Sebastian

On 27/01/2023 at 08:20, DD Driver said:

Great speech here by Konstantin Kisin at the Oxford Union debate

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.

11 hours ago, Emeralds said:

i think the fact that the rights belonged to a company in the Soviet era (with the government even interfering with/approving the final casting) means that releasing it as a DVD may be too complicated to attempt

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? 
 

6 hours ago, alison said:

Coming rather late to this, but this looks to be of interest:

A game of 3-D chess « parterre box - "The most essential blog in opera!" (New York Times) Where opera is king and you, the readers, are queens.

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. 

54 minutes ago, bridiem said:

Sleeping Beauty - Aurora is put under a spell by an evil fairy (sex indeterminate)

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". 

3 hours ago, Emeralds said:

Wow, Kilburn! - my friends who used to live in Kilburn would be amazed to hear that a well known ballet company once performed Sleeping Beauty there (before they were born though).

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

9 hours ago, James said:

Stills from the International Ballet production are here:-

 

https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/record.aspx?searchtype=collection&ref=110002584&page=17&img=110002584_8302&collection=Frank Sharman Photographic Collection&row=2&tit=

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

26 minutes ago, Diandri said:

Hi Sebastian

Have you searched the ROH collections as I've just had a quick look & there seems to be some Frank Sharman collections of what is definitely Sleeping Beauty (or Sleeping Princess as it was then called in their Sergeyev production) & your above photos seem to be Swan Lake. Googling the Gaumont Kilburn on the Images setting brought up some posters & press cuttings from 1948-ish with dancer names as well. Ismene Brown's interview on the Artsdesk.com website  still has some active links to this wonderful lady & her company.

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.

27 minutes ago, Jane S said:

I have no idea what the other picture is but I'd say definitely not Sleeping Beauty!

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)
 

15 hours ago, alison said:

I'm now curious as to who the Hulkas were, and what they had done that Mary feared they might be blamed for her death.

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

11 hours ago, Balletfanp said:

I know she wrote a suicide letter but that could have been part of the play acting. I sometimes wonder if, even up to the point where the gun was pointing at her, she never quite believed he would actually go through with it…..a disturbing thought….

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. 
 

19 hours ago, bangorballetboy said:

Sometimes known as Mizzi and sometimes Mitzi. 

Might I add a little about Maria/Mizzi/Mitzi Kaspar/Kasper/Casper/Caspar, perhaps of interest?

But first a comment on spelling in the pre-computer era. As recently as the Nuremberg trials (ie the late 1940s) well-educated legal and military professionals from Britain and the US were entirely relaxed about how to spell names. For example some well-known defendants in those trials are spelled in a variety of ways – sometimes with significant variation, though not so if read phonetically – throughout the official papers.

This is just one illustration among many. Only the arrival of computers – at which point Mizzi might be importantly different to Mitzi – forced the world to care about exact spelling. The people of Rudolf’s era certainly did not spell as a machine does.

Here are some less-remembered points about Mitzi Casper (to use her ballet spelling):

-          who alerted the secret police to Rudolf’s talk of suicide (at which point she was threatened into silence)

-          with whom Rudolf spent his last night before leaving for Mayerling

-          who despite being his regular mistress for several years was only 24 years old when he died

-          after which she gave no interviews to anyone.

She died some 18 years later, leaving (so far as we know) no letters or diaries, never mind memoirs, suggesting that the threats/inducements she received had worked.

Incidentally, in addition to the King/Wilson book already mentioned, there is a nice short summary of her life (sadly only in German) in Philipp Vandenberg’s Die Frühstücksfrau des Kaisers.

7 hours ago, Dawnstar said:

I spent some time looking up most of the Mayerling historical personalities. While I had assumed that MacMillan had taken some artistic licence with reality, I didn't realise he'd taken quite so much artistic licence! Finding out Archduchess Sophie had actually died nearly a decade before Prince Rudolf's marriage was certainly a surprise.

 
Well spotted Dawnstar! In the ballet Archduchess Sophie has one significant function (apart from personifying court tradition by her costume and bearing): when the painting of the Emperor’s mistress is presented to him by his wife, only his mother Sophie objects. 
 

By the way there is a nice story here about the 85 year old Marcia Haydée taking the role of Sophie:

https://www.tanznetz.de/de/article/2022/i-see-whole-picture-me

2 hours ago, oncnp said:

Excellent book. Well written and easy to read. Not recent though (2017)

Thank you. The extensive bibliography covering the people and events of Mayerling goes back well over a century, indeed (if one includes suppressed or unsigned writings) as far back as the 1890s. The only substantial works I know which have been published since King/Wilson five years ago have not been in English.
 

The little that is new in, for example, the more recent German works is of marginal interest but should anyone want to dive down those rabbit holes, feel free to send me a message.

As someone who spends several weeks every year just down the road from the village of Mayerling, I have tried to keep up with the many and various writings about this sad historical episode.

Recently Greg King and Penny Wilson published their well-researched account (mentioned once before on this Forum although the poster got the name wrong) and this is the book I now recommend to people who want to know more. Here is a link to an informative Amazon review:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1SWX0LUZGJJPU/

32 minutes ago, oncnp said:

Not on the website yet but the Telegraph at least thinks it's launched

 

Antonio Pappano: ‘I happily embrace diversity – just don’t blame us for having been bad people’ (telegraph.co.uk)

 

"Covent Garden is today going some way to combating such concerns. They are launching Royal Opera House Stream, a new streaming service on a monthly subscription basis where you can access productions from the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet archive. Forty-five archive productions will be available from today; with new films of performances of Wayne MacGregor’s new ballet The Dante Project and Rigoletto also being unveiled this month."

Very interesting. I wonder if “archive productions” means “previously available commercially” or whether they are planning also to share some of their unseen treasures.

Ticket taken now

(Bumping this up as it’s this week)