Sebastian
Members-
Posts
478 -
Joined
Everything posted by Sebastian
-
Amphi seats for ROH Triple first night 18.12
Sebastian replied to Sebastian's topic in Ticket Exchange & Special Offers
Just been alerted that I stupidly forgot to put the price, apologies: these tickets, which I can’t use as I have been invited to the Insight on Tuesday evening, are £11 each. They will go to the Box Office on Monday if no one contacts me over the weekend. -
Audience Behaviour
Sebastian replied to Jan McNulty's topic in Performances seen & general discussions
Here is an extract from a memoir by Joseph Wechsberg (the writer and opera-lover probably best known for his lovely book “Looking For A Bluebird”) who writes in “The Vienna I Knew” of his first visit to the Vienna Opera in 1923: ”The audience was incredible. Fat men and vulgar women in the boxes, overdressed and unkempt...They talked and coughed through the arias. During the intermission following the first act, when most people remained in their seats, I watched an improbable couple in the parterre box next to me. They opened small packages containing rolls with sausage, peeled the sausage skins off with their teeth, and threw the skins into the stalls. A man in front of me got angry and threw the skins back at them, and everybody laughed...The real opera lovers were up in the galleries, but I didn’t know it then.” -
That is not what they said to me. Nor is it what I wrote (apologies if there was a different “implication”, I tried to report as clearly as I could): >>The ROH say that once an email is logged, it is the responsibility of the new centralised service department to chase down whoever is responsible for giving a detailed reply and ensure that they do so within a reasonable time. By “ensure that they do so within a reasonable time” I meant ensure that the correct person replies within a reasonable time. I hope all is clear now as this sounds like a significant improvement. Time will tell.
-
A recent failed booking - mishandled first by the Royal Opera House's technology and then by its staff - has over the last weeks drawn me into an extended correspondence with various members of ROH staff. Somewhat to my surprise, the final outcome turns out to be wholly positive, not just for me in this particular case but for customers of the ROH more generally. It turns out that there is a new way to contact ROH with complaints, concerns or questions. As of very recently there is now a central place for us to contact ROH by email: customerservices@roh.org.uk It may be that some recent frustrations are down either to the previous clumsy systems or to teething troubles in putting the new system into place. But whatever happened in the past, ROH now promise that irrespective of the nature of the enquiry - security, clumsy front of house, the dodgy website, a failed booking, the printing of the new programmes, stupid statements by ROH staff, the cost/benefit of the catering, or whatever - this email address is the place to write to. The ROH say that once an email is logged, it is the responsibility of the new centralised service department to chase down whoever is responsible for giving a detailed reply and ensure that they do so within a reasonable time. This is new, so there are bound to be a few stumbles as the system gets bedded down, but it makes much more sense than the piecemeal and rather disorganised ways things were dealt with in the past. This thread could be a place to report back what is - or isn't - working. I for one am pleased with things so far.
-
For sale:RB Balanchine insight 27/11 7.30 Clore
Sebastian replied to annamk's topic in Ticket Exchange & Special Offers
Yes please! I’ll PM you now. -
For sale: La Bayadère, 13/11, 2 x SCS
Sebastian replied to Alice-Faye's topic in Ticket Exchange & Special Offers
I'll happily take one Alice-Faye, will send PM now. -
Fonty, indeed, this has been tried. In the appendix to Tim Scholl's "Sleeping Beauty: A Legend in Progress" (2004) we find an account of a 1924 Soviet attempt to rewrite the Sleeping Beauty as part of the "creation of works of revolutionary content". This ended with the monarchy overthrown and Aurora anointed as the “wonderful dawn of Universal Revolution”. They called it The Sunny Commune. It seems it was never staged.
- 756 replies
-
- 4
-
- Royal Ballet
- La Bayadère
-
(and 2 more)
Tagged with:
-
For Sale: Bayadere Tuesday 13.11 - Amphi BB2
Sebastian replied to Sebastian's topic in Ticket Exchange & Special Offers
Ticket gone to the Box Office -
Thank you so much Fiz for pointing to this book. It has had next to no attention in the UK to date (no reviews, so far as I know) and I didn’t know about it. As someone who spends several weeks every year near Mayerling, has a collection of books on the subject and indeed is a close friend of one of the last people left alive to have seen Mary Vetsera’s remains (those who know the various theories will appreciate the importance of, for example, her skull) I was eager to get a copy as soon as you posted about it. Having now read the book I completely agree with your assessment. I urge anyone with an interest in the historical subject to ignore what has been written previously - which is anyway well summarised in the book, the authors seem to have read absolutely everything - and jump to this easy-to-read, short yet scholarly work. Probably the last word. Incidentally, although it is no great secret, I am always amused that Countess Larisch later became friends with T S Eliot. In fact she turns up in his poem The Waste Land.
- 649 replies
-
- 11
-
For Sale: RB Mayerling Sat 13 Oct 7pm Osipova £18
Sebastian replied to Sebastian's topic in Ticket Exchange & Special Offers
Ticket just returned to box office