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Dawnstar

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Everything posted by Dawnstar

  1. Dawnstar
    I feel the same & I only live 60 miles away. It's still over £20 train & tube fare to get there. Hence I feel that money is better spent on a full-length evening at a theatre or, when possible, doing matinee & evening performances on the same day (not usually of the same show!). I was hoping the Avis interview would be streamed but given the comments about talks not being streamed then it sounds like it sadly won't be.
  2. Dawnstar
    I'm glad I don't have to hear it but loved Monahan's description "sounds like a musically minded cat repeatedly walking up the keyboard of an aggressively amped-up synthesizer"!
  3. Dawnstar
    Is it usual for ballet companies to have issues with male dancers not being tall enough for their female partners when they're en pointe? It's been mentioned several times in this thread & seems to crop up regularly in discussions about RB pairings. Hence I'm wondering if it's a perpetual problem or is it an exception that the RB at the moment just happens to have a plethora of shorter male dancers & taller female ones?
  4. Dawnstar
    I didn't know anything about them, beyond being vaguely aware that ballets of those names existed, until after I really enjoyed the Patineurs etc. triple bill in December & started eyeing up what else the RB was doing mixed-bill-wise this season. The following items on the ROH website induced me to buy a ticket: Nunez, Morera, Bracewell, Cuthbertson & Muntagirov! Though before I booked I did look up the plots of both pieces (found that Asphodel Meadows doesn't have one!) & sought assurance from the Forum that Asphodel Meadows was fairly classical in style.
  5. Dawnstar
    Gosh, I thought she was only in her early 20s. I've not seen her in any (identifiable) roles onstage but in this Insight & a previous Nutcracker one I thought she looked really young.
  6. Dawnstar
    Might that have been why they seemed to be having issues during the rehearsal with moves that involved him supporting her pirouettes? I did wonder while watching the livestream if the was the root cause was that he couldn't reach high enough relative to her reaching up.
  7. Dawnstar
    After repeatedly reading Beard's statement, I don't think the two percentages are comparable like that. 17.5% is referring to tickets for Forza whereas "just 38% of tickets for the spring booking period had been sold to ROH members" means 38% of tickets for all the productions that went on sale on 30th January, not 38% of tickets for Forza. Is that how other people are reading it?
  8. Dawnstar
    I don't have Sky so I wouldn't be able to view that.
  9. Dawnstar
    I looked for Berenice first, with it being in the Linbury. However given the website problems it must have been nearly half an hour before I could actually get onto the page properly. At that point there were no tickets available for any of the performances & repeated re-checking didn't give anything but completely sold out. Hence I'm wondering if there was actually an allocation for public booking or not. I have yet to hear of anyone who managed to get a ticket on Wednesday.
  10. Dawnstar
    I'd need region 2 as I'm in the UK. (I know people manage to do things to DVD players to get them to play other DVDs from regions but I'm not at all technologically-minded & wouldn't have a clue what to do.) Actually what I really should do is get round to seeing the production live again, before it gets replaced.
  11. Dawnstar
    Does anyone know if the ROH is supposed to keep a proportion (is it 20% or am I misremembering?) of seats to be released for general booking for Linbury productions as well as for the main house ones? I'm not surprised to hear that Forza sold out immediately (I didn't even bother to look as I assumed it would) but I am surprised that there appeared to be absolutely no availability for Berenice when public booking opened. Surely you're not going to have ticket touts trying to buy up tickets for an obscure Handel opera with no star names in the cast?
  12. Dawnstar
    Thanks. That's the one I was thinking of. A pity it doesn't look like it's currently available as I'd quite like to see it again. I don't recall having seen the RB Nutcracker until the 2016 cinecast so I don't think I've seen Yoshida/Cope. I don't have Sky Arts for watching repeats, if that's what you're alluding to.
  13. Dawnstar
    I thought that too. I'd assumed she'd retired some time ago. Was that Nutcracker the RB's? If you then went & saw her at the RB. I vaguely remember seeing her as the Sugar Plum Fairy on TV years ago but thought it was the 1994 BRB one she was in. Am I mentally conflating 2 Nutcracker telecasts?
  14. Dawnstar
    What I'm trying to do is to see casts live who aren't doing the cinecast. Admittedly due to cast changes it's not always working out (Nutcracker, Don Q) but that's the theory. For R&J I've booked to see casts who are not doing the cinecast & then intend to see the cinecast to see Naghdi/Ball (& possibly buy the DVD at some point to see Cuthbertson).
  15. Dawnstar
    This sounds pretty much exactly what I'm doing now & I suspect I'm going to end up coming to similar conclusions to you. I wonder if this is due to both of us starting with viewing opera then moving to ballet? Out of what I have seen thus far I have much preferred dance where plot is involved rather than dance for the sake of dance, so Mayerling & Manon have been the most satisfying pieces I've seen. (I also very much enjoyed Two Pigeons but then romantic comedy is my favourite genre in all media (opera, plays, films, etc.) so it was ideal for me.) Oddly, I rather enjoy the Nutcracker's divertissements but watching the Bolshoi Bayadere livestream the other week, where Act 2 was nothing but diverts, I found to be interminable. But then I found the Kingdom of the Shades to be equally interminable so I'm not sure where that leaves me. Possibly back at Macmillan! I'm trying to see a variety of casts but it hasn't taken me long to already start having favourites. Since I don't know enough to really distinguish between dancers technically this is based more on their acting & if I instinctively "like" them or not than on their dancing. I probably need to try to narrow the list down a bit though, given I've booked for 4 Romeo & Juliet casts, having been unable to choose between them, but that's not really going to be financially sustainable to do repeatedly! I'm digressing even more!
  16. Dawnstar
    Did you then kick yourself for the years of ignoring it? I'm currently at that stage.
  17. Dawnstar
    That makes it look like a single ballet, which would certainly be an interesting piece! In terms of booking for ballet and opera, I spent 14 years, up until this year, only booking for opera, feeling that by the time I'd bought the opera tickets I wanted I couldn't afford to explore ballet too. Having seen a couple of cinecasts & a few Insight event livestreams over the last year or so I became more interested in seeing ballet. In the autumn booking period there was only 1 opera I wanted & in the winter booking period none so I finally felt I could afford to give the Royal Ballet a go. I've seriously fallen for it. Therefore today's booking is the most I've ever spent in one ROH booking period & that's without being able to get all the operas I wanted. I fear that ballet - where more than opera a fairly unrestricted view seems to be required - is proving a very expensive addition to my theatregoing roster (already involving opera, musicals, plays & improv). ETA: I suppose it shows that the cinecasts & livestreams have been successful in getting at least 1 person to start going to live ballet (again - I did see some as a child & when at uni), but I suspect I don't count in their new audience figures given my years of opera attendance.
  18. Dawnstar
    I confess that the ending was slightly spoiled for me by the failure to draw the curtain over the Hall door properly after Imbrailo exited to be hanged, meaning that from where I was sitting I could see him just standing there very much un-hanged! Not exactly as effective as when I saw it at ENO in 2005 where the hanging was indicated very simply but effectively by lighting & reduced me to tears. However apart from that I agree that it was an excellent performance. I find semi-stagings can often be just as satisfying as full stagings, especially as they seem to be less likely to suffer from extreme "directoritis"!
  19. Dawnstar
    I've seen two fully staged (both at the RAM's theatre if I recall correctly). The ones at St George's are done in concert. The Prom was billed as semi-staged.
  20. Dawnstar
    Ah, right. I don't really know how all the different levels of Friends, Supporters, etc. sort themselves out as I've never been able to justify spending even the money required for the basic level of Friends - I'd rather keep it to spend on actual tickets. Yes, come to think of it I recall not being able to get a seat for Mitridate either.
  21. Dawnstar
    I think I'm surprised about Berenice because it's a London Handel Festival co-production & I've been going to a number of their operas at other venues (mostly St George's Hannover Square) for the last few years & have never had a problem getting tickets & most of those are one-off performances, not a run. Ah, I didn't think about subscriptions. However aren't subscriptions only for the higher priced stalls/stalls circle/amphi tickets? I was after the cheaper restricted view side stalls circle, which I didn't think were possible to get on subscription. ETA: I don't recall having difficulties in getting a ticket for the Glyndeboune Billy Budd Proms performance a few years ago & that was just one perofrmance, though obviously in a larger venue.
  22. Dawnstar
    I didn't even bother looking at Forza, as I assumed it'd be sold out of anything in my price range instantaneously. However I was very surprised at the lack of availability for Billy Budd & Berenice, given neither has the sort of big stars that usually cause a sell-out in their casts.
  23. Dawnstar
    Yes, I've had that a few times recently.
  24. Dawnstar
    Finally it worked! I've got what I wanted ballet-wise (mostly embarassing amounts of R&J, due to failing to decide which cast I wanted to see most so booking for 4 of them!) but have been unsuccessful opera-wise as Berenice is completely sold out & Billy Budd has nothing left in the stalls circle under £100 so I've only been able to book Andrea Chenier out of the 3 I wanted.
  25. Dawnstar
    All I'm getting now for Events is a totally blank page apart from "Timed out while waiting on cache-lcy19243-LCY" whatever the heck that means. I've tweeted the ROH. I don't remember it being this bad for years, if ever. The last few bookings have been really straightforward, in & out in a few minutes.
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