Sebastian

Ticket spoken for now

(Bumping up as the show is tonight now)

I picked up SCS D15 here but am now unable to go. Face value £12. Please leave a message & DM me if interested.

The current programme for Sleeping Beauty includes colour photographs of current company in the show, the original 1946 Sadler's Wells production and a lovely painting by Watteau. The articles are a typically marvellous piece of writing by the late Clement Crisp; Roy Strong on the designer Oliver Messel; Gavin Plumley on the music; Amanda Holloway on how the designs were refreshed; and a piece on Petipa by Nadine Messel, the author of the recent biography. There is also a historical article by yours truly, but you don't need to read that. So if you have not seen these writings before, that's under £2 per piece, with nice pictures thrown in. This is either a bargain or, alternatively, £8-is-a-lot-of-money.

Quickly, to follow up on the above, it's all good. Production as before, and as before good in parts - the Venusberg opening is very good (and avoids so many pitfalls). Some of the rest is baffling (at least to me): why for example are the pilgrims carrying guns? Given the rest of the production, their guns are maybe to protect themselves from creatures of hell, who...all work at the Royal Opera House? (Yes, that's where the show is - sort of - set.) The singing was of a pretty high standard: Vinke made it through, and sometimes was really very good. He only had me anxious a few times, so well done him. The rest of the cast solid and good, somehow not sensational, even voice of the moment Davidsen, but that may be me. The chorus spectacular, and very well handled by conductor and whoever did the restaging. The orchestra the usual hit and miss (the first fluff by the brass came in the second bar). The audience sounded like they had a great time.

The production is, as they say, good in parts. No idea what is happening now, given the difficulties the tenor has been having. I will be there this afternoon and will report.

Yes please

Having worked in this area (at a high international level, not as a research scientist) I should point out that the speaker makes one claim which is likely to lead his audience astray. It is true that the UK's contribution to CO2 emissions is comparatively small, but the implication he would seem to want people to draw from this (that we in the UK are wasting our time) is wrong and not for sentimental reasons. Not wanting to divert this ENO thread into a climate change debate, if anyone wants to discuss, just send me a DM with their email address.

This one-act ballet, written by Glazunov for Petipa in 1900, has disappeared, says the impeccable Nadine Meisner. However the music is happily still available and there are several wonderful recordings. Recommended listening for fans of the score to Raymonda. Does anyone know if there have been any subsequent attempts to set a ballet to this tremendous music?

First response from a friend about a film which does not seem to be that obscure:— >>Amazon has the Pavlova film listed but it appears to be unavailable on dvd at present. I bought my copy back in 2013. >>It's a sad mess. Michael Powell didn't really have a lot to do with the filming, but worked with Thelma Schoonmaker to edit the feature in a London cutting room. >>As to rights I recall back in 2001 obtaining Soviet footage of a Russian composer from a StPetersburg archive, and that involved getting cash to a fixer to pay them for a tape. Once that was done they said we could do what we liked with the material.

The opposite is in fact probably the case Emeralds: happy for other barroom IP lawyers to disagree but I think there is no copyright in Soviet material of any kind. So unless a western company has gone through a process of somehow registering the production in a western country - and I am not even sure how that would or could work - its free and clear, analogous but different to so-called ‘orphan works’ in the US or UK. In any case it’s a fascinating enquiry. I will ask people in film archives and see what they know.

New readers might like to know of a wonderful (and most unusual) film of Dame Beryl dancing the Black Swan. Here is a link to the Forum discussion, which includes a clip:

Ticket spoken for now

With great regret I discovered yesterday I will now not be able to attend the General Rehearsal of Sleeping Beauty on Saturday 14 January at 11:30. My ticket - row E of the amphitheatre, aisle seat 34 - cost £23. Might someone be interested in this ticket?

Thank you very much for pointing to this article, undoubtedly more informative (and informed) than anything I have read from Britain. Here are links to the other two parts of the extended piece: https://parterre.com/2022/11/30/oh-thoughtless-crew-ye-know-not-what-ye-do/ https://parterre.com/2022/12/02/leveling-up-or-leveling-down/

Simon, just to let you know I have sent you a private message.

The evil fairy Carabosse is interesting. Although in the 1890 original production Carabosse was famously danced by a man, the programme for that first run of the ballet makes clear that the character is female (as are all the other fairies in the ballet). This is also the case with the character in the Perrault story from which the ballet derives. She is an old woman, with a humpback (some argue that her name derives from the French word "Bosse" for hump) and other stereotypical identifying characteristics. In modern parlance it could be said that the portrayal of Carabosse is sexist, ageist, disablist and racist. But one thing she is not is a man, oppressive or not. On the wider question of whether Aurora in Sleeping Beauty is oppressed or not, there has been some feminist rethinking about this character who spends a century asleep. One person who has written most interestingly about Aurora's agency - the entire ballet revolves around her, after all - is Laura Katz Rizzo in "Dancing the Fairy Tale".

In case they are interested Emeralds, here is a review of that show from The Stage in 1948:

Many thanks James (and apologies for misunderstanding what you meant Diandri).

Thank you very much Diandri. I am not sure I completely understand: the Sharman pictures held by the ROH all seem to be (unsurprisingly) of the Sadlers Wells / ROH productions, rather than of International Ballet. Have I misunderstood what you mean? And yes, there is now thankfully quite a lot of information available on Mona Ingelsby and International Ballet but I am searching specifically for photos of their Sleeping Princess production, along the lines of the stage shots I (perhaps wrong-headedly) included in my posts.

Thank you Jane S: the hunt for some photos continues!

I am looking for production stills of The Sleeping Princess, as performed by Mona Ingelsby’s company, International Ballet, which toured after the Second World War. In an anniversary programme from 1951, several photographs from the company’s repertoire are reproduced (without captions). Here are two of those images, one which seems almost certainly to be The Sleeping Princess (there is a fairytale castle in the distance) and one which might be. I’d be keen for any tips as to where other such stage shots can be found. (Spread across two posts because of upload limits)

This may be difficult to discover Alison. At the time of the letters’ rediscovery in 2015 a serious Viennese newspaper, apparently relaying the work of the archivists of the National Library, wrote that the family is “forgotten” today: https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/kultur/mehr-kultur/766544-Ich-gehe-fidel-hinueber.html

Sensationally, Mary’s three letters of farewell - to her mother, her brother and her sister - turned up in a bank vault in 2015. For those with German (or access to Google Translate) here are the official transcriptions of the originals now held by the Austrian National Library: https://www.altertuemliches.at/files/abschiedsbriefe_wortlaut.pdf The letters, kept by her mother, are an indication of Mary’s state of mind in the hours before the tragedy. The PS is particularly heartbreaking.