Fosca

Munich is a bit of an exception for ballet prices, which are rather cheap compared to the much higher opera ticket prices. At Hamburg or Stuttgart ballet is as expensive as opera or sometimes even more expensive. Which means best seats are at ca. 100 to 120 Euros. But you can get cheap seats in every German opera house/theatre, ranging from around 8 to 15 Euro. That's was the subsidies are meant for. Just for your information :-) Now back to Osipova!

The last pdd in Taming of the Shrew is one endless lift - over his head, on his shoulders, in front of his body... Petruchio really makes her fly, a very beautiful sign of his love for her after all the banter. Nobody recognizes that, everybody keeps complaining how women are treated in this ballet.

Cranko loved it when Haydée was in the air, that's why there are so many lifts in the ballets which he created for her - Onegin, Romeo, Taming. She says "He always saw me up there", and she was beautiful and expressive in the lifts, her arms, her face. It's hard for ballerinas sometimes to really fill these long flights with emotion, some just behave like in Petipa or Balanchine ballets. It won't look acrobatic if you know what it is about - Haydée was soaring...

Just a short information on the Rose designs: they are a question of budget, nothing else. If you want to have the original designs, he will come in person (turning 80 in 2017, he is still very much alive and kicking) and supervise the production. He is famous for his taste in fabrics and material, which also makes Neumeier's "Lady of the Camellias" a VERY expensive production, because Neumeier, other than Cranko heir Dieter Graefe, insists on keeping the original costumes and decor. Most European companies use the original designs for "Onegin", that's right, but not all - Berlin State Ballet has modern designs by Elizabeth Dalton. Also the Bolshoi chose the original designs when it staged Onegin some years ago. Rumours say that Jürgen Rose will do another story ballet production for Stuttgart in one of the next seasons.

That's interesting, I thought Barnes used the words first in a review for the first New York performances. Sure enough people jumped at the expression in Stuttgart :-) The company was invited only because some Russian company cancelled, I just don't remember which one. But even if Croce did not like it, the performances sold out in short time and Stuttgart was invited back - was Barnes' review considered more important at the time, or was it due to word of mouth?

At some points, Cranko relies heavily on Lavrovsky, for example in the ball scene in act 1, where the Capulet men hold cushions in their right hands, also the lift where Juliet kneels on Romeo's breast and bends down to kiss him - Cranko took it from the balcony pdd and put it in the wedding scene. There's a famous anecdote about Cranko's and MacMillan's Romeos, Jann Parry cites it in her MacMillan biography "Different Drummer": After a performance of MacMillan's Romeo, a spectator said to Cranko "I wish I had seen yours", and Cranko said "You just have". Both choreographers had seen the Bolshoi performances with Ulanova in London in 1956.

It seems that Cranko started to rework the ballet right after the premiere with subtle changes. I guess he did that sometimes or even often, adapting his steps for certain dancers, improving a scene etc. But the changes to Onegin were substantial, so they had a second premiere in 1967. The first "Onegin" received mixed reviews in Germany, a rather bad one by Horst Koegler, the most important critic at that time (who of course changed his opinion later). It was a time when certain music, certain books were thought to be not suitable for ballet - remember MacMillan with Mahler's "Song of the Earth" and Faurés "Requiem", which were both refused by the Royal Opera House (Mahler! and religious music!), so he did both for Stuttgart (where they were welcome). Such was the case for Pushkin's novel, it was thought to be too educated, too sophisticated to become a ballet. Balanchine hated the idea, if I remember correctly. It was also a problem at the time that the music for "Onegin" was compiled from different Tchaikovksy works. "Onegin" had a slow start, it was only in 1969 when Stuttgart toured to New York that Clive Barnes made it an overnight sensation with his words of the "ballet miracle".

Actually Onegin was made in 1965, it was the revised version that premiered in 1967. Cranko's first version had a prologue where you could see the death of Onegin's uncle, and it had Tatiana's children coming in in the last scene to say goodnight to her. Cranko worked on these scenes soon after the premiere, also on the fight between Onegin and Lenski. The cast in 1965 was Marcia Haydée (Tatiana), Ana Cardus (Olga), Ray Barra (Onegin), Egon Madsen (Lenski) and Kenneth Barlow (Gremin). The cast in 1967 was Haydée, Susanne Hanke, Heinz Clauss, Bernd Berg and Jan Stripling - three German dancers in principal parts, you don't get that very often nowadays... Stuttgart Ballet chose to mark the 50 year jubilee in 2017 because it is the version we know today.

The new Paquita will tour to Baden-Baden/Germany in December - no link yet, they publish their programme in April.

And Neumeier at Hamburg. Though you may not like him in the US, his Lady of the Camellias made a world career.

Yes, that sounds like the perfect explanation, thank you! So the Germans, who never had any impact on ballet history (except may for financing Jean-Georges Noverre some years) at least contributed a job description, hurray

Does anybody know how a German (or maybe Austrian) word came to be the Russian expression for ballet master/choreographer? Why not maître de ballet, almost all the St. Petersburg ballet masters of the 19th century were French... Was it maybe Franz Hilverding who brought the expression to St. Petersburg?

Volcanohunter, the 15 year rule was enforced by the German trade union for stagecraft and artistic workers in order to ensure a steady job after a certain time in a theatre. They were thinking of opera singers (mainly the chorus) and actors, the rule is not good for dancers, but the lobby inside the union seems to be too small to change it. And there are few dancers who really stay so long with a company, it only applies for the big companies, not for the smaller oder modern ones. As you know, Germany is the country with the most state subsidized theatres in the world - actors and singers keep moving from theatre to theatre after 5 years, after 10 years, so they have lots of possibilities to play King Lear or sing Klytaemnestra Diane, there is no exception from the 15 year rule, you can add 4 extra years, but after that, a dancer has to be hired for the rest of his working career, that is until he or she is 65 years old.

The 1,3 million was not an annual donation, but the whole of her donation in eight years. See the correction under the article of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Could you tell me how they are supposed to dance Spartacus without a strong - very strong! - classical technique?!

Yes, there in the USA it's the donors who decide. What is better???? Maybe you should make a difference between countries like Romania and France, Denmark, Germany etc, Diane.

Just a small warning about the beautiful venue: Zurich opera house has the worst sight lines for ballet you can imagine, so if you go be sure to get a seat in the stalls, or if you sit in one of the balconies, sit in the middle. Do not chose a place on the sides and absolutely no seat in the second or third row of the boxes, you don't see the whole stage even if you stand up. Same goes for the second balcony on the side.

Maybe you can translate these via Google: http://www.welt.de/kultur/buehne-konzert/article151940068/Was-sucht-die-Vogelscheuche-in-Schwanensee.html http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/buehne/kunstvolle-retuschen-am-klassiker-1.18691389

Of course you could see the rays. And the tulle beneath was not only white, but mint green. Never mind, I'll never adapt to Kaplan's choice of colours. The first reaction by a German critic is not positive: https://twitter.com/ManuelBrug/status/696072069679812608

Any explanation for Odile's ugly, cheap black swan cocktail tutu, Natalia? Why no feathers here like in the beautiful white costumes?

The new Magazine of the Zurich Opera House confirms that Kapitonova and Jones will be the main cast for Swan Lake - page 3 and page 26, in German language. No idea why they publish it in print and not on their website. https://issuu.com/opernhauszuerich/docs/mag36/5?e=0

Most likely it will be Viktorina Kapitonova and Alexander Jones in the leads. Their facebook page says it won't be Polina Semionova.

The "polyester Paquita" was ugly indeed, but I don't think that the Bavarian State Ballet has a smaller budget for costumes and scenery than Zurich. There were lots and lots of costumes in Paquita, it did not look like he had to economize. And even if you have little money, no need to use floral, shiny polyester prints in a historic reconstruction. Uargh.

Marijn Rademaker was a principal with Stuttgart Ballet, he now dances with Het Nationale. Dinu Tamazlacaru is a principal with Berlin State Ballet, not with Stuttgart. The pdd by Itzik Galili is called "Mono Lisa", not "Mona Lisa". And there are people who adore "Äffi"