Helene

The site is back up, and we've made some significant changes to Ballet Talk. First is that Alexandra and Leigh Witchel will take a more active role on the board again. Just as my job started to send me to another continent on a regular basis, technology opened a new window of time for Alexandra, and I am very grateful that she will share it with us. The look of the board has changed, too. If you look down the homepage, the most significant change is that we are going back the original forum structure, combining all reviews into a single forum, "Recent Performances," and we've moved the Company forums into "Archives." News from all companies have a home in "Ballet News and Issues." We've moved the recent threads from the Company forums to the corresponding threads. Ballet is a small world, and much of what affects one company will have impact on the other side of the ocean or globe. You can still read the threads in the Company forums. They've been made "read-only," but they are visible and searchable. If there are discussions that you'd like to revive, please create a new thread in one of the discussion forums. You can either link to the original thread, or PM or email us through the "Contact Us" link at the top of each page to do it for you. We hope that with the consolidation, forums are easier to find and use, especially for newcomers. Thank you for your patience during the downtime.

I hadn't even seen these on the arkivmusic.com site. I think you're right about Die Walkure -- it was also the first of the operas to be released. It's possible that they front-loaded some of the costs to the first one, although there is no chance that this will recoup its costs in total (if only...). I saw last night's performance: Night and Day compared to last weekend. Here was the Grimsley I knew from his performances as Wotan and Telramund: a rich, sonic voice across all registers. "Die Frist ist um" could have been the whole opera, primarily because it is a jump to Wagner's most mature works. The scene that follows, in which the Dutchman ruminates to Daland, could have been written for Wotan. It's such an odd thing to hear "oom-pah" music in the same work. It's as if there was an aria in Mozart's second opera that could have been written in Don Giovanni. What is really extraordinary about Grimsley's "Die Frist ist um" isn't that he sings the central section quietly. Many singers use sotto voce in their performances, to wide effect. When Grimsley sings Wagner softly, it's almost as if he is speaking. He isn't speaking technically, or doing recitative or music-speech, but to the mind, it's as if he's transformed music into speech. Daniel Sumegi's voice was a lot stronger in this performance as well. I really like his upper register. He has more vibration in his lower register than I tend to like, but that's pure preference. He was a terrific actor, and does comedy very, very well. He's a charming stage presence, even if he's playing a golddigging father. All of the soloists last night were wonderful. Eaglen has a voice that fills the theater, regardless of range or volume. Bybee had some wonderful low Amneris-like tones. According to Jenkins, she is not only Grimsley's wife, but also his vocal teacher, so she is to be twice applauded. Wadsworth has given the Steersman an extended bit of stage business in Act III: he's drunk and rejects his girlfriend, presumably the one he was singing about in Act I, until the very end of the act. He portrayed the ups and downs (literally and figuratively) of a drunk, without ever becoming a characature. He has a beautiful voice, and I was very happy to find on his website that not only is he singing Froh in the 2009 Seattle Ring, he is covering Siegmund. (He did a very fine rendition of "Ein Schwert vverhiess mir der Vater" in the same role in the Wagner Competition last year.)

He could have and chose not to, and all would have been well from a public-facing standpoint. And he didn't seem to be interested in finding someone for whom this would be a well-understood bargain, either.

We are going to make some changes to the board late afternoon/early evening Eastern Time, late evening/early morning GMT, and mid-afternoon Pacific time. The board will be down during that time, because we don't want to lose any posts during the changes.

We are going to make some changes to the board late afternoon/early evening Eastern Time, late evening/early morning GMT, and mid-afternoon Pacific time. The board will be down during that time, because we don't want to lose any posts during the changes.

Thank you, bart -- I've changed the spelling in the title of the thread.

That's my favorite, too.

From Segal's review, it sounds like in his opinion, Kavanaugh doesn't go far enough, and isn't enough of an iconoclast. I'd rather read what Kavanaugh says, rather than what Segal says she says. (Kavanaugh's book is also in our "Mini Store" [link under our logo]).

On a different thread, ViolinConcerto cited a review by Lewis Segal of the documentary aired by PBS, 'Nureyev: The Russian Years' and a preview of Julie Kavanaugh's upcoming biography, Nureyev: The Life, which addressed the issue of Nureyev and demi-pointe. I've created this thread to discuss the Kavanaugh biography. leonid wrote

Luckily your roommate is not a spouse who cannot stand ballet We've branched from your original question, which was why is the Mariinsky casting so many corps members in Principal roles, to those who skipped the rank of corps. On the latter branch, Balanchine was known for casting out of rank and finding younger and younger future stars that he trained. I can't say if during the years that NYCB didn't publicize rank that no one ever went straight from the school to Principal status, but since ranks have been published, the two dancers with the shortest projectory to Principal under Balanchine were McBride and Kistler, who went from corps to soloist to principal in two years. And Kistler did dance corps roles even as Balanchine cast her as Dewdrop and 2nd Movement Symphony in C: as she said in the Dancing for Mr. B documentary, (paraphrase) she made a mess of corps roles, because her instinct was to move on the big music, the ballerina's music. Farrell noted in her autobiography that when she joined NYCB in 1961, she was thrilled when she danced Hot Chocolate, because she had been given the responsibility to set the latch Marie and the Prince's throne. It wasn't until two years later when Diana Adams was pregnant and had to pull out of Movements for Orchestra, for which d'Amboise cajolled Balanchine into trying out Farrell, that Balanchine payed much attention to her. Without that opportunity, who knows how long she would have stayed in the corps. Also, Balanchine dancers were dancing Balanchine and learning from and being coached by the Master. Farrell, especially, spent hours and hours with him on established rep and creating new roles. It is quite a different scenario than dancing full-length classical roles with over a century of tradition and expectations behind them. Balanchine emphasized the "now," while classical ballet emphasizes tradition. To the original question, perhaps a reason why there are more corps members dancing principal roles now is that dancers in the Mariinsky can vote with their feet. For an company like the Mariinsky, losing a dancer they've identified as one of the chosen and have nurtured since a child of eight is more of an institutional trauma than losing a student who's been at SAB for a handful of years.

Except for Rudolf Nureyev and Alla Sizova, who jumped from graduating from the Vaganova to principal immediately. At the Bolshoi, Maya Plisetskaya did the same. Those are very few exceptions to the rules of many decades in the life of the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. What seems to be happening today is a more prevalent pattern, and erring on the side of choosing too many for the mantle. Since both Nureyev and Sizova were from the same generation (born a year apart), I'm wondering if this happened to these two dancers because of directorship policy at the time or perhaps the overall political climate in the Soviet Union under Krushchev's government, affecting the political appointees at the theatre. In Imperial times and Soviet times, this was often the case as well. Displaying the future czar's jewels was as big a badge as the miltary medals worn by the husbands who had really good placement in the May Day parade. In the Soviet Union, not only was casting impacted, but also the ability to tour: only the reliable were allowed to go. (Nureyev again was the exception that proved the rule.) How much is the company reliant upon touring? One of the pressures on artistic directors is to present the next new thing. I would think that the Mariinsky also has pressure to prove that the Vaganova School still produces star dancers and to show them off on these tours. I always wonder how often young, talented dancers are pushed as prodigies and "discoveries" to prove that a given institution or artistic director has it in him (alas there are few hers) to recognize the special ones. It doesn't have the same snap to advertise "The wonderful dancer in her mid-20's whose been carefully nurtured in the classical style and the nuances of presentation, and is now in bloom," as "18-year-old wunderkind jetes over the Oresund Bridge." Regarding the corps in classical ballet, I think this may be the case of "you had to be there." It is such a different experience to see the corps of the Mariinsky or Paris Opera Ballet at their best, and how the corps dancers breathes life and is the core of these ballets. My analogy would be Casa Mila (La Pedrera) in Barcelona: static in photos, and organic and alive as a sea anemone in person.

Many thanks for posting this info, teo. Has anyone seen Andris Liepa's Folkine reconstructions?

Ebook manufacturers are going to have to solve the screen glare issue. For long and boring reasons, I had to take a conference call this morning from our outdoor common space, and I could barely make out what was on the screen of my laptop, which I'd have thrown in the swimming pool, if work didn't own it.

Sandy, your description of Grimsley's performance gives me great hope for this Saturday night. In the Sunday matinee, which I heard from the far left aisle of the far left section of the Second Tier, he sounded a little worse for wear, as did Sumegi, and his voice didn't rise convincingly over the orchestra. On the other hand, I would NOT want to sing the Dutchman's monologue at 2pm. I don't know how they can sing matinees. I don't remember many comments about the singing in this Q&A, and usually this audience gushes on and on. Jason Collins (Steersman) was singled out. I hope you enjoy the CD's. To give you context, I spent $250 on the first three, and the Australian dollar was a bit weaker in early 2006 when I started to collect them. I've been very satisfied with the early ones. I need a few quiet hours to tackle Gotterdammerung. Fisch, Gasteen, and Wegener (Alberich) are the stars of those disks for me, but there are many other wonderful performances. Stuart Skelton, who sings Siegmund in Die Walkure will sing the role in Seattle, and I really liked his performance in Adelaide.

I'm having a thoroughly enjoyable time listening to Thomas Quasthoff's latest album, "The Jazz Album: Watch What Happens." A highlight: the way he says "Dahling" in "They All Laughed."

I haven't seen the "Dancer's Dream" Bayadere, but I own the Raymonda and have seen another (Sleeping Beauty, I think.) The Raymonda is precious to me because of the dance footage, but these films remind me a bit of "The Making of [Harry Potter]" that HBO or studios create to sell the movies. They're a bit softballin my opinion, and I usually fast-forward to the dancing and ignore the interviews and talky footage. They're official, and occasionally piquantly dishy, but I don't find them terribly illuminating, unlike the interviews in the documentary in the POB Jewels DVD or the charm of Delouche's films that lovingly depict their subjects.

I loved Penelope Cruz in Yanes's Sin noticias de Dios, which was released as Don't Tempt Me in th eUS. In the film, she plays the agent of the Chairmen of the Board of Hell (Gael García Bernal) who vies with Victoria Abril, agent of the Benevolent Rule of Heaven (Fanny Ardant) over the soul of a boxer (Demián Bichir).

I agree that Bardem was great in that movie, which played the Seattle International Film Festival.

In the programs of many companies are donations from the Artistic Directors and former ADs and many other people associated with the companies, and usually more than a few with the same last names. Often, someone will be hired by the companies for some work and will decide to donate back to the company, at least according to the chronology of being listed as a writer, photographer, etc. and then appearing on the donor list.

I think The New Yorker is at fault for categorizing this under "Dancing" instead of a feature article in the center of magazine, as Arlene Croce's attack on Bill T. Jones's "Still/Here" was. I don't think it's a flaw that The New Yorker has a single dance critic. In the '70's and 80's I used to go to the newsstand and go straight to the Table of Contents of the magazine and look for Croce's byline. During the dance season, the weeks she skipped were painful. If I did this for Acocella's reviews, I'd be starved between articles. Makes you think, doesn't it?

I don't know either of them, but there's a correlation between their published taste, which in his version, in my opinion, when negative, mostly comes out as shrill and demeaning, and when positive, ex: Part, comes across as gushing. I don't find him terribly credible. followed by a few absurd possible influences. It's very much in the snide, unfunny, tone of Wolcott's writing when his feelings are engaged. Maybe he's just a little bit touchy about suggestions that his dance opinions "reflect" those of his wife? Or when writing about critics of infinitely greater talent than himself? Those were my thoughts as I read the disclaimer. Arlene Croce has been both a tough act to follow and critics that followed seem have to tear down the gospel first when they disagree. In the first paragraph of her article on Morris, Jacobs writes, Take that, Arlene Croces. And, of course, no one "needed" a successor to Balanchine more than Arlene Croce, right? Dance Critic of The New Yorker is a highly coveted and influential post. Vanity Fair that tries to be iconoclastic, which is a natural set-up for conflict and more issues sold for the join publisher, Conde Nast. Wolcott's assessment of Acocella is right in the Vanity Fair vein of exposing the connections between the authoritative spokesperson/frontman -- in this case ascribing the roll to Acocella -- and the subject. I just don't think that Acocella makes any bones about being connected to Morris, and her bias is right out in the open, hardly hidden. And I don't think it's particularly more intellectually honest for a married dance and social critic to attack from both sides.

He's not really an outsider, though: he's married to critic Laura Jacobs, who has made her feelings about Mark Morris quite clear.

This afternoon I heard the Seattle Opera perform Richard Wagner's Flying Dutchman. I had never seen it before, and I don't think I had heard the opera end-to-end before, at least where it wasn't in the background. I never realized how, apart from cameos like the Steersman's song where this is expected, his main characters have their major arias up front -- come out and start singing the Dutchman's "Der Frist ist um" and Senta's ballad -- or stand around for at least ten minutes without singing in Act II. Act I was the roughest, with the robust orchestration, and the men had it the toughest and sounded a bit worn, although Jason Collins' tenor has a lot of ring. I want to see next Saturday's performance before coming to final conclusions. In Act II, though, where the orchestra was much softer, Greer Grimsley gave a text-driven, nuanced, and moving performance. Act II was the best of the three in my opinion, starting with a wonderful Senta's Ballad by Jane Eaglen. She's been criticized for not having much passion; here, she sang the ballad as a challenge to the women who would tease her. Like a young woman who longs to be a martyr to a man or a church, and not content to be the girlfriend of one of the village young men, Eaglen portrayed the strangeness of an obsession and Senta's separateness from the society of the villiage women. (How credible was Katie Holmes, when, according to People, as a young teenager, she insisted to her friends that she was going to grow up and marry Tom Cruise? She showed everyone, too.) Her Erik, Jay Hunter Morris, sang with passion and vocal brilliance. I suppose Erik is the operatic cousin of Hilarion and Gurn; his character flaw is a bit of a chip on his shoulder from being poor, and he is a bit of a whiner. But like the two ballet characters, he proves to be right: he's been ill-used by both Daland, Senta's father, and Senta in the same way. Daland has put Senta in Erik's hands while he is at sea, knowing that Erik won't lay much of a hand on her, but will keep the others away, in Daland's case, until he can bring Senta a weathly bridegroom, and in Senta's case, until the Dutchman shows up. Morris's Erik was very sympathetic, and rather than being a pest in Act III, was convincing that he had every right to call Senta on her promise to him from the beginning of Act II. In a smaller role, Luretta Bybee's sounded rich as Daland's and Senta's housekeeper, Mary. To use a hockey metaphor, the three stars of the show were: #1 Star: Asher Fisch and the Seattle Opera Orchestra. The majority of the orchestra is comprised of musicians from the Seattle Symphony. As terrific as the Symphony is, my feeling is that they are even greater as an opera orchestra -- and that includes when they play opera for Gerard Schwarz. The brass played with strength and clarity, the horns blended beautifully throughout, and the orchestra played as one in a vivid interpretation led by Maestro Fisch. #2 Star: Seattle Opera Chorus, which blew the roof off in Act 3, and thanks to Stephen Wadsworth's staging, provided an eerie transition to the charged scene between Senta and Erik and then the intense Senta/Erik/Dutchman trio, against which, in my opinion, the Act II trio in Gotterdammerung pales. Kudos to the chorus and to Chorusmaster Beth Kirchhoff. #3 Stars: Jay Hunter Morris and Jane Eaglen. In addition to being lauded for their performances here, congratulations are in order: to Mr. Morris for becoming engaged (announced by Speight Jenkins in the post-performance Q&A) and Ms. Eaglen, for very recently becoming a US citizen. The sports metaphor is apt in another way: during the post-performance Q&A, a hockey game broke out. If Speight Jenkins hadn't already injured his rotator cuff before the Q&A, he would have been wearing a sling by the end of it. (Although it didn't stop him from snapping his fingers, holding a microphone, or gesturing with that arm.) Early on there was a rather literal-minded comment about the staging, to which Jenkins responded, followed by some raucous audience participation: unusual jeering and ganging up on the unlucky fellow, with some vocal "I agree!"'s from the crowd, which were equally jeered. The man in front of me seemed to think the entire Q&A was about him, including trying to ask questions out of turn, but managed to keep most of his running commentary confined to the few seats around him, until one audience member, who identified himself as a mariner from another community, pointed out some inconsistencies in the set. After being encouraged by Jenkins to continue in some detail, the man in front of me loudly suggested that Jenkins hire him and that he should SHUT UP. (Luckily the mariner snapped back, and he was merifully silent for the rest of the Q&A.) A woman, with a clearly Germanic accent stated that there were anti-Semitic characters in Wagner, argued that Wagner didn't have to actually say anything directly, but asserted that his code phrases should be clear to everyone (paraphrase). As Jenkins started to respond, she started to leave. When he asked her to give him specific instances, sounding tearful, she just repeated that it was obvious and walked out. It's a good thing the singers weren't there: they might have given up their profession in complete despair over the state of the audience, which might have imported from a Philip K. Dick novel. Other Wagner news: *Wagner Reserve Fund donors were able to pick up their copies of the recording of last year's International Wagner Competition, held one year ago to the day. I listened to it earlier, and it was great to be able to compare James Rutherford's two-thumbs up "Der Frist ist um" and Dorothy Grandia's lovely "Senta's Ballad" to the performance I heard this afternoon. Paul McNamara and Carsten Wittmoser were as impressive as I remember. *As previously reported, Jenkins has made some substantial changes to the 2009 Ring cast: New Casting: Brunnhilde: Janice Baird Siegfried: Stig Hogh Andersen Siegmund: Stuart Skelton (he was wonderful in the same role in Adelaide in 2004) Fafner/Hagen: Daniel Sumegi, who is singing Daland in Flying Dutchman, and who is a terrific stage presence Loge: Kobie van Rensburg Erda: Maria Streijffert Fasolt/Hunding: Andrea Silverstrelli Froh: Jason Colllins, the Dutchman Steersman and finalist in last year's Wagner Competition Forest Bird: Julianne Gearhart The Seattle PI article also says that Miriam Murphy, the soprano who blew everyone away with Isolde's narrative and curse in last year's Wagner Competition and was a co-winner, will sing one of the Valkyries. Stephanie Blythe returns as Fricka, but switches from Second to First Norn, and adds Waltraute. Other major returnees are conductor Robert Spano, Greer Grimsley as Wotan, Richard Paul Fink as Alberich, Margaret Jane Wray as Sieglinde/Third Norn, and Marie Plette as Freia/Gutrune. (The article describes her as new in the roles, but my program from 2005 lists here in the same.) Sadly, Nancy Maultsby, who sang a superb Erda in 2001 and Waltraute in 2005, isn't listed, nor is one of my favorite young basses, Stephen Milling, who sang Fasolt and Hunding in the last two cycles. *The 2004 Adelaide Ring was recorded: all three cycles and rehearsals. The footage has been combined and has been released on Super Audio CDs slowly since last year after a long production cycle, and I've been collecting them from the producer as they've been released. Gotterdammerung isn't even listed in the Melba Recordings online catalog, but, voila!, all four operas were available from the Seattle Opera gift shop, and at considerably less than the price from Australia, which with today's sad dollar would cost nearly $100 each for Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, even more than the historic Testament versions. That would suggest that the recordings, brilliantly conducted by Asher Fisch, will have some distribution in the US, although not online on a US site yet, as far as I can tell.

Are these the Woods translations? Yes. Many thanks! I just ordered two from amazon.com. It's more than time for me to re-read Thomas Mann

Are these the Woods translations?