thewinelake Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 Having been recently involved in a production of Nutcracker (only on the technical side) where all the music was recorded, I wondered how often, when performed to live music, they have a choir in just to do the snow ballet? I understand it's supposed to be a choir of boys rather than adults, but must be quite an expense just for the one scene, lovely though it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sim Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet always use live choirs. Finchley Childrens' Choir was often used. I can't remember which ones were used in the recent runs and I don't have the cast sheets to check. I'm sure someone will enlighten us! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sim Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 Oh, and welcome to the forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anjuli_Bai Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 As I recall - City Ballet of San Diego has used a live choir with a live orchestra. They almost always use live orchestra. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 BRB uses a choir too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regattah Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 My DD was in ENB's Nutcracker in 2010. That year they used the Party Girls/girl Little Rats (because they're Tring students the majority can sing; I only know of one girl who was encouraged to mime) plus a few older teenagers and young adults who I think we're from Royal College of Music or similar. The girls had a quick change from their rat costumes and came out to sing In a box (seating box) beside the stage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odyssey Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 BIrmingham's Ex Cathedra choir provides youngsters from their junior academy for the BRB production. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Macmillan Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Well, well - Jeffrey Skidmore's Ex Cathedra, Finchley Children's Choir, the RCM. No wonder it sounds good ...... and there was me thinking that the Snowflakes were simply multi-tasking! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Q Fan Posted March 25, 2014 Share Posted March 25, 2014 Berlin Staatsballett also have a children choir - it's lovely! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewinelake Posted March 25, 2014 Author Share Posted March 25, 2014 Wow - thanks for all the responses (and welcome). I never knew! Only seen a professional performance of this once, many years ago, at ROH an I have no idea if there was a choir hiding down there or not.... I wonder how Petipa and Tchaikovsky worked together on this piece - was the music done to a vague specification (eg. scenes) and then the choreography added after, or was there some to-ing and fro-ing to optimise the combination. For our version, there were a LOT of modifications. Maybe only the story and music were kept - this was a production with some very young (under 5?) dancers up to about 18 years old, so none of them were really up to the proper choreography, but the ballet teacher did her own which seemed to suit them brilliantly. In particular, the adagio from Grand Pas de Deux featured SPF + 4 "sweet fairies" seemed magical to me - but it's impossible to be even vaguely objective when you know the dancers involved. One thing's for sure, though, that Tchaikovsky and Flying Hops go together like clotted cream and scones! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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