Poor old ROH

[bridiem]

At ABT, they do charge different prices per casting and date of the week, Osipova performances are always expensive. And now they apply dynamic pricing, which is based on how well the tickets are selling. So if Osipova cancels there is a similar groaning heard (I am not sure about how they refund this, someone in NY could explain)

 

In Japan, for instance at K-Ballet Company Tetsuya Kumakawa performances are much expensive than the other male leads. So if he cancels you can get refunds. Also usually the price is different when you have a guest artist. 

 

I think that's rather horrible. No matter how much I may want to see a particular dancer, they can't do it on their own and many other things go towards making a great (or poor) performance. For a singer giving a recital, or some such, I can understand that the venue or promoter will want to charge whatever they think they can charge depending on the name of the performer; but for a company performance, the ballet's the thing.

[Fonty]

I think that's rather horrible. No matter how much I may want to see a particular dancer, they can't do it on their own and many other things go towards making a great (or poor) performance. For a singer giving a recital, or some such, I can understand that the venue or promoter will want to charge whatever they think they can charge depending on the name of the performer; but for a company performance, the ballet's the thing.

 

Yes, I thought the same thing. 

 

I suppose it is understandable that Kumakawa charges more for his performances, as he founded the company.  But otherwise, it seems wrong to me to charge more for performances by, say, a guest artist, rather than a regular Principal.  If I was the latter, I might get a bit annoyed about it.  Particularly if I was a permanent member of the company with a distinguished reputation of my own. 

[Naomi M]

Here is an article on dynamic pricing at the MET and American Ballet Theatre. Which means, popular tickets will be more expensive.

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/02/23/metropolitan-opera-adopts-dynamic-pricing/

 

and here is a quote from the ballet alert forum about exchanging tickets with dynamic pricing.

 

http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/34991-abt-met-season-ticketing-strategy/

 

 

Dynamic pricing doesn't affect subscribers who try to exchange their tickets price wise. For example if a single ticket holder wants to exchange a ticket for a different date or section, he or she will need to pay the price difference between the original price and the higher dynamic pricing price. A subscription ticket holder doesn't have to pay the dynamic price difference if it's an even exchange, if it's not, he or she needs only pay the original price difference. 

At ABT it is possible to exchange tickets if you are a subscriber. but this dynamic pricing strategy is annoying. And I suppose that was the reason why they brought in so many guest artists last season.

 

Well in Japan, the audience usually favors visiting guests because some of the audience still thinks foreign guests are better than their own which is a pity as Japanese artists are very good these days. So not many in the audience complains about this. But I don't know audience in other countries think the same. 

[Two Pigeons]

Having seen a lot of ballet during the 80s the number of times Makarova didn't appear they would have been refunding money much of the time had prices been raised.

 

I must endorse the point about Fonteyn hardly ever cancelling. This is not from my own experience but from a lot of evidence from a number of sources. The person who sticks in my mind who always turned up was Sylvie Guillem. Thank you Sylvie, I really appreciated that.

[alison]

I watched Antonio Pappano's programme about Tenors last night, which was interesting given some of the comments here. He was conducting the orchestra for the Tosca I saw and I was sitting quite near him. I noticed because one could not help notice, that he made a lot of noise with his mouth while he was conducting. It sounded exactly like the noise Hannibal Lector made as played by Anthony Hopkins, when talking about the Chianti and fava beans. I am sure I didn't imagine this as it was quite distracting. Perhaps conductors generally make a noise or is it just him? I have never been aware of it before.

 

Valeri Gergiev certainly is quite vocal - I gave up sitting in the choir stalls at the Festival Hall because he annoyed me so much and I couldn't ignore him when I was facing him.

[penelopesimpson]

I won't give chapter and verse because this is a ballet, not an opera forum, but..... tonight we understood the power of star appeal.

 

Without Jonas Kaufmann to hold it together the whole thing fell flat and one cannot help but think that Mr. Kaufmann made the right call.  Carmen was more trollop than temptress and Jose seemed bemused and ended up being a dope rather than duped.  A poignant moment before curtain up when the Director came on stage and thanked us all for coming and told us that Art transcends terrorism.  We then stood in silence for a minute in tribute to the fallen in France.

 

London was sombre tonight but I was moved by the South Bank Centre and the London Eye spectacularly light in red, white and blue.  There were people in the bars and restaurants but joy was in short supply.

[Bluebird]

 

Without Jonas Kaufmann to hold it together the whole thing fell flat and one cannot help but think that Mr. Kaufmann made the right call.  Carmen was more trollop than temptress and Jose seemed bemused and ended up being a dope rather than duped.  

 

I won't go into detail either but I feel I ought to mention that not all members of the audience felt this way. It's interesting how many different reactions there can be to any one performance.  I really enjoyed the evening, as did my companions. Early on I got the impression that Carè (the Kaufmann replacement) might be a bit nervous but, once he had warmed up, I thought he gave an excellent performance.  In fact, two separate people told me that that they'd never enjoyed Carmen as much as they did last night

Edited November 15, 2015 by Bluebird

[Coated]

Personally, I quite enjoyed the 'Trollop' - big voice and a bit of flavour in an insipid production. Yoncheva's Michaela was very good as well and Nicholas Courjal as 'Officer' - ¡Ay, caramba!

Edited November 15, 2015 by Coated

[Irmgard]

The only case of a refund I remember (though based on just about 7 years of opera going only) was for Tamerlano with Domingo and Kurt Streit, though both were initially priced the same they had different pages to make sure the customers wouldn't mistakenly book the wrong singer (and sure enough the Streit dates were very very poorly sold). When Domingo cancelled and was replaced by Streit for the whole run they offered a 20% discount, it was a few more days before they also discounted the performances that Streit was always going to sing.

I don't think the somewhat recent Domingo/Nucci casts of Nabucco had different prices depending on who was singing.

The only time I recall where prices changed depending on the casts was a run of The Magic Flute a few years ago when there was three different pricings, though it was explained as being related to the day of the week, it just so happened that Simon Keenlyside (if I remember correctly) was only singing the weekend performances.

 

The price differences between casts will rather be for different runs, and with for instance Carmen, the Alagna/Garanca run from 2009 was then the most expensive tickets in the season (or even tickets had ever been at Covent Garden), this run with a couple of Kaufmann dates was getting close to that, whereas the runs in between tended to be noticeably cheaper.

I remember this incident well because my friend was making her ROH debut as Tamerlano and in my excitement to see her I forgot that Domingo was also scheduled to sing!  The 20% refund was therefore a welcome surprise, especially as I did not particularly enjoy the production, having paid quite a lot for my ticket.

I also remember many years ago having booked for Elisabeth Soderstrom in "Der Rosenkavalier" and the whole opera was cancelled!  I cannot remember the circumstances now but everyone had to be given a refund which must have cost ROH dear.  Unlike the ballet company, which could put on another production from the repertoire fairly easily, the opera company cannot do this because all their principal singers are guests and contracted several years in advance and it would be unlikely for all the singers for that particular opera to suddenly be able to switch to another one that they all knew.

The first time I heard the wonderful Kaufmann was at the dress rehearsal of "La Rondine" some years ago in what I believe was his debut at ROH.  Gheorghiu was Magda and was marking her performance both vocally and dramatically.  Then the gorgeous Kaufmann appeared and you could feel the frisson of excitement throughout the audience as he sounded as good as he looked.  This appeared to be a wake-up call for Gheorghiu who then gave a very decent dramatic performance and gave us a little bit more of her glorious voice. (It is quite acceptable for singers to mark vocally at a dress rehearsal, especially with a morning start, but I think it is rather insulting to the other performers when the star can't be bothered to act, especially when we know that she actually can - but that is going slightly off this topic!)

[SPD444]

More problems for the ROH, tonight's performance of Orpheus has been cancelled, cast illness is the reason.

[aileen]

Do they not have understudies for opera performances?

[SPD444]

Do they not have understudies for opera performances?

 

Kasper Holten tweeted that "several" singers were ill.

[jm365]

As a matter of interest - how are people informed that a performance has been cancelled?  Not everyone is on Twitter; rather more have e-mail.  If the illness is known about some time before, are people contacted personally?  Or do you have to potentially spend the money getting to the ROH, including train, hotel etc., only to find the whole performance is off?  It's a different matter if it's just a change of cast.

[MargaretN7]

No, I don't remember ever going to a Fonteyn performance and finding she was not dancing.

But I do remember myself having to cancel going to a performance because I had flu, it was a triple bill and not Fonteyn. Except it was Fonteyn, as a last minute replacement in Firebird, as my mother gleefully but sympathetically told me when she got home. Grrrrr!

[aileen]

I find it surprising that an opera performance would be cancelled because of illness. Dancers get injured frequently and yet it's almost unheard of for a ballet performance to be cancelled. It's just accepted that there will often have to be substitutions and ballet companies operate accordingly. The only time that I've heard of a performance being shortened (rather than being cancelled altogether) was when Osipova was injured and there was no second cast substitute (ready), which most people thought was unacceptable and bad planning.

 

As someone has already said, it's all very well refunding the cost of the ticket but many people have considerable additional costs (eg travel costs, hotel and meals) which are not refunded. It's very poor show to cancel performances except in the most extreme and unforeseen circumstances.

Edited November 15, 2015 by aileen

[alison]

I find it surprising that an opera performance would be cancelled because of illness. Dancers get injured frequently and yet it's almost unheard of for a ballet performance to be cancelled. It's just accepted that there will often have to be substitutions and ballet companies operate accordingly.

[...]

It's very poor show to cancel performances except in the most extreme and unforeseen circumstances.

 

Clearly it was *several* singers, who couldn't all be replaced.  Irmgard's response hints at a likely reason:

 

Unlike the ballet company, which could put on another production from the repertoire fairly easily, the opera company cannot do this because all their principal singers are guests and contracted several years in advance and it would be unlikely for all the singers for that particular opera to suddenly be able to switch to another one that they all knew.

 

As a matter of interest - how are people informed that a performance has been cancelled?  Not everyone is on Twitter; rather more have e-mail.  If the illness is known about some time before, are people contacted personally? 

 

I'm not sure what they do these days - especially on a Sunday, when I guess they don't have the box-office staff available for as much time.  It's always struck me that what would be really good would be to have a system which sends out an automatic message to all bookers whose email address they have, and then everyone who's read it hits Reply and the replies are logged and removed from the contact list, thus reducing the number of people who need to be contacted individually, but I have no idea how feasible that is.  I've had phone calls in the past from venues, but of course that all takes time.

[betterankles]

Not sure how it is now, but the Royal Danish Ballet used to cancel performances for reasons of sickness or injury of cast members quite often..

[capybara]

And now 4 out of the 7 Two Pigeons programmes are being heavily discounted.

 

Maybe the Rhapsody combination after Christmas will do better. I, for one, have booked for more of those than for this run.

[aileen]

The ROH only has itself to blame. The prices are far too high for a relatively unknown double bill: £100 for the stalls and £59 for the amphitheatre (admittedly, these are the best seats in these parts of the auditorium). I've only bought one ticket and I won't be buying one for the Two Pigeons / Rhapsody bill (this must be the third time that Rhapsody has been staged since 2011).

[capybara]

The ROH only has itself to blame. The prices are far too high for a relatively unknown double bill

 

Precisely!!!!

[penelopesimpson]

Precisely!!!!

Hear hear.  If it had been more reasonably priced I might have gone

[SPD444]

Don't forget the costs of staging Two Pigeons are very much more than normal. After all they will need more than two pigeons in case one falls ill.

[Jane S]

Not sure how it is now, but the Royal Danish Ballet used to cancel performances for reasons of sickness or injury of cast members quite often..

 

I think it only happens quite rarely now, at least for the big main-stage productions - certainly it's never happened to anything I was there for! (But they do seem to cancel the drama productions much more often.)

[aileen]

Yes, we wouldn't want performances to be cancelled because there were only two pigeons and one had fallen ill or got injured and couldn't perform.

[FLOSS]

Generally there is no problem when illness strikes the cast of an opera that is part of the standard repertory.The call goes out and someone is found who has it in their repertory and is available that evening.Sometimes the replacement is flown in, sometimes they travel in from somewhere like Barnes occasionally they are run to earth doing their shopping in a local supermarket.You often get interesting casts .In general the worst thing that is likely to happen is that you get a multilingual performance.

 

The problem with the Orfeo which is being performed at the Wannamaker Theatre is that it is not a standard repertory piece.It is by a composer called Luigi Rossi and was first performed in Paris in 1647. It is a footnote to operatic history rather than a standard part of the early music repertory like Monteverdi's version or a semi specialist part of the classical repertory like the various versions by Gluck. I don't think that there will be too many singers who just happen to have the roles in question in their repertory.I don't think that anyone at the opera house is going to be that happy about being forced to cancel a performance.

 

The only occasion that I can think of when a ballet performance was cancelled was the second night of A Month in the Country when Lynn Seymour was too ill to dance it, the rest of the programme was danced.The first night had been touch and go with rumours circulating that Seymour was running a very high temperature and was unlikely to perform.

 

Before anyone asks why didn't they put it on with another dancer and why they didn't have a second cast I shall just say that Ashton did not much like second casts.A perfect cast was a perfect cast. It took many people a long time to accept other dancers in the role of Natalia Petrovna because although you were conscious of what the other dancers brought to the role you were even more aware of what lay completely beyond their compass so that even stellar names seemed like compromise casting.

Edited November 16, 2015 by FLOSS

[FLOSS]

As far as the poor sales for the Two Pigeons programme is concerned I think that it has as much to do with the marketing department's failure to give this revival any publicity as it has to do with pricing.The occasional ballet audience is not aware of any more than a few ballets apart from Swan Lake.It never ceases to amaze me that the Royal Ballet senior management seem to be blissfully unaware of this fact and that their programming policy is in large part the cause.If you don't perform works by a choreographer on a regular basis the general public is entitled to assume that his/her ballets are not very good.A single interview given to a newspaper that isn't read by many people in which Kevin O'Hare says how important the Ashton repertory is to the company does not carry that much weight. It carries even less weight when the company's programming decisions suggest that Ashton is merely of peripheral interest to the company that he helped to create.The impact is further reduced when you know how badly some of the casts danced in the last Ashton mixed bill.

 

 

Everyone who believes that the company has brought this disaster on itself by its pricing decisions and the decision to programme Two Pigeons both before and after Christmas needs to remember that the bean counters will be keeping a careful record of the number of tickets that are actually sold.If the requisite proportion of tickets are not sold for these performances then it puts in jeopardy not only subsequent revivals of these ballets but the ballet director's freedom to programme what he wants rather than what sells without any effort.Many people on this forum have complained about the limited number of ballets that are performed by the Royal Ballet compared with the range of works theoretically available to it in its back catalogue. The fact is that an already limited repertory is likely to be further restricted by what does and does not happen at the box office.

Edited November 16, 2015 by FLOSS

[aileen]

What sort of marketing of Two Pigeons do you think the ROH should be doing. FLOSS?

[FLOSS]

I think that neither the opera nor the ballet company have adjusted sufficiently to the fact that they are now being run as virtually commercial organisations. Both companies operate on the basis that they are the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet and that they have no need to tell the public about the works which they are performing.it is almost as if they believe that we ahould know and if we don't that is evidence of our unworthiness to attend one of their performances. The ballet company management in particular does not appear to understand that for many members of their potential audience there are only two ballets Swan Lake and Nutcracker.It assumes a knowledge of the repertory that the average punter does not possess.

 

I am not involved in marketing but it seems to me that Tamara Rojo manages to get air time and interviews when she thinks that her company needs a bit of publicity.Perhaps Kevin O'Hare should take a leaf out of her book.

 

I would have thought that a marketing department worth its salt would have agreed strategies in place with the companies that it is serving to deal with performances that are not selling. These tickets have been available for months.Surely someone noticed that they were not selling.The ROH website does not tell you that much about the ballet.Perhaps some of Kevin's enthusiasm for the work should have found its way onto the website when the first details were put up on it.I don't think that what is up there now would induce anybody to buy a ticket who did not already know about the ballet.Perhaps some short videos of people like Katrack,Collier, Barbieri, Seymour,Jeffries and Page talking about dancing in it and being coached by Ashton.Interviews with more recent exponents like Parker.The opera house does not use the internet as well as it should.

 

Advertisements in the Dancing Times as soon as possible after it became clear that tickets were not selling on Friends booking and advertisements on the Tube a couple of months ago, followed up by articles in the Evening Standard about the significance of this revival. I know that if it were anything to do with me I would have been looking at this sort of problem a long time ago and demanding that the marketing department did some serious work to find out how people who book at he last moment find out about the performances that they book for. I know that it is very old fashioned but I think that I would undertake a few paper based surveys selecting audiences where ticket sales had been slow initially to find out what prompted the decision to buy a ticket. I would undertake separate surveys of ballet and opera audiences because they may be influenced by different things when it comes to buying tickets.

Edited November 16, 2015 by FLOSS

[zxDaveM]

watch out for lots of snippets arriving soon, on the website/youtube. At the rehearsal today there was lots of filming going on - from the auditorium for the dancing and the wings/stage when doing corrections etc. Don't know when they will appear though - but should be soon (I hope)

[alison]

The RB clearly *has* been having a lot of publicity, particularly in the Evening Standard, over the last few weeks, so somebody is doing something, certainly.  How effective it is is another matter, though.

[zxDaveM]

people are most likely saving their pennies for Nutcracker (whoever's version)

[FLOSS]

Don't you think that the activity has come rather late in the day? Be honest would any of us have been persuaded to buy a ticket by anything that we have read so far? It's an old ballet but it is difficult to dance seems to be as far as discussion of the ballet goes.I only remembered that there had been one of those ES articles that manages to spread saying very little over several columns after I had posted my previous message. That's how memorable it was.

Edited November 16, 2015 by FLOSS

[Geoff]

There are many audiences for London but we've only really mentioned two till now (those who know more about ballet and those who know less). Let me suggest at least one other division: people who book in advance and people who decide later, even up to the last minute.

 

I don't know much about the "science" of marketing but understand that even the most untalented marketeers know to segment their audiences into numerous categories, and chase each in ways appropriate. All research shows that London audiences are making up their minds as to what to see later and later these days (so much choice, not enough money or time) so RB may well be factoring this in. As just one example of how tricky things can get, I can think of ROH shows that sold hardly at all until first night and then sold out.

 

One stunt I hope they don't get into (the ENO are or at least were far too guilty of this): putting up prices in the hope of selling some tickets at premium rates, then discounting to get the rest of the audience in, thus making a bit more in total then if the prices started at the final level. A little too "dynamic" for most of us, I think (at the ENO one got used to waiting for the inevitable and often substantial discounts).

 

How well the RB people involved are playing the hand they've got, that's a different matter and I am not competent to judge. But I'm going to the Pigeons General tomorrow, the first night and then at least twice more, so am doing my bit!