Dawnstar

Thank you. I can't say I recall that at all but I do have a Facebook account, though I haven't used it for years, so I guess I could have watched it on there. What a pity that it's therefore presumably lost in the mists of internet time. ETA I've found it! I did get the date wrong, as it's dated 2018 so it must have been for that run rather than the 2019 run & then I must have watched it about a year and a half later. In case anyone else is interested https://www.facebook.com/royaloperahouse/videos/10156163761882579

There definitely was a run of Manon in October 2019 as I saw 5 performances. The 2018 run was a few months before I first saw the RB live so I didn't attend that one.

Having finally caught up with Friday's Insight stream last night, I thought I'd go back & watch the one from the previous run tonight, but I can't find it on Youtube even though there are Insights on there going back several years earlier. I'm sure I remember watching one in 2019 with Christopher Saunders coaching. Am I going mad?

Checking my local cinema there are 21 tickets sold out of c. 100 seats so I suppose that's not too bad. Admittedly 4 of those 21 are me, my mother, and her 2 friends she regularly goes to cinecasts with.

I noticed that a bit earlier when I was checking for tickets. I wonder if that means there's going to be more cast changes (Gartside appeared as Dr Stahlbaum at the end of the Nutcracker run so maybe he could do GM after all) or if someone has just hit the wrong button!

I think I'd better start praying now that all my trains are running in the first half of June! Though even then it's going to be very difficult to try to see as many of the programmes as possible over such a short time period. And that's assuming I can get any tickets...

While watching James's solo I was doing exactly that!

I don't mind if it's at Christmas or not but I would definitely like to see the RB doing both again soon. Surely after all the work to revive Coppelia after the 14 year gap in performances it would make sense to have another run while the majority of the company who learned it are still there rather than having to teach it from scratch all over again. Having just watched episode 4 of The Magic Of Dance, my wish for ENB to do La Sylphide again has been increased. I've never seen the piece & it seems more likely that ENB might revive it than that the RB might. (The extract shown from Les Sylphides, on the other hand, I found much less interesting.)

Thanks. I'm relieved to find I haven't been misinterpreting Act II.

Going through the reviews in the last couple of days of Links & I am completely baffled by this section in the Seeing Dance review: Is Act II meant to be mostly Albrecht's dream? Because if so then this the first I've known of it!

I'm glad to hear they do actually survive. The village would already be having a bad time of it with Giselle dropping dead then Hilarion found drowned a short time later without having half a dozen of their other men found dead in mysterious circumstances too! I'm now feeling very embarassed by my post yesterday as it seems I have totally misinterpreted the aimed-at characterisation.

I'm extremely relieved that the next round of strikes & overtime bans are happening over a week when I don't have anything booked. Admittedly the main reason I don't have any Manons booked is because I already have no trains due to engineering on 3rd February! Yes, they almost might as well go on strike for the entire week given the train service always looks so awful on non-strike-but-overtime-ban days that I don't dare try to travel on those days.

This is ramblings rather than a proper review. Warning: I am probably hopelessly biased towards Frola, as he's been one of my favourite dancers since I first saw him in Manon 5 seasons ago. Well, after 2 attempts in under 48 hours to see Oliveira & Frola it three-quarters worked! I'm very glad I made a second attempt as I'd been looking forward to seeing Frola as Albrecht for months & he was worth the wait. I didn't get round to posting anything on here about Friday's cast but I felt that Arrieta, while he gave a decent performance, came over as rather too nice in most of Act I to be plausible as a two-timing cad. I thought Frola managed to find significantly more acting nuances indicating that he was playing with the situation & was not being entirely sincere with Giselle and then more emotional depth in Albrecht's unmasking & witnessing of Giselle's madness & death. His dancing was, as always, wonderful in my opinion. I'm very pleased that Giselle & Albrecht get the extra Act I pdd. I thought his Act II solo was glorious, I had tears in my eyes from the sheer quality of the jumps. I don't know if it was because I was seeing them from different angles but there was one jump during the solo that looked different & more spectacular than what Arrieta did. I don't know the name of the jump but when Albrecht comes downstage towards Myrtha and does three up-and-round jumps en route my far-right-edge of the stalls seat was at the perfect angle to see it. I wish Adam had written far more music for the dance to near-death as I didn't want Frola to stop! It's not possible to fully judge today's Giselles with them doing only an act each. I thought Oliveira was very good in Act I and it was a great pity she was unable to show the rest of her portrayal. I suppose I'll never see her do a full Giselle now. I wouldn't have guessed she was ill from her performance, though admittedly as Giselle goes mad possibly playing a distraught character could hide potential signs of illness. I'm getting very confused by the Act I hops. It looked to me like Oliveira did more of them than Khaniukova did but neither did as many as I feel I've seen previously & I thought Cojocaru did more but then someone mentioned upthread that Ratmansky's production doesn't include then. Another good moment from my viewing angle was that as Albrecht has to take Bathilde's hand Giselle was framed between them before she ran to break them apart. I thought Takahashi did very well in Act II under the circumstances but unfortunately I found it difficult to feel as much emotional connection with her Giselle given we hadn't seen first her pleasure and then her suffering & death previously. Considering she & Frola had presumably not rehearsed together I thought they worked very well together in general. The only slight indication of lack of rehearsal that I spotted was shen he was kneeling down & she bourreed over to him and as she got there & reached for his shoulder the distance seemed to be a bit wrong & her hand bumped into his shoulder rather than the presumably intended feather-light touch. Maybe it's a good thing this production doesn't have the big balance lift though given the circumstances. As the veil was whisked off Giselle, I thought that it could have been rather amusing if the cast change hadn't been announced & they'd left it for the audience to find out at the unveiling! (Yes, I know unprofessional & would never happen.) Getting to see McWhinney, who was my first Manon 5 years ago, was a bonus. I thought she was very good, especially considering it's her first role back from maternity leave, but I felt Suzuki on Friday was a bit better inherently suited to the role. I was glad I liked Dowden as Hilarion, as he was the only lead cast member who appeared in both his scheduled performances. (A thought that came into my mind during Hilarion's first appearance today: was the Medieval equivalent of Say It With Flowers, Say It With Pheasants?!) When the casting was first announced my first choice cast was Oliveira/Frola & my second choice cast Khaniukova/Arrieta however the way their dates worked out I would have had to see the former pair first and then the latter pair. Based on last year's Swan Lake, where I saw Arrieta & then Frola and was very pleased to have seen them in that order on the save-the-best-til-last principle, I didn't want to do that, plus I was broke at the time casting was announced so I decided to just book for the one cast. Ironically all the cast issues ended up with me being able to see Arrieta & Frola in that order! And yes, again it was definitely the best last. I don't know if more expert ballet-viewers will agree but in my opinion if you have to see Giselle from a restricted view seat then auditorium right is definitely the side to go for.

Thanks @Emeralds, @Sim & @Roberta While I know some professional photographers deliberately take blurred photos of dancers, mine are always very much accidental! It does I suppose kind of work in an arty way, but it's useless for actually seeing who any of the dancers are! Also the forum is used to Rob S's perfect curtain call photos so I know mine must always look even worse by comparison.

I suppose O'Hare could always do some character roles to get some performance fees!

Unfortunately my curtain call photos have come out even worse than last time from a technical point of view so I'm posting the following very much as a momento of a probably one-off performance rather than because they're any good from a photographic point of view. I literally did not get a single in focus photos of Alison McWhinney so this is the least bad one! I know everyone's legs are out of focus but I love the sense of lightness & movement from Takahashi. And if anyone thinks the above are bad, then this is the sort of thing I've been deleting!

Naghdi is doing the cinecast of Swan Lake so you could see both by seeing her in that at the cinema & Manon live.

@LinMM While I'm not planning to see Magri/Corrales this time around, as I saw them in 2022 & can't afford to repeat pairs, I agree with your point. The Don Q cinecast performance that was originally due to be them was likewise not available for public booking so doing that twice for the same pair within a few months feels unfair to the general public. I'm sorry to hear Takada is having difficulties with nerves on stage. As someone who is having a lot of problems with anxiety when just attending performances at the moment, it must be even worse for those who are on stage with anxiety.

Getting back onto audience behaviour rather than tourist behaviour, in Act I of today's Giselle two women in a box seemed to think that their box was sound-proofed given the number of audible comments they made during the act. At the start of the interval while I was dithering over whether to try to say anything to them a man sat a couple of rows back stood up & spoke to them. They were evidently audible for some distance! They were quiet in Act II. Other than that the audience in my vicinity today were pretty good, apart from the girl next to me checking her phone a number of times. I didn't say anything, as she was foreign so I wasn't sure if she'd understand. Also frankly I was so grateful to have got through 2 performances without any popcorn within smelling distance!

I try to keep out of people's photos but it can be tricky to do so. In the past if you saw someone taking a photo you would walk behind them to keep out of the way but now at least half the time you actually have to walk in front of them to avoid their photos. As for taking photos, given most people who ask will be holding phones rather than cameras nowadays I politely explain that I have OCD so I'm not prepared to remove my gloves to use their phone. (One of the reasons I mostly use my camera rather than my phone for photos is that I can work my camera with gloves on.)

I think it also helps Giselle & Albrecht having an extra pdd in Act I. Otherwise it can feel like the peasant pair get more setpiece dancing than the leads do. I read this comment in the extended interval today so was viewing Act II with that in mind. I can't say I thought the two darker-skinned dancers in today's cast, Precious Adams as one of the wilis & Thiago Pereira, were any more disadvantaged by the dimmer lighting than the rest of the company. In fact it took me some time to even spot Pereira was one of the forresters as with the large hats they wear I find it difficult to identify any of them. I know about this from it being mentioned in at least one of Lorna Hill's Wells books so I wouldn't say knowledge of it is necessarily a mark of age!

Extended interval then announcement that Oliveira is ill & being replaced by Takahashi for Act II. It does feel a bit doomed trying to see this cast!

True, though it's even more annying when people plonk themselves in front of something for ages in order take selfies! The lack of alternatives to audio guides in some places can be a pain. I went round Holyrood must faster than I was expecting a few years ago because there were no labels or written info anywhere, only audio guides. I totally agree on the hygiene & that's my main objection. However I do also dislike being talked at too.

I've just booked stalls E2, which is the nearest I can get to the stage without having to pay £95. I guess I'm lucky to be able to get anything only an hour an a half beforehand but compared to my lovely front-row-for-£50 on Friday...!

So relieved it's finally up. I've literally been refreshing the page every couple of mins. Oliveira & Frola on plus McWhinney as Myrtha. So I am very happy! Now I just have to hope I can still get a ticket...