Dawnstar

I'm glad to hear it's not just me who is getting oddly coloured photos. Recently, for Don Q & now for The Nutcracker last night, I've been having some photos coming out a fairly normal colour then suddenly some come out looking much more orange. If the orangeness is due to the stage lighting then do any photography experts have any idea how the colour of my photos can suddenly change when the stage lighting hasn't changed? For instance the two photos below from last night of Sarah Lamb with her bouquets were taken only a few seconds apart, with a zoom in between photos, yet the colour looks normal in the first and too orange in the second. Or, in case the above pair of photos can be explained by the zoom in upsetting something, does anyone have any idea how the two photos below, taken within the same second & otherwise virtually identical, can look a such a different colour? (Apologies if this is going too off topic. If it is please let me know & I'll delete the post.)

Did anyone else read the BTG review (in yesterday's links) and feel your heart sink at this paragraph: While I'm not seeing The Nutcracker I hope to see Giselle next month & I really don't want to be surrounded by people eating half a dozen different foodstuffs.

I thought this evening's cast were very good but I don't feel it fair to comment in detail as I found concentrating difficult because my anxiety levels were through the roof. If I hadn't been with a friend, who was seeing the production for the first time, I fear I would have repeated my Don Q mid-act early exit. I hope others who were able to experience the performance in a normal manner will be able to make more useful comments.

Exactly what I was going to say. I'd really like to see Andrijshenko (I adored him when he jumped in as Romeo in 2019) but while I'm prepared to pay £64 when I see the RB live I am not paying it for a stream of a ballet. I would be happy to pay around £10-15 but not more.

Having missed a chunk of Act II when the picture vanished during the live cinecast last Tuesday, I decided to go to the encore today to see the bit I'd missed (various other reasons too). The reason I went to the live screening rather than the encore in the first place was because I already had this evening's live performance booked & I thought 2 Nutcrackers in a day might be a bit much. However now I'm doing 2 in a day & am currently on a train half way between Cambridge & London. Thank goodness The Nutcracker isn't a 3 hour 3 act ballet or I wouldn't have had much time to squeeze in the train journey. I'm quite happy with this evening's cast list, especially Leticia Dias as the Rose Fairy as I've not yet seen her in that role, which feels remiss of me considering I have seen her as the SPF! (PS The doctor I saw on Friday night wasn't much help with my blocked tear duct but fortunately on Saturday night I managed to "pop" the lump in the corner of my eye so while I've still got a bit of pain, doubtless I've got inflammation in my sinuses that'll take time to die down, it's a lot less, and I'm not having to wipe my eye every 5 mins.)

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?