Helene

From the Classic Arts Showcase FAQ: Can I get a program guide? We do not publish a program guide because our weekly 8 hour show is downlinked by hundreds of channels across the country at different times, with different schedules, and we can never tell you when any particular clip will play in any particular area. Also, if people knew what was coming up they would only watch clips they like, and perhaps never try anything new. Surprise is an important part of our strategy of creating a new audience for the arts. [emphasis mine]

I don't know this production, although from what I've read so far, I was disappointed that National Ballet of Canada toured West with Swan Lake instead of Cinderella, but Guillaume Cote is a dream of a dancer.

I was about to throw my hands up and quit. I was very lucky to get one clue that led to all of the others.

I disagree with Goberman's premise that the filmed version only represents an ephemeral experience that a re-broadcast -- done for each of the live broadcasts anyway on public TV during the week of the original broadcast -- cannot, particularly for ballet. By definition the camera defines a point of view and imposes it on the viewer. This is not the same as viewing a live ballet, where the audience members choose their focus and even whether or not to see close ups using opera glasses. What makes it "live" the first or seventy-fifth viewing for those of us lucky enough to have taped/TiVo'ed it is that it is broadcast in sequence and the bloopers aren't edited or re-worked, apart from those obscured by camera selection. The idea that if you miss it, it's gone forever is a selfish point of view, in my opinion, if you put a camera on it and tape it in the first place. "I have it, and you don't" is the message I hear. The Metropolitan Opera offers a limited selection of historic broadcasts on CD for $100 ($85 tax deductable) and $150 ($135 tax deductable).

Sandy, I agree with you completely about the witches. I just don't know how they could be portrayed as malevolent when their music undermines this. There are so many ways in which scary witches could have been done if the music supported it, but when the two ladies making fun of the Countess' attempt to land Prince Florimund in Sleeping Beauty are more bone-chilling than witches, "unsuccessful" is the most polite way I could describe it. Jenkins said that he deliberately left out the ballet music; he once saw a production where there were witches on pointe, and the audience laughed. But I do think there's a lot of room between pointe and what we saw for people who can move convincingly during the regular scenes with the witches. I can also see how the bright lights would have been disconcerting and jarring from the orchestra. The closest I got was the back row of the Gallery Upper, but the lighting looked magnificent to me from the Second Tier. Thank you for your review!

It took five pages of Google search and an awkward translation from a note in German on the John Cranko site to find that there was an announcement on 2 February 2006 that Tewsley would guest with the Stuttgart Ballet in Cranko's Onegin, partnering Sue Jin Kang, on 15 and 18 February 2006. It notes that he is guesting now. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...ficial%26sa%3DN Which led me to... According to the "Where Are They Now?" web-page on the National Ballet of Canada Nutcracker page listing the dancers who performed in the 1995 premiere of Kudelka's version, "[h]e is currently an independent dancer living in London, England." http://www.national.ballet.ca/TheNutcracker/about/where.html According to the New National Theatre Ballet Tokyo website, Tewsley was cast as Johann in Roland Petit's La Chauve-souris ("The Bat") this past weekend (May 19-21) with Alessandra Ferri as Bella. http://www.nntt.jac.go.jp/english/season/s298e/s298e.html In March/April 2006, he is listed on the La Scala site as having been cast as the Prince in performances of Nureyev's Cenerentola ("Cinderella") with Marta Romagna. http://www.teatroallascala.org/public/LaSc...pera/index.html As a side note, Denis Matvienko and Benjamin Pech are dancing Albrecht (listed as "Albert") with the New National Theatre Ballet, Tokyo at the end of June. Next season, Zakharova/Uvarov and Chernenko/Matvienko are scheduled for Raymonda, Zakharova/Uvarov for Swan Lake, Cojocaru in Ashton's Cinderella (no partner listed yet), Matvienko in Sleeping Beauty (partner TBD), Lucarra/Pierce in Roland Petit's Coppelia, and Zakharova/Uvarov and Matvienko/partner TBD in the Petipa/Gorsky Don Quixote. Tewsley and Ferri are scheduled to reprise their roles in Il pipistrello ("The Bat") at La Scala in September 2006: http://www.teatroallascala.org/public/LaSc...pera/index.html Tewsley is listed as on the roster of men for the 11th World Ballet Festival this August. (It's quite a line-up for two programs of ballets, to be announced in June.) http://www.nbs.or.jp/english/stages/0608_wbf.html Following is a link to another Google translation of an interview in the Stuttgarter Nachrichten from 14 February 2006, just before his two performances as Onegin in Stuttgart: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%...n&hl=en&ie=UTF8 If the translation link from the Google doesn't work, here's the link to the original in German, which can be run through an online translator, like www.altavista.com/babelfish: http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/stn/...htag=2006-02-14 It's worth a read. He has an unusual perspective having danced with a number of companies. He mentions a Raymonda and a contemporary ballet in Japan. He also notes that he has a garden business in London with a friend.

LOL! Now that would be a Marketing coup! Speight Jenkins, being Speight Jenkins, has educated his audience to know that if they go to the lower-priced Silver Cast performances (Friday night/Sunday matinees), they may very well be seeing the stars of the future. I've seen productions where when all was said and done, I thought the Silver and Gold were equal -- The End of the Affair, Rigoletto come to mind -- or where the Silver was better, in my opinion (Girl of the Golden West, for example). Macbeth didn't happen to be one of them. In some ways, my Silver Cast subscription was like my first, Saturday matinee subscription to NYCB, in which many soloists and corps members danced principal roles. You get to say, "I saw/heard them first." papeetepatrick, it was nice to read your description of Gary Lehman. We were lucky to hear Linda Watson sing Kundry in Seattle, too in the production of Parsifal which opened the new, refurbished McCaw Hall.

Stalking the PNB website has paid off: the first week of casting is up. Emeralds Verdy role: Nadeau (w/Maraval), Korbes (w/Herd), Vinson (w/Postlewaite) Paul role: Pantastico (w/Stanton), Lallone (w/Cruz), Chapman (w/Milov) Pas de Trois: Vinson/Chapman/Pankevitch, Thomas/Foster/Griffiths, Eames/Rausch/Ade Rubies Nakamura/Poretta/Lallone, Pantastico/Wevers/Dec, Pantastico/Wevers/Imler Diamonds Barker/Milov, Imler/Bold, Korbes/Stanton

Opera being what we do in Seattle waiting for the next ballet program () I saw Seattle Opera's production of Macbeth this past weekend. On Friday (Silver Cast), after an unusually long commute due to horrendous traffic, as I rushed to the door to my section, I heard a man's voice from outside the auditorium making an announcement, but I couldn't hear what he said. When Macbeth made first his entrance with Banquo, I thought they had found Gordon Hawkins' (Gold Cast) long lost cousin, because he looked just like Gordon Hawkins. As Speight Jenkins explained during the post-performance Q&A's, the curse of Macbeth took its operatic form: two weeks before the premiere, the original Silver Cast baritone hurt his knee so badly that he needed surgery. Because getting a visa for a singer without a US passport was too difficult in such a short period of time, Jenkins had to find an American baritone to do the role. He found one, and dress rehearsal went well, but I think what Jenkins then said was that Hawkins had to take over partway through the first performance, and went on to sing all eight performances in a week and a half. Friday was the start of second weekend in a row in which Hawkins sang back-to-back MacBeths. (Luckily there were no Sunday matinees.) The production was designed by Robert Israel (sets and costumes) and Christopher Akerlind (lighting). The set was a box, with white panels on three sides, about three scrims tall on the back wall, with door openings in the upstage left back, upstage right side, and about 2/3 downstage left. In the back of the stage, about 12-15 feet high there was an inset rectangle about 10-12 feet high, which formed a balcony. From about 6 rows from the back of the house, it looked like a huge granite tomb; until the lights went up high in the middle of the third act, the walls looked completely smooth. When the lights went up, it was clear that there were "bumps" caused by the fabric on the flats loosing a bit of tautness. (Up closer on Saturday, this was apparent from the beginning.) There were piles of rocks, one of which, placed downstage left outside the front curtain, hid lights 9according to Jenkins) that were used effectively throughout. These were moved around or removed, depending on the scene. In addition, there were two light sheer curtains, downstage and about 40-50% of the way upstage; the latter created a more intimate space. It also allowed the multiple scenes in the first act to flow with little interruption. Besides that wonderful use of light through the doors, the lighting was a balletomane's dream: with a white background, the mixtures of violets and greens in one scene, blue-gray and apricot in the next resembled the dyed silks of Nureyev's Swan Lake production of the mid-80's. Witches, witches, witches. Israel costumed the 30 for whom Verdi wrote choral music and the 12 supers who pushed the action forward, half in black and half in white in dresses of mixed lengths, as a cross between brides and widows. Some wore short red gloves, and I realized on Saturday night that some wore red shoes. (I wish I had seen this on Friday, because I would have worn mine on Saturday, in solidarity.) During the overture, director Bernard Uzan had a small group of them egging on Lady Macbeth into tearing off the head of her doll. The dramatic problem is that Verdi wrote cute, poppy music for them, and there was no way to make them particularly menacing without countering the music. It was as if Verdi had turned them into mother-in-law jokes. It also didn't help that in Andrea Gruber (Gold Cast), they had by contrast a Lady Macbeth who was channeling Sorella Englund's Madge. When in a scene where Lady Macbeth plots the death of the MacBeth's obstacles to the throne, one witch, in black, minced up to her on one side with a knife, handed it to her, went behind her to her other side, and took the knife back. Physically, the witch looked like a Mad Magazine cartoon in which a shadow sneaks up with a knife to stab someone. Jenkins explained that Verdi wrote the opera in 1847, the period in which the opera was set (costume-wise), and revised it in 1865. In the 1865 version, he added a sophisticated aria for Lady MacBeth in Act II, in this production set in a bed, there being no aphrodisiac like power, and a duet for Macduff and a herald, leading to a rousing chorus in Act III. Politically, this may have roused the Italian Nationalists in the audience, but dramatically, this was weak, especially after a great scene by Macbeth, a deeply pessimistic chorus describing the destruction of the country during the MacBeth's reign, Macduff's lament about the murder of his wife and children while he was in hiding, and leading to the Sleepwalking scene. Verdi wrote that he wished he'd never hear Macbeth's final aria again, and it was omitted in this production, but I wish he had been as judicious about not adding in that silly vengeance duet and patriotic chorus. Uzan could do nothing about that but play along. Another issue dramatically was the scene in which Banquo and his son are trying to escape MacBeth's assasins. In a pretty much empty set except for a relatively loq pile of rocks, and no real place to hide, that Banquo's son's escaped was about as believable as most of Sylvester Stallone's. I realize from this description that it sounds like an unsuccessful production, but it wasn't – in most ways in which it was a triumph. Two of the most successful scenes in the opera were those that Jenkins said are often laughable: Macbeth's mad scene in the middle of the banquet and the appearance of Banquo and his descendents, and the three apparitions. The latter was only one way in which Uzan used the trap doors so creatively throughout the opera. Each apparition was raised in succession to the stage, and then receded into the trap, his/her prophecy voiced. The first two were dressed like characters from Oedipus Rex, with blackened eyes and sheet-white faces. The first was sung by Byron Ellis, and the second, by male soprano David Korn, who is a member of the Opera's Apprentice Program. Like the little altars the witches made earlier from a rock with blood streaks down the side and a skull on top, Korn’s white sheath was stained from the neck to bodice with vertical streaks of blood. The last apparition was sung by a boy soprano dressed like an angelic young king (or so it looked where I was sitting); the role was shared by Max Seifer on Friday and Graeme Aegerter on Saturday. The stylization as Greek tragic figures worked brilliantly. In the banquet scene, first the ghost of the murdered Banquo, still in the dress in which he was killed, with the blood where his throat was slit, appeared, calmly stalked the guilty Macbeth, driving him to distraction. When Banquo’s descendents appeared one by one, it was like a procession of elderly Russian Orthodox priests, in flowing robes with tall gold crowns, crossing the stage slowly from all directions and finally joined by Banquo holding with the mirror reference in the text, encircling MacBeth. Those Rasputin-like figures were far more eerie than the witches. The final battle scene Macduff and Macbeth began as a sword fight, one of the few I’ve seen staged where in the duration, they hurt each other gradually, but as Macduff got the upper hand, and Macbeth fell to the floor, Macduff took his vengeance: instead of letting Macbeth fall on his sword or killing him with his own, Macduff took a pistol from one of his surviving men, and shot Macbeth like a dog. In the very final scene of the opera, a group of witches tried to body-snatch the men who had fallen downstage in the earlier battle, while the chorus rejoiced in the fall of the Macbeths. Earlier, when Macduff's half dozen men stormed the stage and he ordered them to put down their shields covered by Birnam wood, they weren’t carrying anything; the line was a throw-away. But at the very end of the opera, the entire ensemble walked slowly but deliberately downstage, dispersing the witches, and in that moment, the force of Birnam Wood approaching made its mark. The tour de force, though, was during the Sleepwalking scene. Lady Macbeth made her entrance in a flowing white nightgown, put down her candle, walked to the back wall, touched it with her blood-stained hands, and left streaks of blood on the wall. As the scene progressed – the doctor awaiting proof of what the lady-in-waiting maintained about Lady Macbeth’s mental state, the slow deterioration of Lady Macbeth -- slowly along the column of panels along the stage right back wall, long, darkish streaks started to appear. Then between the horizontal cracks, red blood seeped out and down the walls. Deeper into the scene, as Lady Macbeth descended deeper into madness, two more columns of panels in the middle of the stage began to show the long dark streaks, more blood running slowly down the wall, and patches of blood seeping through the middle of the wall, during which time, Lady Macbeth’s gown slowly became blood-soaked. Then there was the singing. In the Silver Cast, I felt that as Lady Macbeth Elena Zelenskaya started weakly, and only found the role in the Sleepwalking Scene, which, if there's any place to be excellent, is the place. Andrea Gruber grabbed the role by its throat, so to speak, and blazed through it dramatically, with every shade of light and darkness. I don't really like Gruber's voice; it reminds me of Callas', Scotto's, and Milanov's at their harshest and most strident. But it didn't matter at all; she embodied the role which starts off like a banshee and becomes more nuanced and speech-like as it goes on, the polar opposite of the trajectory of Isuzu Yamada's performance as Lady Asaji Washizu in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Lady Macbeth’s banquet costume was a gem, made of a light green silk taffeta with undertones of red, and short red gloves. Burak Bilgili's Banquo was sympathetic and strong, and he sang with a warm voice. Joseph Calleja grabbed everyone's attention with a big, clear, bell-toned tenor. First Mattthew Polenzani in Cosi fan Tutte and now Calleja. One of the first questions asked in the Q&A’s was "When is Calleja coming back? I'd go specifically to hear either of them sing. It's impossible to talk about Gordon Hawkins' performance without speaking first of the conductor Nicola Luisotti. Jenkins said that there was no trick to his performances: he simply followed Verdi's tempi and markings. What he accomplished was Verdi like I've never heard it before. Listening to the opera, I thought that this was the first time that Verdi did something quite extraordinary that was rarely re-visited in his middle and later works: an almost speech-like, conversational-toned dramatic singing. And this in an early Verdi opera still influenced by bel canto. (Although, the most bel canto scene, the banquet scene, seemed to use the style ironically, as both the Macbeths and the chorus was putting on a false, public face, which their words [chorus] and intentions [Macbeths] belied.) Now, I'm not sure whether Verdi didn't use this again, or if it's in all of the later operas, but stomped over by conductors. This score foreshadowed the later work, particularly the Requiem in the use of the ensemble of soloists alternating with the chorus and then joining it. The chorus of desolation in Act III is more moving to me than any in the Requiem (one of my favorite pieces of music), but I had never heard it before. The tenor aria that followed was almost an intrusion in a sacred space. The words were sadly resonant at this time in American history. By keeping the orchestra at a whisper where indicated, Hawkins, like Gruber, could "speak" the role where needed, and he sang with the full range of shade and color that an actor has, with the additional dimension of song. It was a complete transformation of someone who always has been a very fine singer. In ballet terms, it was as if overnight, a gifted young principal and rising star at the Bolshoi woke up with the gifts of Ulanova in her prime. This was a landmark performance for him. One of the things that makes opera special that becomes less and less prevalent in ballet was evident during the curtain calls. Archie Drake, the 80-something year old baritone who sang the doctor, was standing stage left during the curtain calls. To his left was the elementary [ETA: middle-]school aged boy soprano. To his right was the young star of the Apprentice Program, over 50 years his junior. All colleagues.

Here's another article in the Deseret Morning News courtesy of dirac in links from May 21: Kage says he was forced out

There are reviews of the Feld on the "Spring 2006, Weeks 1 and 2" thread in the NYCB sub-forum: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=22266

In Dance Anecdotes, on p. 82 Mindy Aloff quotes critic George Jackson in section called Beyond Technique:

Another casting hint, this time from the "8 Encores" program: Imler, Nakamura, and Poretta in Rubies.

I was trying to figure out how I knew about it, and realized it was from a poster that was displayed in the outer lobby, just outside the gift shop, during the March "Points of View" program. I don't remember if there was an insert in the March program. I don't think there was one in the Sleeping Beauty program.

And it is phenomenal. Thank you for posting the link! (Sadly, I'll be on a plane ) But please tell us how it goes!

Ooooooooooo. Yummmmmmmm.

before reminded me a little of Il Nodo, which Adam choreographed for Oregon Ballet Theatre two years ago, and which the company is reviving next season. I'm not sure if before really was more clever than its own good, or if it suffered from Go With It! being danced immediately after. I felt like Andersen's work was in the same family, but had heart to it, and it wasn't just the music. In a way this is nit-picking, because I've seen a number of ballets programmed by various companies that I'd have been thrilled to see be replaced by before. Night sounds very different and fascinating.