Lizbie1

I'd suggest that the "rules" haven't changed and their understanding of them was imperfect. It does seem a bit heavy handed but I've always taken it as read that you should only use the tables if you have bought food and drink there. If I'm eating something I bought elsewhere I'll just perch on a chair or bench that doesn't have a table - it's perfectly doable. Tables are in quite short supply at ROH and are clearly positioned so as to be associated with the bars and café - it seems reasonable that people who've bought from them take precedence over those who haven't.

This sounds a laugh a minute.

I had only the RBS show to book for this morning and was all done and paid by the time 0902 clicked around on my laptop. I think that's a record for me!

Flexible rates tend to get significantly more expensive than non-refundable as you get closer to the date, at least in my experience.

Comparable stature. I use them for comparison because planning the ROH season should be of roughly similar complexity. I don't know if you're being facetious about Paris etc. announcements affecting London hotel prices, but in case you aren't I meant simply that they go up the longer I have to delay booking.

My experience - which is extensive - of booking the cheaper hotel rooms in London is that prices generally only move in one direction. Over a month after other comparable houses (Paris, Munich and the Met have all announced) is not "a little later". It is also later than ROH typically announces.

But Eurostar doesn't work that well for people outside the South East (sorry, long running gripe against travel journalists who assume everyone is London based).

From my POV, I need to plan early. Not everyone lives within easy reach of London: hotel rooms get more expensive the later you leave it, and people have other companies to fit in. This year I'll be taking out a Paris subscription: booking for that opens soon and the later you leave it the less likely you are to get a decent seat. I have dates in mind but if, say, ROH were to announce some kind of Ashton festival along the lines of "Sarasota week" that would be something I'd have to work around. (Paris subscribers can change dates, but EasyJet won't be issuing me any refunds!) I know people like me are in a minority, but - somewhat strangely - within the last month or so I've fallen into casual conversation with two other people (neither anywhere near an opera house!) who do exactly the same as me but in reverse. Opera and ballet tourism is a real thing. BTW I don't think the Proms' notoriously late announcement date is something anyone should seek to emulate! (And in their defence, they have many visiting orchestras to juggle.)

Agreed - very late! And they don't have an ACE funding announcement to blame for it this year.

@Timmie - if you like bel canto and are up for a trip to Paris next year, you might like to consider I Puritani at the Paris Opera - the ugly Bastille "conference centre" alas, not the more scenic Garnier. It's a lovely opera and very well cast. I don't know anything about the production but I think there are video clips out there as it's not new. There's been something of a Bellini drought at ROH for some years so I don't know when we'll next see it there. https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/season-24-25/opera/i-puritani The most famous arias are probably Qui la voce (for the soprano) and A te o cara (quite possibly my favourite aria of all) for the tenor.

I'll be trying to get there for Paquita.

Since nobody else has posted it yet: https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/programme/season-24-25/shows-ballet

Osipova's were really thrilling - more so than any SL fouettés I've seen. A wonderful memory and something I feel privileged to have seen.

I've left a gala at the interval before, and a couple of other performances, not many. If it looks like it's going to overrun significantly - as I understand last night did - train anxiety kicks in; sometimes also you might not really be feeling it or you've had a long day, or tomorrow is a working day, etc. Of course I'm not paying anything like stalls prices, but if you're not enjoying something should that really make a difference? You're simply paying more to be unhappy!

I was at Magic Flute on Saturday: the hydraulics had failed on the platform which the production uses heavily. The singers managed well and I didn't really mind. What did strike me however was that the on-stage announcement was made by someone who I believe isn't a member of the senior management team. Where were they?

ChatGPT is my guess.

This is very much a personal opinion but by and large I find Puccini quite a "cold" composer - I can often sense him trying to pull my strings. Tosca and Turandot are the best of his IMO: Tosca because it's so well plotted and because the heroine is never presented as an innocent; Turandot because it's just so impressive - the Act 1 finale is an tour de force - and because we aren't expected to shed too many tears over Liu, the obligatory "victim": the plot moves on pretty swiftly. I must say though that I'm sick to death of Nessun dorma!

I second all of this, especially the bit about never really getting on with Boheme. And Pinkerton is plainly an awful person - something which seems to have escaped those who attack it for its perceived imperialism.

Some thoughts on this afternoon from the train home: Rotunda was a dud IMO, a waste of everyone's time. Boring music, boring choreography, whowever well performed. (I was also probably more antagonised than I should have been by the NYCB habit of wearing tights over leotards for practice. I know there's supposed to be some practical justification for it - though other companies seem to manage not to do it or at least wear shorts over them - but I can't help thinking of it as a "cool kids" thing that spread.) I didn't much enjoy Duo Concertant either, shocking though this may be!* I imagine Balanchine was playing with the duo thing and possibly poking fun at the format, but the long periods when the dancers just watch the musicians were...odd. Maybe the dancers need to practice their staring! I'm not a Stravinsky fan so that didn't help. I liked the Tanowitz! I thought the costumes were jolly, though I acknowledge the points made about their practicality. The choreography was at least distinctive, which is more than I can say of Rotunda. That's two out of two Tanowitz pieces I liked but most of the forum didn't, I don't know what that says about me. I can't remember anything about the music. Best of all for me was the Kyle Abraham. I thought there was some fine choreography and great dancing. Can someone tell me if the first solo after Taylor Stanley's was danced by Olivia Bell? I thought she was super. I started out hating the costumes but they'd won me over by the end - miles better than the practice clothes or minimum effort greige underwear so often seen. Some of them reminded me of the middle section of Woolf Works. As for the music - for the first half it was uncomfortably loud (can someone remind the SW sound team that it's a theatre not a club?) but not otherwise annoying IMO; unfortunately when it went a bit quieter this meant that we had more of James Blake's whiney singing. Sorry, not my most fluent bit of writing, but I'm tapping this out on my phone before I forget it all. *Edited to add: of course there were some great moments in it - it's Balanchine! But it didn't work as a whole for me.

I sometimes wonder whether an unspoken reason why ADs do this is to discourage people from arriving late or leaving early to skip it.

Oh how this resonates - I need to do it more often!

If I've missed this elsewhere, please merge this. I just fished around for news of the RBS shows and was very pleased with what I saw: https://www.royalballetschool.org.uk/summer-performances/ Lots to look forward to!

@Dawnstar have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate your logical approach? It so often makes me think about things in a new way.

Can someone please explain to me why we are worrying so much about marketing for this programme? The amount of attention we're giving it doesn't seem to tally with the number of tickets left to sell. I'm not a huge fan of their work - though I think we've all seen improvements since the disastrous digital-only strategy of a few years back - but the ROH marketing department has limited capacity and is probably diverting its resources elsewhere.

@Angela, when might we expect the season announcements to start coming in? I know some announce quite late but I think I'm used to seeing others come through in February and March.