Helene

You remembered well. There's a ballroom scene in the Maillot where, instead of everyone dancing, there are three couples: Romeo and Rosalind, Juliet and Paris, and Lady Capulet and Tybalt. It's a trio of couples who are communicating stealthily in the midst of a crowd; having them amidst the crowd would have made it very difficult to see.

I was always partial to Jon Anderson (Yes) as a singer.

I like strong, feisty Juliets. I also like the alternative Act I Giselle who knows she's sick, but doesn't want to act sick and restrained all the time.

Lennon and McCartney were pretty full of themselves on film. Starr always did seem like a nice man and a bit of a dreamer, while they were playing cool. He didn't start out as one of the originals. He was like the cousin staying with the family for the summer.

Movies on iTunes are in .mp4 format. Maybe there's a way to read them in iTunes, and convert or save them to another format?

We've had several reports of an outage the other day. We didn't get notice of a special update, and I don't think the changes I'm making would shut down the site that long -- should be a several-second blip. I'll check with Victoria to see if they've experienced it as well. If you create a thread and it's not coming up in View New Content, or you post to a thread, and it's not coming up, please check for the following: From the right link next to your name, select "My Settings", and then from the default tab (Settings), "Search Settings"/"View New Content Method". Is the value of the drop-down box set to "Show me all new content since my last visit" or "Show me all new content that I have not read"? The latter will never bring up your own threads unless someone posts a reply, since it assumes that anything you've posted, you've read. The former should bring up all topics that it calculates from the last time you checked.

And no one would confuse "Don Giovanni" and "boundaries" (except for gender).

"Nixon in China" has a great cast, too: the role's originator, James Maddalena, as Richard Nixon, and Richard Paul Fink as Henry Kissinger.

It's early for promotion announcements -- what a nice surprise! Congratulations to Orza, Ricard Orza, Gilbreath, Adomaitis, Cardea, and Thomson

From "South Pacific": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAO16y3S6M0 From "Don Carlos":

Anne Midgette is reporting the death of the great bass Cesare Siepi, based on a post to Opera-L by the critic and commentator Martin Bernheimer. http://voices.washin...sare_siepi.html There's a video clip to "La ci darem la mano" from "Don Giovanni". He was the best bass I've ever heard live. Rest in peace, Mr. Siepi.

The main purpose of this forum is to discuss performances from the point of view of the audience. A secondary purpose is to note factual information, which includes casting and casting changes. While a certain amount of thread drift is fine, extended conversations about reviews are distracting and off-purpose in this forum. If you want to discuss criticism/critics/reviews, please do so in the "Writings about Ballet" forum, located here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?/forum/25-writings-on-ballet/

In the opera Donna Elvira claims to be Don Giovanni's betrothed, and considers herself his wife. To make Zerlina Donna Anna's daughter is a big stretch, since she and Masetto are supposed to be peasants. Did Donna Anna have an illegitimate child, whom she farmed out to a peasant family, or does she live in the big house?

His technique is indeed beautiful in the Mayerling DVD -- heads and shoulders above those of his fellow Hungarian officers in the ballet. When I saw him a few years ago in "The Sleeping Beauty", he was one of the fairy cavaliers, and just by his carriage, he was head and shoulders above his fellow fairy cavaliers. In the Pas de Trois in the Wedding Act, he was wonderful, although I wouldn't have described him as showy in that role. His classical approach stood out, though.

The list is everyone who is was viewing the board within the last ten minutes. Italics usually mean that someone has opened a box to post (but doesn't guarantee they'll finish it). The Moderators and Editorial Advisors/Foreign Correspondents are now in bold, italic, which means the setting that is driving the "group name" to the left of each post is driving the formatting in active user list. Similar functionality at the bottom of each forum page, except limited to that forum. (Maybe not a dweeb, but I am a nerd.)

Wow, so that's what inspired The Wiggles.

That was premature. It's the "Started By" column that seems to be fixed. The "starter" parameter refers to the "forum" column (go figure). Unfortunately, I can't steal from the "Started By" column to distribute to the "Forum" column, so I stole a little from the "Topic" column. (Unless I can find where it's fixed and changing it doesn't blow up anything else.) Every listing is going to be bigger by definition, partly because the type is bigger than in the old version, and partly because "Replies" and "Views" are in one column, which means two rows for every entry. This is all based on i[Device] design, where scrolling isn't costly.

"View New Content" is a subset of search. Unfortunately, while the search CSS file allows changes in the widths of all columns but the "forum" column, and shrinking the total % of the rest of the columns just shifts all of the columns left, instead of distributing the balance to the undefined "forum" column. I can make any of the columns smaller except the one I want to change.

OOPS.....my bad. I see that in my original post I forgot to include the meat of my suggestion . I meant to say: I should have read more carefully. Do you mean on the home page/forum index? There are two possible approaches to widening the column: 1. Squish or remove the 'Stats" and "Last Post Info" columns 2. Remove the "Recently Added Topics" and "Watched Content Boxes" (and the condition "Notifications" box) from the right-hand side of the screen. It might be possible to move them, but at the top would take up a lot of real estate before the forums started, or at the bottom, where few people would find them. If in "View New Topics", I could possibly widen the "forum" column by taking out space from the "topic title". However, that will only change the amount of scrolling needed to see the displayed number of topics. The number of search results per page is set by a specific parameter. Click the down arrow next to the username. Select "My Settings". Click the "Forums" tab. under "Board Display Settings", select a new default from the "Number of posts to show for each topic page" and/or "Number of topics to show for each forum page" Click "Save Changes" On another topic, I noticed that in the "Most Active Viewers" list, the search engines are in black, and the member names are in blue, the same as all linked fields. (Clicking will bring up a member's profile.) I'm not sure if that's making one or the other look bold.

Yeah, I liked that, too, because it was instantaneous, and you would get it sometimes while you were in the site. I haven't ever seen that on other sites or bleugs, but they must have it. Do you mean when PM's come through? The default on the new site is by the username bar (inline), but you can change this to pop-ups, with the option to disable inline. Click the down arrow next to your username. Select "My Settings" From the left menu under "Settings", click "Notification Options" From "Notification Preferences" check the "Show popup when I receive a new inline notification" -- this will apply to every type of inline notification you have checked in the list on that page (scroll down) Click the "Save Changes" button Unfortunately, there's a disconnect with the notification counter to the right of the user-name, and reading the pop-up won't mark it read and set the counter to 0. Where is this visible? If someone has an open "reply" box, their name has always been shown in italics, but bold might be new. Unfortunately, the list of people reading the topic isn't visible from the posting screen, and I can't log into a test account and see what happens from my own account I note that some of the subforum descriptors are quite long (e.g., "Other Performing & Fine Arts: Performances, Exhibits, Films, and Events"). If the column that contains this descriptor in a display of search list of topics (especially in the list that results from a "View New Content"), then more topics could be listed in a single window of the resulting list. The existing narrow column when it contains so many words makes each listed topic abnormally "fat". Of course this modification may be unavailable or undesirable for other reasons. The is a result of the re-design of the search functionality. The options on the tabs to the left of the search box (except "Ballet Talk") were on the right where the search box is. I tried to add the "Ballet Talk for Dancers" and "Contact Us" links into that group, although people are used to seeing both links to the right, and the clashed with the search box on the default screen width, let along a reduced width. (When I removed it, the search box stopped being right-aligned, at least on Firefox, and I need to find out where I broke it.) If the forum/sub-forum name is too long, the "View New Content", "Contact Us" etc. links go to the next line. For a few, it looks like one long line. I could make the typeface smaller, which would made it more difficult to read. I could change the text on the links, but "View New Content" and "Rules & Policies" are text set to variables that are used in multiple places, and the different appearance would be persisted in those places as well. The only other option I can think of is to shorten the forum names.

I didn't realize it was a feature (I'm still poking around.) Some more features: A heads up: there is a filter on each forums page and on the "No posts found" error page to determine how many posts to return. I believe the default is "From 30: Days". That means you won't get any results if there hasn't been activity in the forum for the last 30 days. The filter is hidden as a default. To see it, Go to the dark blue bar towards the bottom of the forum and above the "Start New Topic" button or at the bottom of the error page and click "Click here to show filter options". The options should open up. In the "Time Frame" drop-down box, choose a different filter. "Show All" will bring back all posts. If you want this to be your new default setting, click the "Remember filters" checkbox. Click "Go". I don't see a way to change this globally. In "View New Content", you have the option to show "Show me all new content since my last visit" (default) or "Show me all content that I have not read". (I don't remember seeing this in the last version, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.) You can change this setting as follows: Click the down arrow next to your username in the upper right corner of the page. Select "My Settings" Change the drop-down box under "Search Settings/View New Content Method" Click "Save Changes"

Since there's been no official news about the casting changes, we don't know why the casts were shifted around. There are plenty of reasons that wouldn't have driven a danseur to slap someone in the face with a white glove in another era.

Many thanks for the heads up. The website isn't the most intuitive one ever, but the Yahoo checkout process is even worse and a graphical mess. Here are some tips to order: 1. From this page, click the film title. It's alphabetized under "La" in left-to-right order (not in column order). http://www.zipporah.com/films 2. In the box on the right hand side, click the price link for whatever category you're in (Educational, High School and Volunteer, Individual) to add to the Yahoo shopping cart. You can change quantity here. 3. If you use PayPal, You'll be navigated to the PayPal site, where shipping and handling will be added. It's $6.95 for one DVD to the US. I'm not sure about higher quantities. After you purchase on PayPal, you'll be navigated back to the site. Be sure to fill in the telephone number and accept the "Terms & Conditions" before you continue. The T&C's give them 30 days to ship the DVD, although for pre-orders, that is probably 30 days after 12 July to comply with FTC guidelines.

I just found this compilation of comments sent to PNB about "Coppelia" on the PNB website: http://www.pnb.org/Press/FanBlogs_coppelia.aspx Several people thought that PNB should ditch the Balanchine Act III. I love Act III, mainly because had Balanchine staged/choreographed "Sleeping Beauty", as he is said to have wanted to do for Darci Kistler, the fairy variations would have been restricted by the length of the music, and I love how the choreographer for Dawn, Prayer, and Spinner is an extended characterization for each that would have been restricted to the Lilac Fairy in SB.