, as it's the sort of thing I might have been inclined to make a day-trip for.

I seem to recall that the last time they did Birthday Offering they happened to have an awful lot of principals out with injuries, and that had that not been the case the result might have been more satisfactory. I've never seen Sylvia so am completely with you on that one, and I'll go along with your casting proposal seeing as I just love Morera in Ashton.

I always find the Polonaise gets mixed up in my mind with the one from the opera... not that I don't remember which one's which, but I can be humming the B section of the opera-Polonaise and somehow follow that by going into the repeat of the A section of the one from the ballet!

Wasn't it Winter's Tale? There's a lot of that ballet that is quite gloomily lit even from seeing it in the theatre.

I had a very satisfying experience on the audience coach to Glyndebourne once when an older, upper-class gentleman sat next to me, took me to be a newcomer, and decided (uninvited) to regale me with his opera knowledge. A few tentative enquiries from me about favourite productions etc. soon proved that he was in fact a once-a-year operagoer, and only to Glyndebourne (when his friends organised the tickets and asked him along) and couldn't name a single singer or director of anything he'd been to. Now obviously there's no shame in not having much knowledge or experience, nor, arguably, with not taking the initiative to increase those things, but if you're going to use it as the starting point to patronise somebody, you'd better choose your target pretty carefully! Needless to say I spent the rest of the journey recommending productions and singers and interesting repertoire and not letting him get a word in edgeways There was also the occasion when I had treated myself to a front row seat for a matinee during the last run of Swan Lake at the ROH, and the gentleman sitting directly behind me (also, like the one I described above, an older chap with an upper-class accent - funny how that's so often the case!) was loudly explaining things to his two female companions, at a volume clearly calculated so that everybody around him would hear how "knowledgeable" he was. This was only mildly annoying until just before Act 3, when he started proclaiming that the next scene was The Dying Swan He repeated himself several times as well, to be heard (I think the two companions were by now bored with him and chatting amongst themselves!), and I and I imagine several others in the vicinity were itching to turn round and say to them "Actually, he has no idea what he's talking about, and the Dying Swan has nothing whatsoever to do with Swan Lake!" But we didn't...

And this is part of why I live in London... every time I do a feasibility exercise to see whether living elsewhere would get me a better quality of life, it comes down to the fact that I have absolutely no wish to return to train commuting (and that the increase I'd incur in commuting costs would wipe out the benefit of having a smaller mortgage, so I probably couldn't afford a bigger flat than I live in anyway...)

Hope I've quoted this correctly as it came out strangely formatted in the original post: Interestingly, while I was not a fan of his Romeo this time around (replacing Pennefather and partnering Sarah Lamb - I missed his scheduled partnership with Salenko) when he did it opposite Evgenia Obraztsova two years ago I fell madly in love with them at the dress rehearsal and ended up seeing all three of their performances. I don't feel I've ever seen him as such a convincing and subtle actor before or since, and of course I most like to see him in roles with the technical wow factor. Apologies for going off topic.

I would also say (before I stop talking about myself and taking the thread off-topic) that I'm not in London by accident. I didn't grow up here, or get a particular job that brought me here. I moved here specifically to have the easiest possible access to live performances (albeit that opera was then and is still my main interest) and built the rest of my life around it. I'm now London-centric by necessity (home and full-time job here) but get about to the regions and Europe pretty frequently - I'm not one of these people, and I see plenty of them, whose cultural world ends at the M25.

As somebody who lives and works in London, I see the vast majority of my ballet at Covent Garden for two very simple reasons - the existence of genuinely cheap tickets at the bottom end of the price spectrum, and the fact that they do a vast number more performances in London than any other company. At the RB, I'll go to anything once (and several casts if the fancy takes me) and obviously when you see a certain company regularly and start to be able to recognise the dancers' faces and follow their progress through the ranks, that leads to further loyalty. Of course "seeing most of my ballet at Covent Garden" also sometimes includes Bolshoi and Mariinsky tours. Of course it helps that as a long-time opera fan it's also the only house where I bother with membership and therefore have priority booking privileges, dress rehearsal access etc. Ticket prices at ENB, even with special offers, mean I'm unlikely to see things there as many times per run as I do at the RB (for example, my side Dress Circle ticket for my one visit to Le Corsaire this time around was £29.50 reduced from £59. Bearing in mind that I prefer a downstairs view, for which I don't care if I sit or stand, I could see three performances at the RB for the same price in Stalls Circle Standing. I do go to other companies' performances, but it tends to be driven by a particular factor (repertoire I'm keen to see; dancers I'd particularly like to see in a particular role; guest stars with obscure touring companies...) whereas at the RB I'll go just because it's there. I don't keep count of how many performances I attend, but this year I've attended ENB a couple of times, BRB a couple of times, Queensland Ballet once, Dutch National Ballet once, and that Diana Vishneva one-woman show. And the RB on probably about 40 occasions. (I've always been prepared to travel all over the place for opera, which takes up all my spare time and cash as it is - I can't possibly develop a travelling-for-ballet habit as well )

I've just realised my gross oversight in this earlier post: yes, the RB has another Principal with all four qualities. Ed Watson. But he's not cast in Nutcracker...

Totally agree, Alison - to me, while both Hristov and Ryoichi Hirano (another First Soloist who I don't think has been mentioned) have some of the qualities that make them useful leading men, neither of them is at the all-round level of the RB's best principal men, and I don't personally see that they ever will be. In many ways the same goes for the always-reliable Bennet Gartside who has demonstrated in the likes of Mayerling and The Winter's Tale that, as cover, he's more than capable of carrying a challenging full-length ballet. I'm not sure of the most diplomatic way to say this, but there are already male principals with the RB who don't have the "edge" that the best ones have, and if Kevin O'Hare simply has very high standards when it comes to promotion to principal, I can't see that that's a bad thing.

In my inexpert opinion, the RB really needs a couple of leading men who are (1) reasonably tall, (2) physically expressive, (3) facially expressive, and (4) a really solid partner. Rarer than hen's teeth I'm sure, so I don't dispute that achieving this this is easier said than done. Thank goodness Muntagirov decided to join the company, as without him they'd really only have Bonelli who, though he isn't THAT tall, just about fits fits the bill. I can't think of another dancer of theirs at Principal or First Soloist level who has all four, and you really start to notice it when somebody like Bonelli is out injured. If they lose any more Nutcracker leading men to injury, I wonder whether they might bring Muntagirov in early? His first scheduled show (with Nunez) isn't till 5th January... or maybe he's guesting elsewhere and unavailable.

Well, Alina Cojocaru used to dance Clara for the RB, and I don't think many would dispute that the RB have their eye on Frankie Hayward as a future Principal, so I don't think that necessarily holds water. (I'd also be quite surprised if, should Hayward win that promotion in the next couple of seasons, they'd suddenly stop casting her as Clara, any more than Laura Morera's principal status has stopped her being cast in less-than-leading roles that she's really good at.) I agree Naghdi doesn't seem a natural Clara (not for this production, anyway) but look forward to her future Sugar Plum Fairy. (She is also the one of the current crop of very talented mid-ranking RB dancers who I'm very disappointed hasn't been given a Giselle debut this season.) Watching Anna Rose O'Sullivan's first Clara last night - which was confident and lovely, as I thought it would be - I was struck that she's a little taller than I thought she was, and certainly on the tall side to be partnered by James Hay. As for the Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince, Campbell (standing in for Bonelli) is similarly a bit on the short side for Morera - presumably, as she'd have been rehearsing with a taller partner, the reason for the small mishap on the final pose of the grand pas when her hand touched the ground!

Ah! In which case you are quite right.

Not that rare... to name but a few with production credits with the UK's major companies: Francesca Zambello, Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd, Katie Mitchell, Annabel Arden, Fiona Shaw, Olivia Fuchs, Rodula Gaitanou, Marie Lambert, Mariame Clement... (edited to add: ...and of course Annilese Miskimmon, who I wouldn't have hesitated to mention were she not already the subject of this thread!) They are certainly very under-represented in the industry in comparison with men, but they aren't that rare. I'd have more trouble trying to name female choreographers with work being presented at a similar level of prominence.