Helene

Congratulations, Swanilda8!

Huang was such a lovely dancer! I hope we get to see the rest of this. I was expecting it to be released on Act at a time, but got my hopes up when Act II started.

I'm am most embarrassed about not having heard of some of them and having never been able to get through a few of them, but I was so happy to see Rules of the Game, one of my favorite movies of all time, so high on the list. And I remember seeing Barry Lyndon one summer in a screening sponsored by a college film course and loving it.

One of my favorite figure skaters, Matthew Savoie, went to Cornell Law School. Congratulations to Tyler Rhoads!!

More baby anticipation news posted to PNB's Facebook Page: Wheeeeee!

By no means a full re-opening, Christina Scheppelmann, General Director of Seattle Opera, just sent out an email, and this was in it: Seattle Center has transformed the McCaw Hall stage to the Seattle Center Studio, a fully equipped video studio for center organizations to use for live streaming and on demand recordings. Seattle Opera was the inaugural user, testing the technology when we recorded Seattleite Shelly Traverse’s Songs of Summer recital, which I hope you were able to watch. You can imagine we are excited to be back in the hall, taking advantage of the wonderful acoustics. This is an excellent opportunity for us to think about future uses of the studio over the next several months. From the Seattle Center website: "Seattle Center is operated by a city department that is also called Seattle Center. This department plays multiple roles as a business partner, financier, landlord, custodian, event producer and promoter." McCaw Hall is where Pacific Northwest Ballet performs, too. This is great news and a great investment, and I'm hoping that when dancers are able to get together, that at least the smaller ballets will be able to be streamed from the stage. I also hope that the space can be shared a bit more broadly than usual, where it's not cost effective for anything without a big crowd.

Consideration for other people was never Wagner's forte.

I'd be interested to see whether it's been worth it for organizations to stream under the following models: 1. Put it out, and hope people donate. 2. Put it out there, and hope people subscribe (Met Opera on Demand, Vienna State Opera) 3. Put it out there only for people who donate. 4. Paid streaming subscriptions. Only the 2nd and 4th have been tested at all with new content, 2 with performances open over the weekend, 4 with a number of chamber groups and in Seattle Symphony's plans. If these strategies would work for new performances where the audience can't be present -- ex: Seattle Symphony's first two phases -- then helping the organizations to fish, so to speak, by investing in the technologies means the organizations would be able to raise some revenue. Some organizations sold subscriptions for next season, and some % of those funds plus credits issues from this season will be donated, although that money would be spent. But I don't think that organizations, assuming they survive that long, can count on next year's subscription revenue and cash flow without more certainty for 2021-22. Investment in technology may be the only hope outside windfalls.

At the moment, what we have is the basic archival set-up for almost all companies, unless, like NYCB, they can get fancy for marketing purposes. That's quite a range. Given the pandemic, I hope there is grant money to amp up the equipment and filming budgets, because they could at least start to pay themselves off for companies who either charge or offer films to donors.

My post was in response to "All viewers," and I'm not sure what constitution or country has an all-encompassing right to attend a live performance.

What a finale!

There has been a non-peer-reviewed study reported by major news outlets over the last few days that suggests six groups of symptoms, and one is a no-fever flavor. Relying on temperature checks -- I'd be > 3 degrees over normal and still pass -- perhaps they should use smell tests instead as the primary way to test health since loss of smell is common. (And use temperature as a secondary, for those who usually have no sense of smell.)

Seattle Opera has been re-airing old broadcasts through KING-FM, but only once, at 10am on Saturday mornings (extended through 2020, although the schedule isn't set yet). While they list the unions that have made it possible, they haven't made the "on-demand" model available to donors. I'm not sure if they can't, or if they haven't, but it's also audio, not video, like Lyric Opera of Chicago's on WFMT, which run at the same time. This morning it's Rigoletto from Seattle vs. I Puritani from Chicago. I saw Makropulos Case for the first time about two decades ago when I didn't know it well. It was at the Liceu, and it was in Czech with supertitles in Catala. My high school French helped a small amount

I would understand if they wanted to give long-time subscribers and/or donors an extra for their loyalty. But given the number of snafus that have been happening with systems and communications and linking the pieces together for access that I've seen in different organizations, who are generally working with limited staff and new technology partners, I'm not sure any interpretations can be relied upon. If they don't come outright and say something, I'm not sure we really know what they intended. I do know that when San Francisco Opera offered on demand access to the videos they've been making accessible for one weekend for a certain level of donor, I jumped on it, and they delivered.

I thought violinists played for classes back then, not pianists. If I've not mis-remembered this, it would make sense that violinists would be the rehearsal musicians, too.