Dawnstar

Good luck from a fellow Cambridgeshire resident! I was fortunately able to attend their first performance, as I couldn't face the combined engineering & strikes that will be blighting this weekend's trains.

I'm sorry that I never saw him dance, not even in any character roles. There are two London-Cambridge train lines. Some weekends when there is non-Cambridge-South engineering one of the two lines will be running, so I could get to Manon on 20th January because the Kings Cross line was running & hope to get to Manon on 17th February matinee because the Liverpool Street line is due to be running. However when it's a Cambridge South engineering weekend then neither line runs - because the station is being built just before the lines diverge south of Cambridge! - so then I can't get to London at all. (There are rail replacement buses but I can't face them as it was the stress of that tha caused me to have a panic attack during Don Q.) Since work on the station started last year both lines were closed every weekend in October, all but one weekend in November, and Christmas Eve to New Year's Day inclusive. Coming up it's going to be the first weekends in February, March & April and what looks like every weekend in May (info currently only available for the first 3 weekends). Hence at the moment it's a major risk for me to book any weekend performances until I know the engineering status for that weekend. Sorry, this is probably far more info than anyone wanted about my train woes!

For comparison, the same seat is £118 for Swan Lake & £132 for La Boheme (which I believe are the highest upcoming ballet & opera price rates).

Gosh, I didn't think of Kobborg as a possibility. I can't imagine him as Widow Simone. Coleman on the other hand I can't imagine as Colas because I've only seen him in character roles. Is it O'Hare who danced Colas, Widow Simone and Alain? I'm sure someone doing so was mentioned on here fairly recently but I'm not vertain if it was him or someone else. Unfortunately they're building a new station just south of Cambridge & it's not due to be completed until some time in 2025.

The seat map with prices is up on the ROH website. I had a look out of curiosity, as someone I know is thinking of trying to go, and the prices are fairly eye-watering. Balcony A64 is £166. I really hope the prices don't give the ROH management any ideas...

Maybe Acosta could give Widow Simone a go! I'm guessing there must be a few dancers who have done both roles at different stages in their careers. It's lines closed due to engineering rather than strikes that's my main problem at weekends this season.

I've already started worrying in case I have no trains that Saturday!

Do you think it's likely that anyone below Principal level will get cast in the lead roles given there are only 13 performances? Assuming BRB has 5 male Principals next season (current line-up minus Morales) then that would only give each of them either 2 or 3 performances without any lower-ranked dancers getting cast. Personally if I go to 2 performances then I'd ideally like to see Dingman & Monaghan but I suspect that the Sadler's Wells performances are likely to sell quickly enough that I'll have to book before casting is announced.

If they are doing a 2-show day then I'd be tempted to book both, as I've never seen Fille before & suspect one viewing will not be enough, but what one is supposed to do to kill time for about 3 hours in the vicinity of Sadler's Wells I do not know....

I wonder if BRB doing Fille, and particularly that they're bringing it to London, means that the RB won't be doing it for yet another season....

I see that the web page for the MacMillan triple bill no longer has "The Company" listed for each performance. Maybe that means they're preparing to add the actual casting? Or maybe I'm being too optomistic & it's just the website playing up, like the disappearing/re-appearing GMs & Mistresses on the Manon page.

Given the discussions on the ENB thread about Giselle flying, I thought it interesting that in this production neither Giselle nor any of the Wilis even had any visible wings let alone did any flying. I understand Giselle sometimes does not wear wings because of the pdd work but I was rather surprised that the corps were wingless given that's not a consideration for them.

After ENB recently tweeted a clip of Petit's Carmen, and also seeing it on The Magic of Dance, I wish they were doing that version instead!

The Russian system seems to consign their female skaters to the scrap heap by the time they get to about 19 (I recall a few years ago hearing an 18 year old described as a "veteran") so Valieva would probably have been out by the next Olympics even without the doping ban. Such a shame.

I've got away with various bumps & bruises fortuately but if someone elderly tripped over it, or someone out running because that path's often used by runners, then they could be more seriously injured. The power cables were installed for new housing estate that's being built so I went & spoke to one of the builders to see if something could be done (I tried myself but couldn't pull it out of the ground) but as it's about a hundred yards up the road & not actually on the building site he didn't seem very interested & just trotted out the standard "I'll speak to the manager" line. That is terrifying! And surely contravenes every health & safety regulation in the book!

Whatever idiot decided to leave a metal peg/stake sticking about 6-8 inches out of the ground on a public footpath, after it was dug up for power cable installation at the end of last year. Yes, I did catch my foot in it & fall full length onto a muddy path.

The website seems to now be working again & the alert at the top has changed to: "We are carrying out essential maintenance work on our website between 6am and 10.30am (GMT) on Friday 26 January 2024. If you encounter an error, please try again after a short while. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

I'm with @Scheherezade on Holten's Onegin. I found the doubles deeply annoying & intrusive. If he thought Keenlyside & Stoyanova were too old for the lead roles, which as I recall was one of the suggestions given at the time for the use of doubles, then why did he agree to their casting in the first place? Given he was running the company at the time I can't believe he had no say in the casting. There were other aspects of the production that I also disliked, such as Lensky's dead body being left lying around on stage for the remainder of the opera, but it was the doubles that were the worst thing for me. I much preferred the previous much more straigtforward Pimlott prodution, which I saw for both its runs, and I don't know why they didn't keep that one for a few more revivals rather than spend doubtless plenty of money on the Holten production which again has had only the 2 runs. For a company that always seems to be saying how short of money it is the ROH certainly seems to be good at spending it on (IMO often unnecessary) new productions.

Damn. That's what comes of trying to dash through threads as quickly as possible late at night. I was thinking of Kaneko in comparison to Magri & O'Sullivan, because they all got promoted at the same time, so my brain didn't alight on the longer standing Principal Naghdi even though I saw her debut on Saturday.

I didn't want to start a new thread for this in case there's an official press release to come but I've just seen this on Twitter. Rather nearer than Singapore at any rate, though still a bit of a distance & no indication of whether it'll be the same programme or a different one.

During Saturday's Manon performance I found myself wondering whether any dancers had performed both Des Grieux and either Monsieur GM or the Gaoler. Dowell seemed the most likely one & having got round to searching the ROH database I find he did indeed perform GM as well as Des Grieux. Does anyone know if there have been any others?

While I definitely agree that giving dancers more than two performances as standard per run would be a good idea, it does also feel at the moment like debuts are happening, or rather not happening, pretty late for some dancers in some roles even with the 2 performances model so if it was a 3 performances model then there would be even more of a backlog of dancers debuting roles. I'm not talking about up and coming First Soloists either but Principals. For instance neither Magri nor O'Sullivan are getting to do Manon this run, Kaneko is the only debut in the title role, so as they are both about to turn 30 they won't be debuting as Manon until they are about 33. Hirano will be debuting as Des Griuex at 40 next month! I don't know what the solution is for this though. It's probably a good thing that I finished watching The Magic Of Dance tonight as with every episode my wish list is getting longer. After the final episode I now want the RB to do Marguerite & Armand again, though admittedly I have seen that live once when Cojocaru included it in her Sadler's Wells show in 2020 so I am a bit less desparate for it than for some of the pieces that I've never seen live.

In which case I am very happy to be an intellectual failure! When I first started getting interested in opera in my mid-teens I listened to a lot of broadcasts on Radio 3. It feels like it'd be better & cheaper to return to that than endure many current stagings.

I can't see that anyone else has answered this but if they have then apologies. The ballet score doesn't use any of the music from the opera version of Manon. If you've not come across it already, the ballet's Wikipedia page lists the sources of all the music in the score, including several other Massenet operas but not Manon. I've not seen the opera live but during the 2020 lockdown streamings I watched a couple of performances of it from the Met. I have to say that I found the music for the opera less beautiful & moving than the music for the ballet! It baffles me that an assembled score can be better than a score a composer wrote specifically for a plot but, at least for me, that's the case for Manon. Does anyone know why the company have their break after just 3 performances of Manon? It kind of feels like it would make more sense to have the break at the end of the Nutcracker run rather than to just get started on Manon then have to stop for a couple of weeks. Do they have to have the break for the same dates each year?

I regret that I wasn't able to see Hawes/Maievskyi but, as well as the cost, neither of their dates worked for me as the first was a schools matinee & the second clashed with the only Naghdi/Bracewell Manon that I could get to. I really hope ENB revive this production again soon so I can try to see casts I missed this time. I'd also really like to see Frola again but with just the one Giselle!