Helene

One of the things that struck me most about Jensen's performance in the Harlekinad pas de deux clips on YouTube were how lifted and vertical she is in the supported pirouettes. She just kept getting taller!

I've watched the Murawski montage twice, and neither time did I see anything that would make me want to see her dance live while those are the choices she presents, regardless of her training pedigree.

In the 2007 YAGP finalists montage on YouTube, the only dancers in classical or neoclassical roles with huge extensions were dark-haired. One of the posters in the thread thought that the blue tutu was the costume for "Pharoah's Daughter", and the dancer wearing that costume was blond, but there was nothing exaggerated in that short clip. There are a number of clips that indicate that Ms. Jensen certainly knows where 90 degrees is. (I very much like her partner, Albert Davydov, in the other four clips from the "Harlekinad" pas de deux. Here's his solo clip: I would think if she were going to dance in an exaggerated manner, it would be in pieces like "Le Corsaire" or "Black Swan Pas de Deux", but I don't see that in her clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNgVfStktbs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4qzNmxXvcQ Her developpes in second weren't any higher than Lopatkina's as Odile, or Vishneva's as Aurora in live performance in which I saw her.

Since Jensen wanted to compete and perform in Europe, she took a path of competitions that built very much like athletic competition, from junior to senior, building up to one of the most prestigious, with an influential jury. Varna is highly regarded in Europe, and I'm sure she got the exposure she wanted from it. From Vasiliev's description, she wasn't trying to show big tricks, but dancing.

For the life of me I cannot understand why Monica Mason thinks that David Makhateli is.

In the two performances in which I saw Ansanelli last spring -- Fonteyn/last movement in "Homage to the Queen" and Aurora -- I thought she was trying to channel Margot Fonteyn, at least from the waist up. I would think that this would have mixed reaction in London. From the waist down, though, she'd have far to go to meet that ideal, as her feet were sloppy in the fast sections, and her legs don't sing to me. Even through film, the perfect balance and finish between Fonteyn's upper and lower body was very clear to me, and without that counterpoint, it doesn't work, at least in my eyes. I wasn't living in NYC when Ansanelli made her mark at NYCB, and only saw the company sporadically, so I have no basis on which to compare her dancing for NYCB and RB.

I almost forgot: The reflective background -- it was there on all levels, and it looked to me like I saw across the top of the orchestra as well as saw the conductor on the bottom level. I don't think it was just a monitor, since the performers looked straight out at the conductor throughout.

I catalogued the books I have that aren't in storage, 72 in total, and the top three books that match other members -- a fluid number -- now are "Rebecca", the new translation of "The Magic Mountain", and "Lies My Teacher Told Me". For a while, it looked like Adam Gopnik's "Paris to the Moon" was going to be, but it's now in 7th place. 20, or over 25%, have no matches at all, and they're not all that obscure

Many thanks, innopac! I've just signed up, and will start to create my library tonight.

Where did you see this? Sadly, I didn't see this, but heard it over the radio, both on the Saturday broadcast and again on Sirius Metropolitan Opera Radio, which broadcasts 3-4 live performances a week during the Met season (including the Saturday broadcast, once it starts up for the season). I LOVED her in it. In Seattle, the passion for me came from Polegato and Burden, as Orest and Pylade, but I wasn't knocked over by either gold or silver cast Iphigenie. Graham was the missing piece of the puzzle in this co-production with the Met. It's really great to be able to hear several live broadcasts of the same opera, usually in a two-three week period, and sometimes broken up like the season is for some operas: a few performances in the fall and then another few in the spring. It's not great if, for example, you never want to hear "Tosca" again for the rest of your life -- then you skip it for a few weeks. The issue being on the West Coast is that the operas usually start between 7-8, which is 4-5pm PT. Apart from that, it's the standard argument over whether the voices are correctly represented in broadcasts. But I don't really care, because I judge what I hear in whatever medium, and I listen for others to describe what they heard in the other medium, if I can't experience both for myself. For example, whether a voice is big or small or carries and can be heard in the house, when that same voice carries well when miked from above the stage. If I hear that a singer doesn't carry, or is often covered by the orchestra, or is drowned out by his/her colleagues, I won't travel to see him/her, but will enjoy him/her on the radio, or will try to hear him/her with colleagues who have the same sized voices or in concert or in a hall that has better acoustics or is a better size for that singer. There are also voices, like Giordani's, that to me sound better and fuller live, although he's no slouch over the radio. (And I heard a brilliant "Benevenuto Cellini", also Berlioz, with him on Sirius this afternoon, from 2003.) It's like judging dancers from video. I've almost never been impressed by Margot Fonteyn on video, but enough people have told me that video doesn't do her justice, so I conclude I'm seeing a different performer on film than on stage, and accept that I missed my chance to "get it", having seen her live only when she was at the end of her career, performances on which I know I can't judge her career. As much as I've been impressed by Maria Tallchief on video, I've been told by those who've seen her live that I couldn't begin to know the energy she brought to the stage from video. That gives me context for the video. Likewise, I loved Lopatkina on the recent "Swan Lake" video, and she bored me to tears live as Lilac Fairy. I wouldn't fly to another city to see Lopatkina live based on my experience, where I would for Alexandrova of the Bolshoi, or other Mariinsky dancers, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the "Swan Lake" video.

It sounds like a drinking game: a shot or beer every time he does. Or, in the corporate world, "Buzzword Bingo".

I sent you a PM with details.

Sadly, none that I know of. There are opera list serve groups, like Opera-L.

Many thanks, Natalia!

Not to mention that children in the cast bring in paying ticket-buyers in the form of friends of the performers, friends of the family, grandparents, aunts, neighbors, and anyone else who sold the child performer's family a ticket to their school fundraiser, peewee hockey team fundraiser, Boy/Girl Scout trip fundraiser, etc. "Nutcracker" is payback time.

I'm on a stealth visit to NYC, to see a close friend, to earn enough United miles for elite status, and to see the last performance "The Damnation of Faust". I bought the ticket before the HD broadcast, mainly to hear Susan Graham, who blew me away as Iphigenie last year, and I was lucky I did, since two days after the broadcast, only a few of the most expensive seats were left, and by tonight it was sold out. I found the physical experience in the theater richer and deeper, while the broadcast experience was more exciting and urgent, which was not unexpected, since the sweep and, in some scenes, majesty of the whole stage picture is impossible to capture on film without sticking to long shots. (I sat in the front row of the Balcony, the last tier up, but much closer than the Family Circle, the top most section of the last tier.) The projections with architectural details, like the Inn scene, where above the grid the building was projected, were difficult to absorb in the film. I've read complaints that the LePage staging is too vertical and does not take advantage of the depth of the Metropolitan Opera stage. While it did not go deep, often on Met Opera sets, the performers look like ants when they do, and rarely does anyone take advantage of the vertical space, although this year there's a trifecta, with "Dr. Atomic" and "Orfeo ed Euridice" and, from all descriptions, "Tristan und Isolde". By using the vertical space to full advantage and a reflective background, the stage always looked full with half the number of performers. The dancers/sprites looked particularly fine with the muted mirror effect, which in an almost etherial effect hinted at the underwater projections. The male aerialist creatures looked a lot more natural and less stylized in their pas de deux with the sprites in the theater from a distance. There is one image that I didn't notice in the film and couldn't identify for sure on stage. As Mephisto tempts Faust with a vision of Marguerite, there were swaying white blade-like things. I wasn't sure if they were tentacles, a very literal take on the scene although visually beautiful, or if they were some kind of algae, or none of the above. What I also couldn't see on the film was how these morphed into long blades of grass in water, like rice paddies, and after the aerialist/soliders climbed the wall, when the were shot/bayonetted and descended on their lines, the projections of water and grass were pushed away as they floated down, which was a stunning effect. There were two things that I thought worked better on film: the underwater images were more immediate in the film version, and might have looked the same from the Grand Tier (tier 1) or the Dress Circle (tier 2); I may have been sitting a little to high to get their full impact. The other was the backward march of the soldiers and women across the tiers. By focusing on one or two soldiers at a time, the fact that they were out of synch, or fading after the 75th repetition, or did not have matching leg line didn't register, which it did on stage, where it just looked sloppy instead of sharp, like the film. The flames during the first half of Marguerite's "D'amour l'ardente flamme" were just as tacky onstage as on film (almost ), I think because they were contained within their grid . Midway through, though, there was a huge "whoosh!!!!" and the projection had the glow of a raging forest fire, with I think a stylized silouette of Faust in the flames, and a blurry version of Marguerite. THAT was a fire, and film didn't capture it. The image of the conductor that Sandy identified from the last scene was actually visible throughout most, if not all of the opera, as the mirrored part of the lowest level of the grid reflected the conductor and top of the orchestra. There was a pre-curtain announcement that John Relyea, Mephisto, had a cold, and begged our indulgence, etc. Except for an occasional rumble, he sounded as good as I've heard him live. Susan Graham has a magnificent voice, secure and beautiful in all registers and at all volumes, and it was a pleasure to hear her live. I have very mixed feelings about Marcelo Giordano's performance. I think his voice is much more beautiful live than in broadcasts. Some voices bloom with a second or two delay and the house acoustics, while they sound drier miked relatively up close, but even in the house, each register at each volume sounded like a different voice. It is clear how he was trying to shape the performance, and the change in voice could be taken as the conflict in the character, one who while he has the body and enthusiasm of a young man, still is an older person in that body, but, unfortunately, he was covered by the orchestra too much. I think his interpretation was too subtle, especially for a fevered aria like "Nature immense"; until the end there was no Romanticism in it. His approach would have been better suited to "Pelleas et Melisande". The chorus was fabulous, changing character from one scene to another. Kudos to Donald Palombo and his chorus! The orchestra was conducted by Derrick Inoue, and except for a little sour brass in the begining, the orchestra sounded very fine. Special mention to the percussion and brass in the Hell Scene with the male chorus which was fantastic!

[Admin Beanie On] Somova's promotion is a polarizing topic, but please avoid speculation about it. [/Admin Beanie Off]

Many thanks, naomikage, for the links, and we very much look forward to reading your reports about the Tokyo performances. A heads up: there are five pages of wonderful photographs in the blog. Scroll down to the very bottom of the screen to go to the next page.

I remember talking to an acquaintance from Barcelona about the reconstructed Liceu and about the difficulty in raising funds. He told me that prestigious and wealthy families had once owned boxes on the equivalent of the Grand Tier at the Metropolitan Opera, and that they decorated the family box. I may be mis-remembering this, and I can't find a seating chart on the Internet, but I believe he told me that they were not reconstructed, so that the house would appear more democratic. I half-joked that I thought that the government should have "sold" the boxes to corporations for them to decorate as they saw fit, and that perhaps Banesto could buy one to display one of Miguel Indurain's bicycles. He was not amused. The trick with sports is that the naming rights only last a limited period of time, usually a decade. After that, the teams can bid out for a new name. Generally, buildings only get renamed for another entity is when new companies acquire them. After they're named for one person, that's usually it, until a new venue is built. I believe Mr. Koch has a lock on this one, as long as it stands. I'm glad you liked the performance, flo!

Kristen Scott Thomas gave a superb performance in this movie, but I found it disappointing overall. There is a secret in the movie, but it was predictable enough that I figured it out about halfway through, and I never figure these things out unless I'm watching a Lifetime movie, which this resembled more than a bit. (Example:the contrast between the sister's husband and Thomas' character's love interest.) I expect a little more distance in French movies.

The recent controversy over Vishneva was whether the Mariinsky should allow her to remain with the company while spending so much time away from it, guesting.

Roslyn Sulcas gave a rave review to "Infra" in Friday's The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/arts/dan....html?ref=dance

This topic has swerved from a thread on the Opening Night Benefit performance to a critique of Koch and again to a critique of New York State Theater architecture, and the civility factor has gotten a bit battered intermittently along the way. It would be great to get this back on track. Did anyone see the performance? Was there dancing in it?

There wasn't anything more I could find about Ballet BC, and given what may happen, maybe no news is better news. The great thing about the sets for both Tatyana's childhood room and her receiving room was that the sets created much smaller and more intimate spaces, and there wasn't a lot of room for the singers to fling themselves around. The final scene had a little more physical melodrama, with Onegin on his knees next to Tatyana on her sofa, but the only part that was a little over the top was when Onegin ran out at the end, knocking over a chair. Polegato made it seem deliberate, but that may have been a great save.

Many thanks, Cristian! I love Kristen Scott Thomas -- I just saw her in "Tell No One" ("Ne le dis a personne") -- and I'm glad to have a recommendation to put at the top of my list when it opens here this weekend.