Lizbie1

6 minutes ago, Roberta said:

"A trained cellist, Claire studied music at Southampton University before embarking on her career into arts administration."

 

An example from this very forum this week of a person trained in a 'performing art' who has gone on to make a career NOT performing, though her in-depth knowledge gained via her music degree is what surely began it. 

Studying music at Southampton University is very different to "training in a performing art", which happens at a conservatoire such as RCM, GSMD, etc. Putting it in probably oversimplified terms, it's similar to the difference between studying history of art and going to art college.

She is unlikely to have had any expectations of a performing career on the back of her degree alone. To have one the usual route would be to go on to postgraduate studies at a conservatoire. (I studied music.)

9 minutes ago, Roberta said:

The wider implications of all this downgrading of creative subjects also appear to have been ignored by politicians.

 

Where will educated, informed, enthusiastic, appreciative audiences (I include in this attendees to theatres, concerts, exhibitions, museums, treasure houses in the care of the National Trust, in fact cultural offerings in many forms, long list) appear from if people aren't encouraged to see, from a young age, the value and joy of these things, and that joy belongs to all? 

 

No audience, no revenue, no jobs.  This will massively impact the economy adversely. A great British success story damaged beyond repair. 

 

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this subject but I'm not sure this kind of claim hangs together.  In the last few decades there has been a huge expansion of vocational courses in creative subjects in tertiary education but I don't see a corresponding increase in either amateur participants or audience members.

This may be at least partly down to primary and secondary schools downgrading performing arts but that is not the subject at hand here. And for the record, cultural development of young minds was not as standard in earlier generations as I sometimes see claimed here: my primary school in the 80s had a nativity play, some occasional movement-to-tape sessions - laughably labelled "drama" - and we were sometimes plonked in front of Music Time, which was enough to put anyone off for life. That was it. There were no school trips to anywhere more culturally enriching than Thorpe Park. If your primary school offered more, you were lucky.

15 hours ago, FionaM said:

The sightlines in Munich opera house are pretty good from stalls as well as circles.  There is a good stagger   Personally I avoid the first few rows else (like ROH and many other opera houses) you’ll not see the dancers’ feet. 

I'm not so sure about the view from the circles at Munich - I was once pretty central but a couple of rows back and I had no view of some fairly crucial action going on at the sides in Kameliendame. Depending on degree, further round (with the possible exception of the front row) is, IMO, strictly for opera. The ballot system doesn't help, either.

@TSR101 I'm not entirely sure what it is that you want. Is it that casting shouldn't be posted here until published on the website, or that discount codes sent to a subset of Friends should be shared here?

(I'm not trying to make a point, I'm just curious.)

6 minutes ago, Dawnstar said:

 

Oh, that is annoying. I can't help wondering cynically if someone saw an opportunity for getting a little extra income for the ROH with all the £4 exchange fees! 

I suspect the £4 is a fair reflection of the cost of (manually) processing refund requests so I'd be very surprised if this were the case.

1 minute ago, Roberta said:

 

And yet at Glyndebourne this is actively encouraged! 😉

Except that at Glyndebourne if you want a table and haven't brought your own you pay a charge for one of theirs.

1 minute ago, Geoff said:

That reads like - perhaps logical but nonetheless - assumption, rather than house rules. Or have you seen any such signs over the years? I haven’t ever seen one. Hence my question about rules. 

Maybe the number of people unaware of what might previously have been considered well-understood etiquette has made them feel a "rule" was needed?

There are plenty of unspoken rules when going theatres like ROH, such as keeping coughing and unnecessary noise to a minimum. People here often lament that ROH doesn't work hard enough to promote good behaviour and police bad. I don't think it's such a bad thing that patrons of the bars and café should now stand a better chance of getting a table.

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.

38 minutes ago, Angela said:

The Nederlands Dans Theater, one of the most prestigious dance companies worldwide, will be a guest at the Staatsballett Berlin (July 2025, Deutsche Oper Berlin) presenting the trilogy Figures in Extinction, a four-year project by choreographer Crystal Pite and theater maker Simon McBurney on the theme of climate change.

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!

29 minutes ago, Emeralds said:

For members who have to book hotels for autumn, can you pick a flexible rate in advance that allows you to change dates without the price going up? I know some loyalty schemes allow that. 

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

49 minutes ago, San Perregrino said:

Comparable how? Different companies, different cities, different business models, different business constraints…. 
The price of hotel rooms in London won’t be affected by Paris, Munich and the Met announcing their seasons ahead of the ROH. 

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.

2 minutes ago, San Perregrino said:

Hotel prices advertised months in advance can be priced at a premium as well as a discount. The hotel I booked six months ago in Birmingham for next week has actually come down in price and I have been able cancel and rebook at a lower rate. So, the early bird doesn’t always get the worm.

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.

6 minutes ago, art_enthusiast said:

Just saying, the Eurostar allows date changes for free (just difference in fare if any) as long as it’s more than 7 days before. Certainly has helped me this year when I needed to rearrange Paris and Amsterdam trips.

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).

2 minutes ago, San Perregrino said:

Not sure why it makes much difference if it’s announced before, simultaneously or after other companies? Booking only opens to the general public for the summer season tomorrow. Surely the emphasis needs to be to sell these seats before dangling a new season in front of people? 

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

8 minutes ago, Mummykool said:

 

I don't recall, either - I think it would be etched in everyone's memories if she had! 
Unless I've got my definitions wrong, Dudinskaya starts with runs of single piqué turns interspersed with chaines turns, and finishes with a continuous run of single piqué turns. My recollection of Osipova is similar - and just as fast!

 

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.

1 hour ago, art_enthusiast said:

 

I find it bizarre that people like this exist - you can see them at the ROH as well. They clearly have more money than sense. I hope they get didn't any kind of discount on their tickets.

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!

9 minutes ago, JohnS said:

I’d seen the apology @Scheherezade and thought that’s very unfortunate. Mistakes do happen and it’s good when they’re corrected so hopefully no one turned up yesterday.
It was the run of ENO clangers that rather worried me and with the awful news on redundancy letters, compounded by being distributed part way through a performance, resignations etc, it’s been a very grim time at ENO.

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.

9 minutes ago, alison said:

 

I'd say the same.  I've seen a few productions of Boheme, even the RO's previous one, and not liked it.  I haven't seen the RO Butterfly, but saw ENO's many years ago and remember saying that I felt as though there was a pane of glass between me and the action on stage.  Totally unmoved.

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!

12 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

@JennyTaylor I started regularly operagoing in 2004 but I've never really got on with either Butterfly or Boheme. In both of them I find some of the music glorious but the leading characters annoying. So it may be that you don't click with those particular operas either. Tosca is my favourite Puccini opera, partly because it's one of his few operas where the lead tenor character is actually a decent person.

 

2) There are some directors who like to put in loads of extraneous stage business so it's not always static, it really depends on the production. The pieces you've seen so far are all tragedies & it's often comedies which have more stage business. A pity the ROH aren't doing something like La Fille du Regiment this season or I'd suggest you tried that for an example of a pretty busy production. I suppose fundamentally opera being more static comes down to ballet being all about expression through movement whereas expression through singing is easier for the singers if they can stand still.

 

3) I flipping well hope not given the ROH employs a full time chorus so I'd be amazed if they cut any choruses! I'd say that Puccini was a composer who tended to using choruses fairly sparingly. Tosca Act I only (apart from offstage), though I do find that one very effective as long as you've got a Scarpia who can make himself heard properly over it. Butterfly's Humming Chorus is very well-known but I confess I personally find it a little dull. Boheme I feel the chorus in Act II is more about peopling the stage than having an amazing musical impact, though that might just be me.

 

4) Again, this varies considerably by production. The 3 Puccini productions you've seen are 3 of the ROH's most traditional productions at present. Personally I prefer more traditional opera productions, and therefore have seen a lot less opera in recent seasons as the ROH have replaced more traditional productions of many rep pieces with more modern ones, but many people prefer the modern ones. The current Don Giovanni production for instance uses loads of projections rather than literal scenery.

 

5) I think most people feel that way about Pinkerton. I've seen the tenor be pantomime booed at the curtain call before, at Opera Holland Park. 

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.