Helene

It's still listed as playing at the Harvard Exit in Seattle through next week

Buddy, thank you very much for your reports. Our policy about news is that it must be official, from a company website or publication, announcement from the stage, or established news source. We don't allow news from other discussion boards or blogs, unless the blogs are from established critics, or from personal contact with dancers/dancers' family and friends. (More details can be found on this thread. But as long as your sources are official, and you tell us where you found them (link to an internet site or name/date or issue of a print publication, i.e., Dec 5. New York Times), you should be fine.

Review, Take 1: Tonight I saw Ibsen's Pillars of the Community. It had a Hollywood ending. My friends and I were sure that this could not be the real ending. Review, Take 2: Tonight I saw Ibsen's Pillars of the Community. At the end, it switched tracks from a tragic ending of Shakespearean proportions to a vision of politics and business in America during the Enron era, which is a whole lot sicker.

Thank you so much for noting this -- I just looked at the program and saw that I had missed the following: "A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera." I hope it's as much of a box office success in NY and Vilnius as it was in London. I also read that the Sellars/Viola Doctor Atomic may come to NYC. I should note that my memory is already playing tricks: the direction for the principals is patient and focused, and I had blanked out much of the silly staging for the chorus -- except the final scene, as the bomb is dropped, which was inspired -- and the mundane and dated Lucinda Childs choreography ("OK, campers, let's pretend to be radioactive debris!"), with the one exception where they embodied the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" facade of the war machine. That's exactly what some of last night's opera sounded like! Luckily, there was a sign-language translator to the side of downstage right. I don't understand sign-language, but she sort of acted the entire opera, including all parts in the ensemble. She was very graceful. Their season this year also includes The Carmelites, Xerxees, Salome, Billy Budd, The Mikado, Rigoletto, Vaughn Williams' Sir John in Love, La Belle Helene, Orfeo (co-production with Handel and Haydn Society of Boston), Makropoulos Case, Ariodante, Nixon in China, and Purcell's King Arthur (with Mark Morris Dance Group). It actually sounds like a couple of NYCO seasons combined, with a greater emphasis on texts that were written in English. Butterfly had to be translated -- Pinkerton's first act aria began, "The world is my oyster" -- and while the translations themselves by David Parry were sensitive to text and time, on the whole, operas that are written in English sound more natural to the English-speaking ear. Unlike the supertitles translators, who can give the gist of the text without regard to the music, for opera in English, the translator must take on every text-based note. Both The End of the Affair, with large sections taken from or based closely on the Graham Greene novel, and Doctor Atomic, a compilation of texts, including one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets which provided the text for a tour de force aria for Oppenheimer that ends Act I, flowed quite naturally. (It helped a great deal that Gerard Finley, Kristine Jepson, and Richard Paul Fink had superb diction.) The proposed introduction of supertitles at ENO has proven to be controversial, with commentators wondering what the purpose of opera sung in English is, if the words are projected. However, as bart pointed out, the Colisseum is a barn, and I doubt that the gaudy decorations were applied with acoustics in mind. There is a great recording of the Ring sung by ENO, called the "Gooddall Ring." All 16 hours are in English. Seattle Opera put itself on the map by producing the Ring, and the first seasons had sequential English and German versions. Opera in translation has a long history: many of the productions in the first half of the 20th century were translated into the local language (Wagner in Italian, Verdi and Massanet in German and Russian.)

And many, many thanks to Mme. Hermine who provided today's Links for today's holiday.

Good for her. She said she wanted to dance the classics, and this will challenge her not only in those roles but in a different style. In her short tenure, Mason has had a track record for putting the Company's interests first.

Happy and healthy Thanksgiving today to our US readers and their families, and to people visiting.

This afternoon I saw an ad for "Nicholas Hytner's Olivier Award-winning production of Handel's classic" Xerxees. ("Wise, witty, wonderful, & fun -- The Daily Mail.) I went to the London Colisseum to see if I could buy a last minute ticket to find a queue waiting for returns. It was getting late, and I was transitioning to the meal of Chinese food I'd have instead, when a woman came by with one ticket, and no one in front of me wanted less than a pair. It was only after I bought it that I saw that it was for Madam Butterfly; Xerxees doesn't open until tomorrow night. (Doh.) If I had known, I wouldn't have gone, and I would have missed a night of spectacular vocal theater. From front to back, the set consisted of an apron (approximately 5-6 feet deep): a raised lacquer floor (about 1.5-2 feet above the apron) that went to about midstage, with horizontal grooves that spanned the stage and in whose tracks shogi screens were moved to created different scenes; more lacquered floor on a rake; and all the way upstage, an unseen platform with stairs leading to the raked stage. Just like in Un Ballo in Maschera at Covent Garden, there was a reflective ceiling, tilted to reflect the stage. (Michael Levine designed the set.) The opera opened with Butterfly (or perhaps a surrogate) in a white Kimono being wrapped in two long -- half the stage depth -- red silk scarves that formed an intricate set of bows tied behind her back. (This was during the overture.) Goro, the marriage broker, looked like a Kabuki character; Pinkerton was in uniform, and Sharpless, the US Consul, was in a western suit. (He changed ties between acts.) The women in Butterfly's family were dressed in bright kimonos -- aqua, yellow, hot pink, bright green -- making a kaleidescope of color against the reflective ceiling. Clothes designer Han Feng did the costumes ("Among her private clients are Jessye Norman and Susan Sarandon" according to her bio in the program). One of the articles in the program stressed the many parts of the opera that the Japanese find inauthentic and laughable, even if they enjoy the music. I don't know enough about the various types of Japanese theater to know how authentic Minghella's vision was, or even if he strove for authenticity: he may have been following Puccini's example by focusing on the dramatic possibilities. The three main devices he introduced into the production were dancers in Japanese dress acting out a few scenes, including one short one to physicalize her family's disapproval; eight characters dressed in long, slim black robes who took on a multitude of roles, such as holding lanterns, flying origami birds on long poles, moving scenery, and in a theatrical coup, becoming gardens from which Butterfly, Suzuki, and Trouble picked flowers to prepare the house for Pinkerton's return; and the use of bunraku, Japanese puppets that are controlled by three "handlers" (arms, hands, feet, legs, and head) who are dressed in black, but are visible to the audience. While two were used in Act I to introduce Butterfly's cook and another household servant, and a third, dressed like Butterfly, was used during the Act III overture with one of the dancers -- I'm not quite sure what this was meant to signify -- the fourth, Butterfly's son, Trouble, was a major character in the second half of Act II and in Act III. This was not a production in which a cute young kid was walked on and off stage; there was constant interaction between Butterfly and Trouble, and Suzuki and Trouble. Butterfly, who was young and naive in Act I, became far more interesting when she became delusional and tragic in Act II, particularly when she brought the boy out -- Sharpless didn't know she had a son -- and started to ask, "would he [Pinkerton] abandon this child?" Of course, the audience knew the answer to that was a resounding "yes," but Butterfly was overtaken by her own inner logic, and there was a child onstage, trying to understand why his mother was suddenly so emotionally charged. Gwyn Hughes Jones sang Pinkerton with a bright, open tenor voice, and his high note at the end of the Act I love duet shook the rafters of the old tart of a Colisseum. Alan Oke has a very strong tenor as well, and he sang Goro with clear tone and diction. Mark Stone was an impressive and moving Prince Yamadori, visually and vocally. Jean Rigby (Suzuki) was most impressive in Act III, when she sang much more in her lower register. (She sounded like Carmen intoning inevitable fate.) Christopher Purves was a very sympathetic Sharpless; the role is more lyrical than most baritones get to portray. He has a lush but flexible voice, superb legato line, and I could understand every word he sang. (Not a given in opera in English.) In my fantasy opera house, I'd hire him to sing anything he wanted. The star was Mary Plazas, who sang Butterfly. After the first act, I didn't expect this. She has a very nice voice, but she sounded like she was pushing it when she went from sweetness to full throttle in the love duet, when her voice sounded a little hollow, like the vibrato had holes in it. But from the moment she started to sing in Act II, as the mother of a child desperate for the return of its father and delusional enough to be completely convinced of his return, she was spellbinding. I don't know if there was an objective change to the quality of her voice, but she brought a modern opera sensibility to her characterization, and a contemporary opera singer's fidelity to the text. Except for the occasional cough, there was not a peep from the audience that I could hear. (Well, and two cell phones that went off and were very quickly shut off.) Minghella's Butterfly was a very hot ticket in London. From random conversations I overheard in the lobby, the number of people who didn't seem to know how the theater worked, and from the conversation between the group of women to my left, there were a number of people who'd never been to the opera before. It's rare for an audience to give that much attention to a performance, but Plazas was vocally and dramatically riveting. I've seen more great operatic performances in the past two months than I've seen in any one year: The End of the Affair, Doctor Atomic, Tristan und Isolde, Un Ballo in Maschera, and now Madam Butterfly. There are four things they all have in common: great conducting and orchestral playing, unusual use of sets and other media, direction that seemed to slow down the pace to focus on the drama and the text, and the singers who took the opportunity the pacing provided to tell a story with their voices.

Thank you for the news, dachnitsa! Many of us who've seen her on the Bolshoi US tours -- and not featured enough -- are hoping for the same thing. I laughed when I saw the description "gorgeous," because I'm visiting England right now, and the only thing I've heard that word used to describe here is food

I forgot to note that Darcey Bussell is the poster girl for Sylvia twice over: she's all over the Tube in a full-length pose from Act I -- also replicated on the back of the cast list flyer for the Royal Opera performances -- and she's also on the cover of the 2006 calendar, held aloft in a lift.

Ballet Talkers who attend the Suzanne Farrell Ballet season at the Kennedy Center: Please, please, please post your reviews! We'd really love to hear your impressions! Here is the link to the Suzanne Farrell ballet forum: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showforum=98 Here's the link to the existing thread leading up to the season: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...pic=20170&st=15 Please feel free to start a new review thread or add to the existing one.

In the reconstruction article in the program, there are two mentions of films, on which Newton relied: 1. "The Royal Ballet video archive contains some clips of the third-act pas de deux, variations and coda from various galas down the years, as well as a balck-and-white record of Nadia Nerina as Sylvia but that shows none of the subsidiary roles." 2. "Anthony Russell-Roberts, who is also Ashton's nephew and legatee of most of the choreographer's works, unearthed black-and-white footwage of an entire stage rehearsal featuring Christopher Gable and Doreen Wells., then of the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet. It was shot in 1965 by Ednee Wood, wife of the company manager at the time..." Newton commented on the latter, "It's really primitive. The stage lighting isn't strong enough to see them clearly. She [Wood] misses openings and enddings. There was no sound and she made attempts to add it later, which frankly is worse because it never synchs, so usually I work on it with the sound off."

That was so awful, that when it was paired with Palais de Cristal, I left right after the Balanchine the second time around. Once was more than enough. I remember thinking the same when I saw it: not every idea needs to be put onstage.

Sylvia is back in rep at the Royal Ballet. In an essay on the reconstruction in the ballet's program, Clifford Bishop writes Act I was like a treatise in Ashton style. Watching it, I was reminded of how Balanchine put "teaching" ballets like Symphonia Concertante on stage, and how individual soloist parts were tailored to showcase a dancer's strengths and challenge his or her technique. While many of the women had neat footwork and danced with conviction -- notable feet were Cindy Jordain's (as Terpsichore)-- it will take a lot of performances of Sylvia before the upper bodies have caught up. The men's villagers' dance could have been an entire company class in itself; the demands of the steps were frighteningly difficult, even if the men, like the slaves in Act II, looked a bit schoolboyishly neutered. I liked Act II a lot; the part of Orion looked like it was tailor made for Gediminas Taranda, which, by definition, puts it high in my book Sylvia plays more of a seductress in Ashton's version than in Mark Morris', and I can imagine the men in the audiences of 1952 needing to be revived after Fonteyn vamped in that costume in that choreography. I loved the extended mime sequence in the beginning, in which Sylvia proudly rejects all of the riches Orion tries to bestow on her. Act III lost me until Sylvia's solo, and then again until the grand pas de deux. The main reason was that there was little poignancy to the reunion of Sylvia and Aminta; it lacked a certain bittersweet recognition that they might never have been blessed by the gods to find each other again. Here was another resemblance to Sleeping Beauty: apart from a perfunctory reconciliation, the wedding might just as well have been preordained and arranged between Acts II and III. Perhaps I was being dense, but when the soloist couples entered, I thought the I was seeing the Ashtonian equivalent of Puss 'n Boots and the White Cat, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, and a few more Sleeping Beauty-like divertissements. These people were not costumed like gods and goddesses. It wasn't until the finale, when I wondered, "Where are the goats?" that I realized Puss and the Cat were the goats According to the article, "Reconstructing Sylvia," "in going back to the authentic score [Newton] had to drop two dances (an interlude for Apollo and the nine muses and a pas de cinq for Jason, Ceres, Pluto, Persephone and Eros), and 'slightly stretched out the male solo.'" It seemed rather odd that the three god/goddess couples had little mini-breakouts during the ensemble dancing, but not a number of their own, and the goats pas de deux alone seemed unbalanced. Zenaida Yanowsky danced Sylvia, and she was as opposite to Fonteyn as could be. She's an amazon, with long, muscled legs, in the Karin von Aroldingen mold. (In San Francisco, she would have been cast as Diana.) There was no doubt for the most part of the ballet who was in charge. Since Eros isn't really a pixie, I think it would have taken a Marcelo Gomes to have the presence to make Eros' power over her believable. Joshua Tuifus didn't have it, and it was almost as if he had opened her unconscious and allowed her to realize that it was really her idea to fall for Aminta. That said, it was that much more surprising that Yanowsky's strongest dramatic moments -- both acting and dancing -- came in the three most unlikely places: immediately after she falls for Aminta, in the seduction solo in Act II, and in the Act III solo, the latter until the final phrases, which reminded me of one of the Beauty Fairy solos, and during which she was done in by her long legs. (It almost looked like she was being funny, but it wasn't possible for her to look spritely.) Yanowsky's arms were beautiful; in Act I especially, they were a source of her power. It was wonderful to see a dancer with the patience to be in the moment and not push the pace or phrasing. If I had a beef with David Makhateli's performance, it was that in his first solo, he didn't have this patience. He seemed to want to get somewhere and it looked rushed. The transparency of the choreography, where every degree of every movement requires equal commitment and precision, was unforgiving. He's got a beautiful body for a dancer, though, with long, long legs to match Yanowsky's, and I'd love to see him in the Petipa classics. Gary Avis danced Orion. He phrasing was a little soft, and he lacked a little of the panther-like menace that makes Orion a little sexy, not just the guy who is going to get his because of theatrical convention. Poor Gillian Revie as Diana -- she had to out-Diana Diana! She was lovely, though, in the recognition scene, where Eros reminds her of her love for a shepherd. (Ashton's Diana takes this change of affairs much more in stride than Morris' Diana.) I would see this again in a heartbeat, however, Manon has entered the building, and Sylvia doesn't return until 1 December.