Sebastian

The critic Mark Ronan has posted my 2019 article about The Sleeping Beauty on his website (with permission from the Royal Opera House: the piece appeared in their programme for the latest revival). Perhaps people might like to have the link:- https://www.markronan.com/2020/06/sleeping-beauty/ The article focuses on the first production in order to try and rediscover the original intentions of Petipa, Vsevolozhsky and Tchaikovsky. Although not mentioned in this short piece I also have a personal interest in such issues as tempi and choreographic style, the key research question for me being one of meaning, both of the Sleeping Beauty as a whole and also of the individual scenes, mimes, variations and so on. Please note that the Royal Opera House did not allow me to write this article academically - with footnotes etc - and asked me just to assert my findings. This may be controversial (for example when I appear to contradict well-known books or leave out stories "everyone knows") but all is drawn from - mostly - primary sources. I am looking for more material, specifically private documents (e.g. diaries, memoirs, correspondence) that might cast light on what was going on in St Petersburg and Paris around 1890. So if anyone knows of a family archive - even just forgotten papers in an attic somewhere - relating to Russia and/or France during the relevant period, I would be delighted to learn more.

In case anybody might be using this unusual period to declutter, I am looking for a few magazines for my research collection: Dance & Dancers: 1956: February 1957: July / Sept / Nov 1958: Jan / Feb / March / April / May / June / Sept / Nov 1959: July / Sept / Oct and various issues from 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1964 Dance Now: 1/4, 9/1, 9/2, 12/1, 17/1, 17/2, 17/3 If anyone might be able to help - even just with a single copy they don't need - please feel free to send me a PM. Many thanks.

Ticket gone now

(Bumping this up)

Both tickets gone now

This has been discussed before but if one goes by the text of the novel, Olga is 19, Tatiana 20, Onegin 26, and Lensky 18 when we first see them. Four years later we have the ball where Tatiana is married to Prince Gremin: he shares memories of their youthful pranks and adventures with Onegin (who by then is 30). This makes Gremin maybe a bit older (nobody says exactly by how much), maybe something like 35-40. So perhaps a ten year gap or so between him and Tatiana. Tchaikovsky on the other hand needed a lower voice for the operatic Gremin, so people usually assume he is much older.

C34 now gone. C35 still available.

(Just bouncing this up)

Two tickets for Friday 28th February 7.30pm for sale. Amphitheatre C34 and 35, £12 each. Please PM if interested.

Many thanks - changed now.

E-ticket £6 Please PM if interested

Tickets no longer available

(Bumping this up as it's on Friday)

Just sent you a PM.

No idea what the situation is now but in 2004 London had a live screening of the Royal Ballet dancing Onegin, see here:- https://www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/community/connecting-through-arts-and-culture/bp-and-the-royal-opera-house/bp-and-the-royal-opera-house-partnership-30-year-anniversary.html

Many thanks Angela. Which translation is this?

For sale: two side Row C Amphi tickets for 7.30pm Friday 21st February "Onegin" (Naghdi / Bonelli cast). £18 each. E-tickets so can email. Please PM if interested.

Very nicely put Angela. The book has the greatest spread of interpretative translations of any I know. If one checks the (many and various) versions of the poem in English - including the extraordinary one by Nabokov, so different to all others - one can see the considerable variety of meaning contained in Pushkin's work. Beware all those, like myself, who don't have enough Russian to read the original in all its glory. Here for example is Kasper Holten - formerly of the ROH - on the challenge in relation to the opera:- https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/02/eugene-onegin-unchain-heart

Just sent you a DM.

This announcement of an upcoming exhibition and associated events is perhaps of interest. A leading figure in Austrian musical society, Arnold Rosé led the Vienna Philharmonic but was forced to live out his days in exile in London; Alma led the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz and perished in the camp. One of the events is an evening with Anita Lasker Wallfisch, the ‘cellist of Auschwitz’. More here: https://www.ram.ac.uk/museum/exhibition/only-the-violins-remain

As the person who asked the question at the Insight evening about Tchaikovsky's metronome markings, might it help if I added some detail? We know about Tchaikovsky's and Petipa's intentions from the always impeccably researched and argued historiography of Prof Roland Wiley. In the notes to his wonderful book "Tchaikovsky's Ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker" he tells us what we need to know. Wiley examined a number of primary sources in the early 1980s, including the holograph score and the reduced rehearsal score for two violins (which has since disappeared). He argues convincingly that the numerous tempo markings he found derive, not from the time Tchaikovsky was composing the music, but later, from the period when Tchaikovsky and Petipa were rehearsing the work in the run-up to the first performance, and possibly yet later still. So the markings can be taken as an indication of the speeds the dancers of the time were performing to. Musicologists are likely to continue to argue about individual tempi but the current general view is that, at least as regards late works such as Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky's metronome markings can be relied on. In any case such records as exist about Sleeping Beauty are reproduced by Wiley in his Appendix E. There is nothing for the Prologue but many metronome markings for the rest of the ballet. Well worth examining with a copy of the score and a metronome.

Both tickets now spoken for

As I now have to travel for business that week, I am selling two tickets in Row C of the Amphitheatre for the sold-out Swan Lake performance on Wednesday 11 March (Osipova/Hallberg cast). £30 each. Will sell separately if enough people respond. Please PM if interested. Thanks!

Ticket sold to Giselle21.

I have one ticket in Row D of the Balcony for tonight’s ENB Gala (possible second ticket as well, don’t know yet): £15.80. E-ticket so can send by email. Please PM as well as posting here if interested.