onemouseplace

To be fair to them, I was really impressed with this and it went straight into my food caddy as a liner.

Talking of costumes and outfits, I was also very interested to see a number of items of Fonteyn's included in the Dior exhibition at the V&A. From memory there were several hats, a couple of dresses and I think a two-piece suit. It was fascinating to get an idea of her size and shape from these (I have to say as an aside that the outfits I enjoyed the most at the exhibition weren't necessarily the show pieces, or the ones made for celebrities, but the ones made for real clients, some of whom were clearly not model shapes or sizes!).

Not as far as I know. I've been mulling over returning my ticket for the Gala actually as I could do with freeing up the cash for the new season (there are 6 operas to 2 ballets I want to see which throws my usual budget out slightly!) and I'm seeing R&J the weekend before and The Firebird triple bill the weekend after anyway.

I'm looking forward to Coppelia - I don't think I've ever seen it (I have a vague memory of possibly seeing Northern Ballet Theatre tour with it in the early 90s) and it was always such a staple of the ballet books I read growing up.

We must be the same age as I did my A-Levels in 1996 as well! I can't for the life of me remember what exam board we did - but our set works were Fidelio and Brandenburgs 1, 3 and possibly 5 for the other topic.

Snap! My must-sees are Agrippina, Alice's Adventures Underground (for my 10 year old), Kaufmann's Fidelio (I studied Fidelio for A-Level Music and hated it at the time, so I'm thinking this is a good chance for it to redeem itself to me!), Jenufa, Elektra and Netrebko's Tosca.

Totally agree - although I don't think it helped at all that Preziosilla on opening night was by far the weakest link in an otherwise phenomenal cast. I loved the evening, thought it was Netrebko's night (and have since become mildly obsessed by her instagram feed - she is delightfully bonkers imo) and that Kaufmann took a while to get into it but was wonderful with Tezier, who was also stunning. I'm pretty annoyed with myself for returning my ticket for a later night as I'd have happily gone and seen it again - although whether I would go without the casting I agree I'm not sure. I didn't know the opera at all beforehand, but at least I can place the familiar bits now.

I have tickets for Thursday so let's see. I actually swapped them when better seats came up from a Netrebko/ Kaufmann night later in the run but returned the ones I didn't want immediately - I'm now wishing I'd kept them!

Just had a look at the new site and, my goodness, it is awful isn't it? The ultimate irony for me is that to get a decent overview of what is going to be on and that I might like to see in a coming season will be via the Friends printed magazine and will not be by looking at the website. Hardly encouraging new audiences and participants.

I'm a Friend + and have just ordered a ticket on spec so to speak. I'm figuring I can always return it for resale when I know more about the programme/ dancers!

More Forza tickets added now for Kaufmann or Netrebko nights. Although, interestingly, only select nights seem to be available for Friends as I discovered when I wasn't logged in on my phone. Presumably they are releasing some for general booking only?

And on that note, does anyone know whether they hold back tickets between the various levels of Friends in a similar way? I might pop an email over to find out, because depending on the allocations, that starts making paying for the extra priority look less attractive if one doesn't get a chance at the whole House.

I was just coming on to post the same article Geoff. According to The Times only 100 tickets were kept back for general release (8% of the total), plus the Friday Rush allocation (which The Times has at 70, but I thought was 49). I wasn't aware that tickets were held back for general release (and I'd be very interested to know which seats they are, or whether it is just the last 100 that haven't been sold to Friends) and that would explain why those nights were showing as Sold Out during the Friends priority period.

The Netrebko/Kaufmann/Tezier castings were pretty much sold out before even the Friends booking period opened. I'm a Friend+ and it was a bunfight for those nights even then. I actually ended up booking two tickets as I booked the first seat I could, then managed to get a better seat shortly after (and then spent over an hour on hold to return the first ticket). Definitely sold out before general packages/ general booking as I've popped back every so often to see if I can get a better seat.