Dawnstar

That's the main reason why I got a rush ticket for that performance. In the last couple of years I've seen at least one debut for each of the other 4 main roles but I have yet to see a Drosselmeyer debut & the Insight livestream the other week really made me want to see his.

I'm the other way around in that I can't make 27th so I thought I wasn't going to be able to see Rovero & am very pleased that I now (hopefully!) can. It also helps my dithering over which of 2 January Nutcracker casts to see as if I'm seeing Tsembenhoi & Junker next week then I can skip seeing them in January & go for Bailey & Boswell instead.

They really are racking up the cast changes for this run. That's now all 3 men replaced for 18th & 22nd mat (having been booked for the 18th since booking opened back in July, it's a bit like And Then There Were None watching them drop out one by one!) while for the 20th and 23rd matinees Bracewell is the only originally cast dancer left. I wonder if Cuthbertson's already injured so soon after returning or if she's just got some sort of seasonal lurgy. Zuchetti & Dean presumably are injured given he's been off since after the first Don Q & she vanished from Dante Project cast lists mid-run. I'm pretty happy with the cast changes for the performances I'm booked for, now I just need to make sure I can actually see them. I wonder how an NHS doctor is going to respond if I tell them this evening that they have to sort out my blocked tearduct immediately because I have 2 Nutcrackers to see next week?!

I really hope it' a bit more predictable, or there's less demand, when it comes to Manon. I wasn't able to book any tickets for that when booking opened so it looks like I'll be entirely reliant on rush for the several casts I'd ideally like to see. If the website keeps on like this then I may be dead from stress & exhaustion sooner than Manon will be! (And sadly without a gorgeous Des Grieux to throw me around to ravishing music just beforehand!)

I see right now the performance I booked for, Wednesday 20th, still has a single side stalls circle rush ticket available. So maybe I was able to get a ticket not because everyone else was stuck in a queue but because everyone else was fighting over tickets for the other Nutcracker performances next week & for some reason this one was less in demand.

I must point out that last week, when trying to get a rush ticket for Cav & Pag, I tried going directly into the performance only for the rush tickets not to show up. They only showed up when I went in via the Friday rush page. So what worked today is certainly not an infalliable way of getting rush tickets. I have also tried being already on the seating plan page before 1pm and refreshing at 1pm, which sometimes brings up the rush tickets and sometimes does not. As far as I can tell, there does not seem to be a single best way of getting rush tickets, the successful route seems to vary on different Fridays!

Today's Friday rush was quite weird at my end. I only got home just before 1pm so at 1pm I was still waiting for the Wifi to come on so tried going onto the ROH website on my phone in the meantime, got onto the Friday rush page as it ticked over to available, & got a 10 minute wait time. Then my Wifi came on so I tried on one browser & got a 7 minute wait time and another browser gave a 14 minute wait time. All of these wait times were jumping around but none of them looked like they were about to give me access. So I decided to try going into the performance I wanted directly, though I wasn't expecting it to work. However it let me get straight in & all 5 rush tickets on the side of the stalls circle that I was after were still available. I snapped one up & was paid & confirmed while the other 3 queues were still queuing. I can only assume the tickets were still there several minutes after 1pm because everyone else was stuck in queues too! Now I just have to hope I can actually use the ticket as the reason why I was only just home by 1pm was because I spend the morning at my local A&E trying to get a painfully blocked tear duct seen to. I have to go back at 7pm this evening to go to the eye clinic so I really hope they can sort it out as at the moment I'm in too much pain to be able to enjoy a performance.

I've never seen it full stop - I couldn't get up to Birmingham earlier this year for BRB's latest airing - but would like to do so. I like some of Wheeldon's choreography but his fairly frequent use of flexed feet really annoys me. I'm not very keen on Talbot's music either. (I'm still looking forward to seeing Winter's Tale later this season though because I've never seen it live.)

I didn't think of The Firebird. I was trying to come up with ballets where all the characters are animals rather than one animal among humans (admittedly the humaness of The Immortal Koschei is debatable!).

How about an animal ballets triple bill? The Cunning Little Vixen, Still Life At The Penguin Cafe and Tales Of Beatrix Potter. (I know the latter isn't the most popular but I can't think of any other animal ballets.)

I thought Medusa was pretty awful, especially the costumes, so if Strapless was worse than that I can only be glad that I missed it by a couple of years!

Fortunately the alert has now vanished so I've just quickly done some cast sheet saving in case another one pops up!

If the rehearsal was yesterday evening then that would be after ENB's cast change post yesterday morning, so the cast change must therefore presumably be due to something other than injury.

I do hope the ROH sort out their phone line issues soon so they can remove the alert from their website. I was trying to save a couple of cast sheets as .pdfs only to find that the alert shows up at the the top of them. As I don't want the alert saved for years to come, I'm waiting for it to disappear.

This reminds me of a mixed bill I saw ENB do back in the early 90s. I don't remember it very well, as I was only about 7, but it definitely included Le Spectre de la Rose, Scheherazade & The Dying Swan. I have a feeling there may have also been a fourth piece but I can't recall what, definitely not Petrushka though. I've been trying to come up with triple bills myself but I feel I haven't seen enough one act ballets to informatively do so. There are a number of one act ballets that I really want to see but as I've not seen them before I can't tell which other ballets they would go well with. I have enjoyed all the more classical/traditional triple/double bills I have seen the RB do in the last few years, though not their modern ones.

ENB do not seem to be having much luck with their Nephews for this Nutcracker run & Ivana Bueno is now onto her third partner!

It sounds like everyone else didn't have any technical hitches? Unfortunately the cinema where I was watching lost the picture during the Waltz of the Flowers & it didn't return until near the end of the first part of the grand pas. We still had the sound, which was arguably more frustrating than if both had gone.

I would absolutely love that but sadly I'd absolutely be amazed if it did happen.

Yesterday eveing I felt like an Opera Ignoramus because I kept on forgetting to look at the surtitles for Cavelleria Rusticana. I've seen so much ballet at the ROH recently, while not making the last 2 opera I had booked due to train strikes, that I'm out of practice with needing to look at surtitles rather than just at the stage! By Pagliaccia I'd got back into remembering to look.

Is there anyone who will be sitting/standing in the right hand side of the stalls circle for tomorrow evening's Nutcracker & would be able to quickly check something for me?

Thinking about this, does Hirano do less international guesting than some of the other RB Principals & so is more available? Some Principals often get mentioned on here as guesting elsewhere but I can't think of many mentions for Hirano, apart from the ones in the UK with Scottish & Northern Ballets. Actually Lamb seems to rarely get mentioned as guesting either but I don't know if that's because she doesn't do much or because she's not on social media so it doesn't get publicised.

Coincidentally, the ROH tweeted this today. Do I wish Lamb was dancing Manon with Muntagirov again? Yes. But I'm still planning to see her with Hirano, assuming I can get a ticket. (I don't currently have any tickets for Manon because I couldn't afford any when booking opened. Now I have the money but there aren't any of the tickets I'm after left so I'm going to have a horribly stressful Friday rush time come Jan-Feb.) The first time I saw Hirano was in Mayerling in 2018 when he replaced Watson, which was also my first time seeing not only the piece but the RB live. I can't say I was too keen on him from an acting point of view so I avoided booking specifically for him for a while after that, though I did see him in various triple bills & secondary roles in full length pieces which latter showed that I did like him in more "character" roles (Espada, Lescaut, Tybalt, Paris). I did see him as the Prince in the Nutcracker, because I wanted to see Magri's SPF debut & he was her partner, but that's not really an acting role. Then come the 2022 revival of Manon I ended up booking for both the casts he was with because I wanted to see Morera as Countess Larisch & Hamilton as Mary Vetsera. I found I much prefered his Rudolf with Hamilton's Mary Vetsera than with Osipova's, so I guess it took me 4 years to realise my Mayerling issue was more with Osipova than Hirano, though there are still other Rudolfs I prefer to Hirano's. In the same Mayerling run I received a bit of a shock when a review said that Lamb had just turned 42. I knew she wasn't young by ballet standards but I'd been thinking she was later 30s & still had a while to go. That made me realise that I'd better hurry up & see her in some more roles, as while I'd seen her in the MacMillans I'd not seen her in classics, apart from half an act of SL. So I saw her & Hirano in SB last season and, given the cast changes with McRae's injury, will probably see them in The Nutcracker, Manon & SL this season. In terms of other partners, I really liked her with Muntagirov but that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. I really like her with McRae in Mayerling but didn't think Cinderella worked quite as well. I'm not very keen on her with Sambe as I think he's too short for her. I think that's everyone I've seen her with in full lengths, plus Edmonds in a couple of 1 acters. I'd potentially be interested in seeing her with Ball or Bracewell but I doubt that will happen given there's been no attempt to pair them for the last few seasons.

Thanks for the heads up on that @jmhopton. My mother has a Telegraph subscription, which I borrow to read reviews & suchlike online (and of course Matt), so I've just booked. Whether the link will let us each watch on our own computers or whether we'll have to both huddle round one computer I guess we'll find out on the day.

Yes, I got that, followed by the sofa with the estimated wait time going up & down like a yo-yo. Fortunately it seems no-one other than me is desparate to get stalls circle Cav & Pag rush tickets as when I got in 5 minutes later all the tickets were still available. It does not bode well for next week though when I'll be trying for The Nutcracker. By the way, I think I answered my own question from yesterday when about an hour ago a stalls ticket for tonight's Cav & Pag appeared on the website showing at £236 for me. Given it disappeared rapidly, presumably someone more fortunate than me picked it up for somewhere around a tenth of that. So it looks like whatever discounting is going on is not available to the general public. I find it depressing that on Monday I'll be sitting in my £65 restricted view bench seat looking down at the stalls partially filled with a couple of hundred people (there are currently 210 unsold stalls seats, plus goodness knows how many others in the other tiers) who will have paid a lot less than me for a much better view. ETA: I've just tried to have a look at this coming week's Nutcrackers, to see if the rush tickets went as quickly as I assumed they would, only to find that tomorrow evening's performance isn't showing up in the drop down list on the seat maps. It can't be because it's sold out as plenty of other performances that are sold out are showing up. I noticed the same issue with a Don Q performance when I was getting rush tickets for that (fortunately the missing performance wasn't one I was trying to get tickets for). I wonder what the ROH website is doing that is making performances vanish at random.

That should read "tomorrow night's performance". Tonight's is of course The Nutcracker. I'm afraid I realised my mistake too late to edit my post.