Lizbie1

Well - spare a thought for anyone trying to book for the Met:

I *think* - but I could be wrong - that the making of the new version if the Chinese dance was featured in the Dancing the Nutcracker documentary a few years back (2016 says Google).

"Her manner seemed inconsiderate, tactless, annoying." Now who does that remind me of?

Here: https://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/news-grants/news/item/205-royal-cypher

The cypher should be straightforward enough but I'm not so sure about the crown (Tudor in place of St Edward's).

But if so I don't understand their reasoning in announcing a strike for these dates - they would be causing little additional pain for the train operating companies while making themselves look like villains to some people who hitherto have been supportive.

He has been very clever about keeping a lot of the public onside (e.g. cancelling strikes for HMQ's funeral and when they clashed with Remembrance Day), but this feels like a mis-step.

That was kind of my point (though I specifically meant that increases were proportionately higher in certain parts of the auditorium) - that it's easy to moan but less easy to come up with solutions. They also offered a free-form subscription, albeit with less generous discounts. (And I can think of at least one major company where Nutcracker is exempted from the subscription. I suppose that where this happens it's because they're certain of selling out or as close to selling out that it makes no financial sense to offer discounts.) Well yes! - that touches on my point about efficiency savings not generally helping much. If you're referring to some of the brass section, this is not new and has been speculated to be related to long-serving members of the orchestra who are tok expensive to replace. On the bright side, I amd others have noticed an improvement this season so maybe the situation has been resolved. I think we are actually in agreement here. More generally, I don't want to sound critical but sometimes posts can come across as assuming less knowledge from other posters than is in reality fairly widespread on this forum. It's good to explain things clearly but I always make the assumption of familiarity with the RB and the ROH itself on RB-specific threads. And if I assume too much (can't remember when this has happened!) people will generally ask for clarification.

YES!

And now I wish Katherine Barber (toursenlair) were still with us to give a much better informed view 😢

It's long been a quirk of theirs to favour the -ize spelling - they grudgingly allow -ise as an alternative, but I'm not sure that they always have.

I'll be generous and assume they are OED sympathisers (or is that sympathizers?).

I'd misremembered it slightly - it was 5 years ago! - but here's the video.

I thought Oropesa was very, very good in this (as she is in everything, TBH). I don't know if you've seen her before but she has the knack of adjusting her voice and style to suit the piece and era it was written in. I saw a clip once of her rehearsing some of the Lucia mad scene and she was asking the conductor: "how do you want me to phrase this? I can do it (demonstrating) like this or like that" - and each was immaculate and somehow fresh and surprising but at the same time as if it was exactly how it was intended by Donizetti. That can only come from a rare combination of technique and musicality. Add to that a very beautiful timbre, good dramatic instincts and a charismatic stage presence and I think she's the complete package. (It's not the biggest voice but it's big enough for her repertoire and does seem to carry well enough.)

I find it surprising that you felt that way - as you are no doubt aware, subscriptions are very widespread in the opera and ballet world and the ROH was in fact an outlier in the limited way it offered them. I've mentioned it before, but the RB and RO receive less subsidy per ticket sold than certain other companies. That surely needs to be taken into consideration when comparing their prices. I've sometimes criticised ROH for targeting specific (i.e. my!) areas of the auditorium for above average price rises, but as a few others have said, I don't see that they have much choice but to increase prices: they're not doing it because they're greedy and rapacious, or for fun! Or do people here support job losses in the corps, or making the orchestra freelance, for example? There are no doubt some behind the scenes efficiency savings that might be made but they never amount to much in reality. And anyway, how far do we want to go down that route? I've seen it suggested on occasion that the costume department could do things cheaper - but this is a cultural institution of international renown and their costumes are part of that reputation: I don't want them to be made with any less attention to detail. Cheeseparing should have no place on the ROH stage, IMO - and you can tell when it happens! (There are a few opera productions where corners have clearly been cut.) I'm more receptive to the idea of putting on fewer audience-repelling mixed bills, but we're repeatedly told that the dancers want them and that the RB *must* create new works every season.

I think there's a learned behaviour problem emerging: people leave it late because they know that the performance never starts or re-starts on time these days.

Whether schools are interested in going to the theatre, let alone the ballet or opera, has probably always been highly variable: at my primary school - getting on for forty years ago now 😳 - I don't think we saw so much as a pantomime.

FionaE, when Alexei Ratmansky decided to cut all ties with Russia, your reaction was scepticism and nitpicking; Smirnova's defection is explained away as no great sacrifice. De Bana and previously Polunin on the other hand get a free pass for their tacit or overt (respectively) support for the status quo in Russia. Others here have managed to express support for and interest in artists still working in Russia without denigrating those with an opposing view. I don't think you are "pro-Russia" but I do see a lot of motivated reasoning.

It does help that you can offset the higher prices for opera with a worse view than you'd put up with for ballet. The one thing I'd be wary of is overhang from higher tiers - if you're not in the first row or two below this can deaden the sound. I nearly always sit in the slips for opera (the sound is very good, the comfort less so) but would not do so for ballet. With recent price rises for ballet this means that my opera tickets are now cheaper than my ballet tickets.

While many might see political naïveté as a generous interpretation of Netrebko's past words and actions, at least there is room for it to be made. With Zakharova there is none.

I've been keeping a close eye on that too - a very Netrebko-shaped hole in the casting!

How is Netrebko performing there worse than Zakharova?

It's quite difficult to break a wine bottle I think?

Sorry, also the outstanding R&J I think.

I can send Giselle 18th November. (File is too big to attach.)