JohnS

I’d be surprised if there’ll be further casting details before booking opens which I think is only days away for patrons. I know last year casting details for all 5 principal Nutcracker roles were published well in advance of booking but I thought those details were all announced at the same time. The Friends Magazine shows a 9 December matinee ‘relaxed performance’ but on the website this is a Paul Hamlyn invited audience performance and there are also a couple of schools matinees - 6 & 7 December. I haven’t seen any casting details for these extra performances and it will be interesting to see who’s cast: the performances are a few weeks before those dancers scheduled for just one SPF/Prince performance and normally dancers tend not to have too long between their performances. I’m assuming there are two casts for Dante as there’s a matinee and evening performance on 2 December but there’s no indication so far as to which performances are cast 1 and cast 2 so at the moment it’s pot luck if people are wishing to see both casts (unless booking for the 2 December double).

Please see the link for Don Q, The Cellist double bill and Nutcracker casting. Nothing as yet for Dante. https://content.app-us1.com/vz2oy/2023/06/01/d047b00c-036d-4666-ba45-63d493b9e5f0.pdf?id=21609568&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Friends++E-News:+An+exclusive+Il+trovatore+offer&utm_campaign=230602_membership_enews_friend

Despite my irritation with some aspects of McGregor, I’ve booked for three performances (2x Morera, first and last nights, and 1x Osipova) plus the General Rehearsal. I wasn’t impressed by Corybantic Games last time and we’ll have to see what the new McGregor offers although I don’t have high expectations. But Anastasia Act 3 I’m sure will be searing and I think fitting for Laura Morera to bring the curtain down on her fabulous career as dancer.

The problem I have with Wayne McGregor is that he seems utterly indifferent to audiences to the point of treating them with contempt. Look how difficult it was to get McGregor to provide even a basic cast list for Woolf Works where from conception, dancers referred to themselves by character. But audiences weren’t allowed to know until the most recent revival. A decent synopsis and helpful programme notes should be considered par for the course for all works performed at the ROH. McGregor chooses to ignore these norms. Might it be that he prefers a shield of obfuscation? And might that be because his work isn’t as intellectual coherent as he would have us believe?

I’ve been meaning to add a Wozzeck thread after seeing the General Rehearsal and it’s now some days since opening night. I’d mentioned that Wozzeck acted as something of a cold shower in moving from Cinderella to the second half of the Sleeping Beauty run. I could have been more explicit as the production starts with the curtain up on a military latrine with various soldiers going about their ‘ablutions’. I’m afraid I find all this a bit old hat, irritating and unnecessary - Berg and Buchner are bleak enough without the extraneous material. But there’s much to admire in the rest of the production, fabulous sets and curtain cloths. And Tony Pappano worked wonders with the singers led by Christian Gerhaher (Wozzeck), Anja Kampe (Marie), Peter Hoare (Captain) and Brindley Sherratt (Doctor) and the orchestra. I haven’t seen all the Insight as yet but it struck me Tony Pappano might have let the music play rather more than he did: he pleaded he needed to give a 3 hour seminar where I thought he struggled to say much in the time he had. I haven’t had chance to see Wozzeck in performance as yet but am toying with next week - last performance is 7 June. I think Wozzeck is being broadcast on Radio 3 on 24 June and I’ll certainly listen or catch up on BBC Sounds.

A hugely enjoyable double Sleeping Beauty yesterday. Delighted to have seen Sarah Lamb’s Aurora again. She projects a welcome aura of serenity about her despite some uncharacteristic unsteadiness in the matinee performance so I’m pleased that I saw earlier performances when she was more secure. Ryoichi Hirano makes an impressive Prince Florimund. Fabulous to see Olivia Cowley back on stage and making the most of Carabosse. I can only echo the words of a very young member of the audience on Carabosse’s dramatic departure at the end of the Prelude: “Oh no, she’s gone.” The fairies are of course lovely but it’s Carabosse who makes the dramatic impact. I liked Gina Storm-Jensen’s Lilac Fairy but still find her solo a bit tentative. I thought the evening performance with Natalia Osipova and Reece Clarke very fine. But I do find Osipova’s Act 1 a bit out of character with what I look for in Aurora. To me in the Rose Adage she looked more like a cat playing with four mice who at any stage could swallow one whole if the fancy took her, an extraordinarily knowing 16 year old. It certainly made for a bravura performance and one I very much enjoyed seeing. Reece Clarke was excellent, fabulous dancing and partnering. Elizabeth McGorian made for another telling Carabosse. I’m so pleased to have seen a couple of her performances and had chance to say thank you at the Stage Door. Nadia Mullova-Barley was very impressive as Lilac Fairy - I’d seen her debut and her solo was much more secure, complementing her strong stage presence. All the supporting dancing was of a very high standard. Fabulous to see Yuhui Choe and Joonhyuk Jun as Princess Florine/Bluebird and Liam Boswell and Luca Acri were hugely impressive Cavaliers.

Fabulous photos as always @Rob S. Having so stunningly captured Lilac Fairy’s flowers did you by any chance manage the same for Carabosse receiving her bouquet at about the same time? Given her distinguished and inexhaustible career, I imagine Elizabeth McGorian would feature very highly on many Ballet Forum members’ lists of dancers most seen and I thought it great to see her in such a role.

Very good to have met you on your recent visit @Sophoife and many thanks for all your contributions from Australia. Here’s hoping you won’t have to wait another 6 years before a return to Europe and the Royal Ballet etc.

The Bank of England’s inflation calculator suggests that a good/service sold for £1.00 in September 1977 would cost £5.48 so @bridiem’s ‘equivalent’ ticket prices for £1.50, £2.50 and £3.50 would be £8.22, £13.70 and £19.18. But that’s based very much on a fairly narrow measure of inflation (CPI). A broader measure (RPI) would give higher ‘equivalent’ ticket prices - £11.70, £19.50 and £23.30, still very significantly below today’s ticket prices. The GDP deflator would give ‘equivalent’ prices falling between these two estimates - £10:38, £17:30 and £24.22. What would be interesting to know is what the top ticket price was in 1977. It’s also pertinent to ask what has happened to the level of Arts Council grant to the Royal Opera House since 1977? In November 1997, the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee published a report which included a section on the Organisation and Funding of the Royal Opera House: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmcumeds/199i/cu0102.htm That report includes a fair amount of historical analysis of funding and there’s helpful supporting detail in Annex 3. Grant for the 1977-78 season (say the average of the financial years 1976-77 and 1977-78) was £4.575m. In today’s prices that would be £25.1m (using CPI), £35.7m (using RPI) or £31.7m (using the GDP deflator). The Royal Opera House’s most recent cash grant is £22.3m. But there’s a large caveat as the Select Committee’s report makes clear that the grant to the Royal Opera House also covered the Birmingham Royal Ballet, formerly the Sadler's Wells Ballet. And it excludes incentive funding - I don’t know if there’s any incentive funding in the £22.3m grant. What’s probably more relevant for recent price increases is that the Royal Opera House has experienced a very significant real terms cut in grant in the last few years. In welcoming the £22.3m grant, Alex Beard reported in November 2022 that the grant equated to a real terms cut of £4.7m (19%) and came on top of what has been a 10% real terms cut since 2017-18. Once pricing maps are published for the new season, I think it will be interesting to see what has happened to prices since 2017-18 and whether lower priced tickets (particularly for ballet) have seen disproportionate increases in prices.

Many thanks @Rob S - what a fabulous ‘Welcome back’ for Olivia Cowley.

Hoping there’ll be some photos. Looking forward very much to seeing Olivia Cowley at next week’s Bank Holiday matinee.

Thanks @oncnp. I’d seen the Limit on the ROH calendar and in filtering for Insights there’s very little information for the new season. Thanks too @Ondine. Perhaps British Theatre Guide has the wrong year although the article reads as if there’s a future performance.

And it flags up an Insight evening in the Linbury theatre on 27 October 2023, including Hamlet and Ophelia, which was news to me. Apologies if this is already flagged up elsewhere but I don’t yet see it on ROH’s website.

A fabulous Sleeping Beauty last night, Yasmine Naghdi effortlessly breezing through all the challenges and showing such radiance in her achievements. And sobering to hear at the Stage Door just what effort is required to perform Aurora when, with Yasmine, everything looks so simple and natural. Matthew Ball is a great Florimund and he and Yasmine make wonderful partners. Here’s hoping we see a lot of them on stage together next season. Kristen McNally is a magnificent Carabosse. She always brings something special to every role. I very much enjoyed Mayara Magri’s Lilac Fairy and all the Fairies delivered their solos with aplomb. They and the corps in all their guises looked incredibly well schooled throughout, a pleasure to see. The performance really showed the Royal Ballet at its best and it’s great that next week’s cinema relay features this cast. The performance was filmed in case of any problems with the relay. There were a couple of slight glitches. The black out for Carabosse’s Act 1 disappearance was rather late last night and one of Red Riding Hood’s trees looked as if it was going to stay for the grand PDD. And with Yasmine and Matt giving such a fabulous performance, who wouldn’t want to be there? Just as an aside and in support of @bridiem’s suggestion that it would have been neater to have separated Cinderella and the second run of Sleeping Beauty by the Triple Bill, I saw the Wozzeck rehearsal yesterday morning. That certainly provided the cold shower needed for appreciating the delights of Sleeping Beauty.

Tonight’s cast sheet - very much looking forward to the performance: https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/40/the-sleeping-beauty-by-marius-petipa/cast-list/51607

I have been assured that the statement refers to main stage performances only. I specifically asked about Linbury/Insights etc. Where I haven’t had confirmation is how Schools matinees/NHS/Paul Hamlyn performances are treated. I included this assurance and discussion in my first post. The ROH would put itself in a better position if it were precise in how it describes its target (ie main stage only) and reports its achievement (ie quote the actual figure rather than ‘almost 40%’ which is hopelessly vague). I’m sure it has a strong story to tell - schools/NHS/Paul Hamlyn/targeted discounting all extremely positive AND whatever it can say with precision about the bulk of its tickets actually sold to the general public. I think it would have a considerably stronger line if it looked again at its pricing maps and returned to consistency in pricing for all performances, with all tickets priced as a %age of the maximum price for the particular production (with sensible rounding). For ballet that would tend to reduce the prices of cheaper/restricted view seats.

Many thanks @bridiem. The ROH looks to demonstrate its accessibility in terms of making available ‘almost 40% of our tickets at £50 or under’ without specifying whether the tickets provide an unrestricted view or whether they’re seats or standing places. I think that’s perfectly reasonable as it’s covering all tickets put up for sale. The horseshoe auditorium means that some tickets will inevitably have restricted views and at least the ROH readily provides the view from every ticket for sale albeit without showing the impact of audience members sitting in seats in front. My major concern is that there seems to be an unfairness in pricing, particularly the pricing of cheaper seats for ballet which have seen very significant increases in recent years. That has occurred because the traditional pricing map (where prices for all productions were broadly a similar percentage of the top price) has been abandoned. I’m also very interested in just how close the ROH gets to achieving its ‘almost 40% of tickets are £50 or under’. And with 10% plus inflation it looks pretty impossible to achieve. I meant to add a note of caution about the prices published in the magazine as there may be a few typos. Hopefully the pricing maps will be available fairly soon on line.

Many thanks @Bluebird and @Lizbie1. There are many anomalies on pricing and when contacting ROH I did include the Upper Slips anomalies which I know were brought to attention some weeks ago. I should have said that the anomalies I highlighted in my post above were purely for illustration. The stability in opera pricing patterns (albeit there’s year on year inflation) is telling. It’s the frequent ballet price changes and movement of seats into different bands which make me wonder if the resulting anomalies are a result of accident rather than design. As regards maximum ballet prices and whether there’s a reluctance to increase these further, Nutcracker has increased by £10 to £160 compared to last year. Let’s see what the price is for Swan Lake. I’d expect it to be more than the £175 for Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella, perhaps £185 or £190. And as @Richard LH said, the Cellist is significantly more expensive (47%) than when premiered in early 2020.

Good to see such interest in pricing. I’ve been following up the discrepancies between ballet and opera prices where some of the lower priced ballet tickets are significantly more costly than opera tickets (Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella v Don Carlo). I haven’t as yet got an answer to the particularly issue raised but have been provided with the folliwing: “The pricing model for the 2023/2024 Season will be reflective of our current financial position and commitment to ensuring that performances at the ROH are accessible for everyone. We are proud to announce that we have consistently been named the cheapest theatre ticket in the West End, with tickets this Season (22/23) starting at just £4, and have been able to maintain almost 40% of our tickets at £50 or less, despite rising costs.” I am assured that the ‘almost 40%’ refers to main house performances but have not yet had clarification as to whether main house performance include schools matinees/Paul Hamlyn/NHS performances. I think it would be more meaningful if these were excluded as these performances are not on sale to the general public. I also find ‘almost 40%’ infuriatingly vague - it could readily cover a range from 35.5% to 39.5% (or possibly even less than 35%). The ‘almost 40%’ is an average over the whole year and there will be significant variations between productions. With this in mind and as the ROH wishes to highlight how well it is doing to promote accessibility through reasonably priced tickets on sale to the public, I think there’d be considerable merit in publishing what %age of tickets are for sale at £50 or under for every price map (rather than people having to do their own analysis) and the results may well be rather illuminating. I have made the suggestion to the ROH but not yet at a senior level as I’ve been having some email exchanges to get a better understanding of pricing. When the price maps are made available on line, I’ll be interested to see what the pattern is as regards %age of tickets for sale under £50 as well as checking some particularly seats which highlight the massive discrepancy between ballet and opera prices for lower priced tickets. In the past consistency in pricing was achieved because all prices were a similar %age of the top price. I think it’s a matter of regret that the ROH has abandoned such an approach and we now see many anomalies. I don’t think it’s good enough simply to charge what the market will stand. There needs to be an element of fairness which was provided when there was at least consistency in pricing. How can anyone justify charging £112 for Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella when that same seat (Stalls Circle B26) is £90 for Don Carlo? From the information already published there’s a real oddity in ballet standing prices: for Nutcracker, the most expensive ballet in the Autumn with top price £160, standing is £12; for Don Q and Dante standing is £14 (top prices £150 and £130); for the Cellist standing is £9 (top price £110). If these standing prices followed the Rheingold pricing (£25 compared to £325 top price), standing tickets (to the nearest £) would be Nutcracker £12, Don Q £12, Dante £10 and Cellist £8 (to nearest £0.50 the prices would be £12.50, £11.50, £10 and £8:50). Once the pricing maps are published and I’ve had chance to have a reasonable look, I may well contact Alex Beard. I rather think the discrepancies in pricing have occurred more by accident than design.

Just to say my much feared journey home today proved to be extremely relaxing and uneventful. Avanti’s dire warnings must have been sufficiently discouraging because there were not too many people at Euston and a very quiet ‘quiet’ coach. The train was on time and I guess the only problem was the lack of any shop, not that it bothered me as I very rarely use the shop. The enforced extra night in London because of the train strike has been put to good use: two Sleeping Beauties; a visit to the National Gallery’s ‘After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art’ which I’d highly recommend; and I even managed the free lunchtime performance in the Floral Hall - a very engaging Italian couple giving a violin/piano recital drawing on operatic variations making for a very enjoyable hour.

I’m pretty sure that’s right. One of Olivia Cowley’s last performances before going on maternity must have been the Devil in The Dante Project where I thought she was chillingly terrifying. I do hope she’s not feeling typecast but am very much looking forward to her Carabosse.

Apologies PeterS - I hadn’t read your post in quite the way you’d intended. Here’s hoping the nightmare isn’t catching and we can all delight in the Naghdi/Ball cinema relay.

Strikes me Reece Clarke was very much in role as those closest to him or with insight comment on his sadness.

Fabulous Sleeping Beauty last night with Yasmine Naghdi and Reece Clarke making a wonderful Aurora and Florimund. They looked as if they’d been partnering each other for years - I know they’ve done a few guest performances together in numerous places but I’m unsure whether we’ve seen them in a full length ballet at the ROH. Yasmine is supremely confident as Aurora and there’s never any doubt that she’ll breeze through all the challenges, just as she did on her memorable debut. It’s wonderful to see and it’s great that she has the cinema relay. For my part and very much a reflection of my own preference, I find something very appealing in seeing an Act 1 Aurora who suggests a sense of vulnerability as I think that makes for more of an arc to a performance giving a greater contrast between Acts 1 and 3. Reece was astonishingly good, made for Florimund. Nadia Mullova-Barley made her Lilac Fairy debut and certainly has a strong stage presence, essential for the role. I was a little underwhelmed by her solo and I’m very much hoping that she’ll find the solo flows more readily in future performances. Very good to see Elizabeth McGorian‘s Carabosse and the value of years of experience. Yuhui Choe and Joonhyuk Jun made for a wonderful Princess Florine/Blue Bird after Yuhui had excelled as Fairy of the Golden Vine. A hugely enjoyable evening and I’m very much looking forward to Wednesday and Yasmine’s cast. I’m hoping Natalia Osipova recovers quickly from her illness and we can the full Osipova cast (with Olivia Cowley as Carabosse) later in the run.

Tonight’s cast sheet: https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/40/the-sleeping-beauty-by-marius-petipa/cast-list/51605