Helene

Thank you for the link, bart. I knew I had seen this before, and thought, "wow, he's not blond anymore, he's a redhead now, (but not quite the orange of older women I saw in Russia)" but my Google searches were coming up lame. Maybe that's because I typed it "Vassiliev" I look forward to reading your review, and yours, too, MakarovaFan If they were any good, I'd be on a plane in a heartbeat...

From the context of the article, unless the promoter is pulling a fast one, yes. I do remember reading that VVV had choregraphed for Vinogradov's company (in Australia?). On the one hand, not much more than Nureyev's on his skill as a choreographer. On the other hand, from the Delouche documentaries, it's clear he has a very specific aesthetic about performing which is displayed in his coaching and staging, as well as more experience with Soviet and Russian versions of the story ballets, having danced them into his maturity, than Nureyev or Baryshnikov, who both defected when they were young. If these qualities translate into choreography and staging, I would think he'd have a voice worth listening to.Brigitte Lefevre came to a different conclusion, based on a different hierarchy of values: The Paris Opéra Ballet Ten Years After Rudolf Nureyev: A Conversation With Brigitte Lefèvre

In today's links, there is an article about the upcoming visit of State Ballet Theatre of Russia to Florida in a production of Cinderella choreographed by Vassiliev. In it, the Managing Director of Hollywood Entertainment Group, Igor Levin, who was responsible for bringing the troupe to the US, said,

I received a card from Mark Morris Dance Group about special events in Brooklyn in January: Brooklyn Public Library -- Central Branch, Grand Army Plaza Community Dance Class January 13, 4pm (Free) Mark Morris in Conversation with Robert Greskovic, January 16, 7:30pm (Free) Mark Morris Dance Center, 3 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn Mark Morris Dance Group Performances, January 17-20 and 23-27, 7:30pm ($40, mmdg.org/tickets, 212.352.3101) MMDG Music Ensemble Concert, January 19, 10pm ($20, mmdg.org/tickets, 212.352.3101) MMDG Music Ensemble Lecture Demonstration, January 20, 2pm (For Junior Fan members and students attending The School at the Dance Center, reservations required, 718.624.8400) Open House, January 21, 11am-4pm (Free, mmdg.org/January or 718.624.8400 for full schedule) MMDG Dance Intensive, January 27, all day. A day long workshop for students from ten area universities, by invitation only (Free) Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, Plaza Level 2007 Dance on Camera Festival, Screening of Dido & Aeneas, directed by Barbara Willis Sweete, followed by a discussion with Morris and Sweete, moderated by Joan Acocella ($10 through filmlinc.com, 212.875.5601) There's also a note to "Look for our new website January 10."

That image just made my day

Over the past three weeks, we've had two issues with the email service that is attached to our board. The first is that AOL blocked our emails from getting through. This affected a few people's subscription notifications (as well as personal mail), but not all, which we don't quite understand. Hosting Matters, the company that provides the email service, worked with AOL to restore service, but it took a few weeks. I think we've resolved the underlying issue; I've learned that spam control is a two-part set-up, not one. We also had issues getting into our mailbox to send out custom emails from the Moderation team. This has also been resolved. I'd like to apologize to the people who donated to our fundraiser since the beginning of December. If you haven't received a thank you PM, you should receive an email or PM by the end of the weekend.

It was great -- it was as if she soared over us.

A few years ago in Seattle, either as part of Folklife or Bumbershoot, I attended a panel discussion with authors whose books had been adapted to movies.One of them was James Ellroy. He made it very clear that once he cashed the check for LA Confidential, it wasn't his anymore, and they could do what they wanted with it. If he liked the end product and thought it was true to the book, that was gravy. He did say he was impressed with how the book was translated into film and how the film kept the spirit of the book, which couldn't have been turned literally into a script. Ellroy is quite charismatic in person, if you don't mind a bit of arrogance mixed with energy and articulateness (which I didn't). Another author was Dorothy Allison, who talked about her book Bastard Out of Carolina. Her attitude was quite different, most likely because it was a wrenching account based on her own experience. She said Angelika Houston had to ask her multiple times for the rights to make the movie, and it took a long time before she was convinced that Houston would be true to her book. Even then, I got the impression that while she lauded the movie for the most part, she really hadn't let go. I seem to remember a moderator and one other author, but he or she didn't make an impression.

The Metropolitan Opera website explains that the broadcasts are being shown at theaters equipped with HDTV: http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/bro.../hd_events.aspx I'm not sure how common these theaters are, or what the demand is apart from the Met. With a start time of 10:30 am Pacific Time, a three-hour live opera including intermissions cuts right into the noon schedule. Although most noonish showings are cut-rate, and the Met broadcasts are $18. I'll never forget seeing Ananiashvili on the HUGE IMAX screen in To The Limit.

While it is possible to create something similar through a variety of different arias and art songs, you are right that song cycles already have coherency, both in text and music, built in.There are a number of arias that I would love to see woven into a ballet, but I think one of the other reasons vocals are rarely used is that it is always expensive to add singers, especially since they generally need to rehearse end to end.

I've been following this discussion closely on Opera-L, which has a lot of opera insiders, and there has been no definitive answer, just a lot of reasoned speculation. Unless the Met decides to address this, perhaps because of criticism, we may never know. It's very disappointing the Magic Flute won't be shown in the Puget Sound area. On the other hand, there will be local viewings of the other operas in the Seattle area: I Puritani (January 6): Auburn Stadium 11 The First Emperor (January 13), Eugene Onegin (February 24), Barber of Seville (March 24), and Il Trittico (April 28): Auburn Stadium 11, Bella Botega (Redmond)

I'm not trying to be contentious, but what arias are 20-minutes long? The longest ones I can think of are the Immolation Scene in Gotterdammerung and the final scene of Salome. Most opera arias on excerpts disks clock in at 4-6 minutes. Balanchine choreographed two versions of Variations for Orchestra as a solo for Suzanne Farrell, and that is not a short piece, nor is the opening of Tzigane, also a solo for Farrell, and there was also Pavane. None of them are aerobic virtuoso allegro pieces, but they are sustained.There are also several ballets made from song cycles. A ballet that uses opera arias does not have to be a series of long solos; an extended adagio could match some of the long phrases. There could be room for solos, corps, pas de deux, pas de trois, pas de quatre, etc. depending on the music that was put together.

I've always said that I'd only consider seeing that opera live if I could listen to the overture then leave to go shopping, have dinner, maybe visit a museum, and come back 5 hours later for the prize song and final chorus. :grinning-smiley-001: Unfortunately, opera houses frown on that casual attendance thing these days. In Gotterdammerung, I always want to hear the Norns, leave for drinks, come back for Brunnhilde/Waltraute's scene, leave for appetizers, come back for Hagen's Watch and Hagen/Alberich's scene, leave for dinner, and come back for the death of Siegfried through the end.I'm not sure those scenes would make a terribly coherent libretto, though.

This has got to be one of most self-defeating practices around. All it does is to encourage people to tape off TV and to make pirated copies, when commercial distribution could reach a far wider audience, especially as the DVD's make their way into library collections.Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera unions had the right idea in creating contracts that allow live broadcasts and archival broadcasts to be aired on Sirius network by subscription, where a cut of actual earning, not projected earnings, is paid.

Many thanks, cygneblanc! Congratulations to all of the dancers who were promoted, and best of luck to the women.

One thing of note about Russia and the Eastern European and Baltic countries and former SSRs is that the major opera houses are repertory houses, and because of years of little contact with the West, had house singers that stayed in their major cities and were the operatic stars of their day. There are very few Western opera houses that still function this way; most of them, like La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris Opera Ballet, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Australian Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Liceu, etc. utilize guest artists for the major roles, not great house singers that stay primarily in one location.The segment on Nikitin was fascinating. He likened singing at the Met as a vacation -- one or two roles over several months -- while singing with the Maryinski Opera, he performs different roles every night, some big and some small, and that keeps his voice agile and in shape. Last March in Moscow, I saw a quite wonderful Eugene Onegin performed by the Bolshoi Opera. It must have been the last production, because there was nothing controversial about it.

It depends on the DVD. The majority of arts DVD's are region "0," which means they can be played in all regions. An exception was the Royal Danish Ballet's La Sylphide, which had region 1 (US) and region 2 (Europe) versions.

Doh, Kent Stowell used the pastorale from Pique Dame, complete with female vocals, in the first act of his Nutcracker. He choreographed a masque for two men and one woman, in which the dancers hold Nutcracker, Mouse King, and Pirlipat masks on sticks, and the woman dances in ballet slippers. They recreate the story told at the beginning of the ballet by three children dressed as these characters, a story familiar from Mark Morris' The Hard Nut: the mouse bites Princess Pirlipat, and she turns from a beautiful princess to an ugly one.

(Which I would have known if I had read your first post carefully. )

Was The Merry Widow the Roland Hynd version done by ABT and PNB? Roland Petit choreographed La Chauve-souris (Die Fledermaus), and La Scala Ballet performed it this season. There are more ballets to song cycles, like Robert Joffrey's Remembrances to Richard Wagner's Traume, where the dancing reflects the theme of the song. Tudor's Dark Elegies was set to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

Not a dumb question at all. Yes, there are PAL and NTSC DVD's. Most computers will play both, and there are a number of DVD players that will, too, but many do not, like my combination TiVo/DVD player made by Toshiba. I watch all of my PAL DVDs from Europe on my Mac. Some of our threads have ventured into this territory. I will try to find the most pertinent posts by the weekend and put them together in a thread, so that the information/discussion is all in one place.

I will. I promise.

I guess it's time for me to reconsider