Dawnstar

I was quite surprised that the scenery for Diamonds was different to the RB's but the costumes were the same. I would have expected either both to be the same or both different. As I've not seen the RB's Emeralds or Rubies I don't know if that is the case for those parts too. Last night was the first time I've seen the first two parts of Jewels live. I think I liked Diamonds the most, then Emeralds, then Rubies. Out of the dancers, all bar Joseph Caley unknown to me, I particularly liked the performances of Sharni Spencer and Callum Linnane in Emeralds and Benedicte Bemet alongside Caley in Diamonds. I agree it would have been nice to have casting information for more of the roles, especially as I imagine the majority of the audience was not familiar with the company. My curtain call photos last night didn't come out very well but as no-one else has posted any (yet) these are a few of the less unsuccessful ones:

I've heard from someone I know who was booking to see the RB's Nutcracker for the first time. I'm not sure if he's ever been to the ROH before but he certainly hasn't for a long time & he had to create an account before booking. Yet he got the exceeding ticket limit message when trying to book a single ticket from a newly created account! What is up with the ROH's website?! Fortunately he's an extremely experienced theatre ticket booker in general & I'd warned him there might be problems so he persisted & was able to book after a bit. It's hardly encouraging to new audiences in general though if first time bookers can get those errors.

I'd say my booking is similar to last season but there was a significant shift between last season and the season prior to that, due to the abolition of package booking & the price rises last season. Since last season all I have been able to afford have been the cheapest stalls circle side bench seats. Before that I was able to treat myself to one set of better seats with the package booking then do additional performances from the cheaper seats. So with the interruptions of covid, I basically got 2 and a half RB seasons where I was able to occasionally enjoy decent views before being banished to restricted views in perpetuity! Or until even the restricted view seats get so expensive that I can't go at all. Other than that, I might have booked 2 rather than 1 Nutcracker performances if the full lead casting had been announced. I may add another performance nearer the time using Friday rush, and ditto for Don Q as one cast I want to see was already sold out of the cheapest side stalls circle seats. In previous seasons I might have gone up a price band but not now.

I quite agree. I know there are invite-only performances and that Friends get access to performances the general public do not - i.e. the Friends Rehearsals - but it does not seem very fair that a performance that was initially advertised as being open to the general public has suddenly been turned into an invite-and-Friends-only performance mere hours before public booking was due to open. PS Hope your trains oblige this afternoon. I've had to switch to a stopping train to Liverpool Street after I discovered half an hour before leaving home that the fast train to Kings Cross I was intending to get had been cancelled. (I'm going to a matinee first - the trains aren't yet quite bad enough for it to take 7 hours to get from Cambridgeshire to the ROH!)

I've finally managed to book the single Nutcracker I wanted. Adding the ticket to my basket before signing in seemed to work for getting round the exceeded ticket limit message. (I also worked out that the only way I could have exceeded the ticket limit would be if they'd counted every Nutcracker I've ever seen at the ROH including the 2 performances that were cancelled in 2021, as they add up to 8!)

I've just gone back in to have one more look in case any tickets have reappeared, only to encounter the ticket limit announcement for the first time. Ironically it's not for Don Q, which I booked a couple of tickets for half an hour ago, but for The Nutcracker, a production I have not yet booked any tickets for this coming season!

Well that was cheaper than I was expecting, since by the time I got onto the website 2 of the 6 performances I had hoped to book didn't have any of the seats I was after available. I must say I wasn't expecting the Kaneko/Bracewell Don Q to be the cast I wouldn't be able to get a ticket for. I'll have to hope I'm able to get a rush ticket.

My queue time seems to have stablised at 23 minutes, after spending the first couple of minutes jumping around from anything between 1 to 35 minutes. I imagine by the time I get to the front of the queue there are unlikely to be many if any seats available for the performances I'm after, given the intersection between seats I can afford to sit in & seats I am prepared to sit in is less than 10 tickets per performance. At this rate I may be spending a lot of Fridays this autumn praying I can get rush tickets.

Oh great, I was intending to book for that performance. Since there are only 2 performances for that cast, and the other one is the half term Saturday matinee, it is not exactly helpful of the ROH to make that performance unavailable only the evening before public booking opens. Maybe I will have to only see that cast at the cinema then.

I've had an email from the ROH asking me to "take a short survey" about Carlos At 50. It was an extremely short survey: only 2 questions. The first question was "How likely would you be to recommend the performance" which seems a rather silly questions as given the short run has concluded what would be the point in recommending it to anyone - unless Acosta is planning to do a Carlos At 51, 52, 53, etc.!

Tomorrow evening will be my first time seeing Jewels live too. In full that is, I saw the RB's Diamonds last year.

You may be the only person who will appreciate my dismay when I realised that the World Championship men's road race is on Sunday & I'm booked for Australian Ballet's gala!

Yes so relative to that price then £49 for Manon seems reasonable, given the MacMillans are usually less expensive than the classics. However those same seats were £58 for Mayerling last season so relative to that £63 seems more likely.

I can't decide whether to hope the side stalls circle bench seats are £49 or fear that they're £63....

Oh yes, she's on my want to see again list too. In fact I fear that if Manon has the casts I am expecting it to I'm going to want to see all bar one or two of them, which is not going to be possible!

That is very interesting to read @JohnS. As someone who's been going to opera at the ROH for a lot longer than for ballet, the differening proportionate price for the area where I usually sit, the stalls circle bench seats, has been very apparent to me. However it worries me is if, now it has been drawn to the ROH's attention, they respond not by lowering the ballet prices but by increasing the opera prices which, given how much higher opera top prices are than ballet top prices, would mean I would be priced out of the stalls circle & would no longer be able to afford to attend opera performances.

@MJW I definitely agree with this. The other day someone I know who's planning to see the RB Nutcracker for the first time asked me for recommendations & I had to explain that given less than half the lead casting was available it was a bit tricky, especially with no Drosselmeyer casting as I'd say Avis is the must-see dancer out of all the Nutcracker roles. Personally I'm only going to book one performance (I really must get round to seeing Lamb's SPF before it's too late) & will be waiting for the rest of the casting information before deciding on any further bookings. @Missfrankiecat Certainly seeing Nunez doing the Manon pdd made me decide I'm going to have to book to see her again in the full ballet next season, in case it's the last time she does the role. I also need to see her doing the entirety of SL live, as I've so far only seen her do Act III & now part of Act II!

Thanks. I already spent Friday evening reading a Manon 2015 thread which I dug up after looking up the ROH performance database to see when Acosta had last danced in that. I was surprised to find he made his Lescaut debut then, only a year before retiring.

@Bluebird Thank you. I didn't think about him raiding the RB's costume archives! I suppose as both he & that production retired at around the same time they would still have had the costume in his size & wouldn't have adjusted it for subsequent use.

Looking at the photos reminds me of something I meant to ask: does anyone know which production the Swan Lake costumes are from? As I knew immediately that it wasn't the RB's I had assumed it was BRB's but a quick Google indicated that they aren't.

@Rob S Yes, I felt that too and - what you wouldn't have been able to notice! - it then got slightly cooler again down the next flight to the basement ladies' loos.

I found it uncomfortably warm in the auditorium on Thursday evening. I was surprised given the weather is currently warm rather than really hot. I've been to the ROH on previous occasions where the outdoor temperature has been some degrees higher & the auditorium has been cooler. I do hope the ROH doesn't turn their air con off when guest companies are performing!

I didn't manage to rearrange Nozze, as there were only a couple of other dates I could do & they only had tickets available that cost more than I was prepared to pay. I've seen the production several times since it was new in 2006 so I wasn't desparate enough to see it again to pay what would have been at least 3 times my original ticket price. Fortunately I was okay for Thursday this week & at the moment sufficient trains are scheduled to be running for next week's Australian Ballet viewings, as long as there aren't a slew of last minute cancellations, so fingers crossed I can make the last of this season's ROH bookings.

Yes, it is a little depressing to discover the person next to you has paid considerably less than half of what you have paid for a seat, even if they have a good reason for it.

I agree with you on that. I did seriously consider leaving in the second interval but, having paid £67* for my usual side stalls circle bench, though I'd better stay on. In hindsight I could have perfectly well left! I enjoyed (chronologically) Apollo, Swan Lake, Le Corsaire & Manon and thought the pdd part of Carmen & Tocororo were okay. The other pieces were not to my taste, to try to put it politely. Oh well, I suppose it was about 50% enjoyment & I can now say I've seen Acosta dance live. *The woman sat next to me struck up a conversation & asked how much I'd paid. After my reply, she said she'd paid £25 with the disabled concession & was unimpressed with the view compared to her usually sitting more centrally in the stalls circle. I would be ecstatic if I could get that view for only £25! In fact it almost made me wish I was physically disabled rather than mentally & could qualify for the concession!