richard53dog

The gap between theater reviews and dance reviews is getting bigger and bigger. Now THAT should generate some controversy. Acocella take on the piece is devastating. But it echoes a lot of what Macaulay wrote. To a point it seems like a lot of what is presented on Broadway is just carefully feeding the audiences what the demographic input has insisted they want. It's pretty discouraging.....

Your bringing up the Rosenkavalier HD feature brought a couple of examples of other opera singers filling in the time during scenes of their performances. Beverly Sills spoke in her memoir of addressing Christmas cards between her scenes in the Magic Flute. This isn't the greatest example I guess because Sills came to the conclusion if she could complete over 100 cards in her "spare time" then the Queen of the Night didn't really hold her interest and she dropped the part. Much, much earlier, Kirsten Flagstad either knitted or played solitaire during big gaps in her time off stage. I think performers are professionals , then as well as now, and they can turn their concentration on and off during performances. Or maybe it might be more accurate to say SOME can. There may be some performers that need to keep things on the flame and others that manage their stamina by putting up their feet and blowing off steam between their onstage periods. In general I'm with the posters that make the case for "by standing still, you go backwards". And Luddites get left in the dust!

From the program, it looks as if this was a lovely tribute. How nice that she was remembered and honored in such a loving manner.

I'm pretty much with DeborahB on this. If this kind of information distribution runs contrary to how you look at your ballet experience, it's easy enough to sidestep all the Facebook/Twitter type material. But it's important to meet new potential audiences half way, particularly the under 25 set. It's crucial to get this age group to participate. And today's audiences are consumer conditioned and expect to be marketed too. And this is not just the under 25 set. For those that treasure the mystery component as part of their world, there's nothing saying they need to give that up. Don't subscribe to twitter, don't join facebook. And remember, things run in cycles. Five years from now, old-style mystique may be the hot new idea. I guess I don't want to be part of an audience that is collectively getting older, and older, and older...

Thebom was a very glamorous on stage and was very conscious of her striking appearance. She went out of her way to cultivate it, in a way she had a lot in common with today's opera singers where looks are an important part of the overall "package". She fought opera managements when she felt she was being saddled with unatractive costuming; she was proud of her fine figure and didn't want to hide it. If all else failed, she would add a sash around her waist to give definition to a costume designed to minimize the less than flattering figure of heftier collegue. One of Thebom's unusual feature was her long, long hair, which reached the floor when unbound. She was the subject of a Life magazine spread displaying her hair in all it's glory sometime during the 50s (no, I don't remember seeing it, that was a bit before my time, but I've heard stories of it ) Here's a link to some "long hair" photos: http://www.angelfire.com/art/rapunzellongh...e/portrait5.htm She also worked extensively with young singers after her own singing career was over, sharing her wealth of experience. RIP, Blanche

Maybe it wasn't working earlier, but I see the "click on a section to select your own seats" choice available now. Just make the selection of which level you want and go from there

I enjoyed reading this back a year or two ago. Since then I've ready Nancy Barr's Backstage with Julia which was very interesting. But most recently I read the rather plain A Life by Laura Shapiro. The book had very little material that hadn't been published elsewhere EXCEPT for revealing Child's very strong, open , vocal, homophobia.This was ironic, her father was a good old fashioned bigot; blacks, Jews, women, etc and Julia struggled endlessly with him to try to get him to adapt a more diverse outlook. But Julia was perfectly willing to snicker over the "pedalinos" who seemed to be everywhere to her and whose presence she resented and ridiculed. Not the only icon with feet of clay, unfortunately.....

And on a related note, next season will see the Met premiere of Nixon in China with a production directed by Peter Sellars.

I do like her singing on the Anyone Can Whistle cast album, though,especially the title tune. She knows how to "act" a song so well. We lost her too soon. I always liked her. I had a real soft spot for Lee Remick. I mentioned seeing her in Follies but I had seen her on the stage once before, many years earlier in the stage version of Wait Until Dark. I was just barely a teenager and very, very impressed; well more than that, I was enthralled with her. And maybe I was just very impressionable, but the play itself was thrilling. Going back to Sondheim, one of my points, and maybe I didn't describe it all that clearly, was that the structure of the musical changed starting in the mid 60s. Jerry Herman seemed to have finished off the old standard book musical which was the accepted format for about 30 years. Sondheim was one, perhaps the leading, writer that developed and defined the form the genre took as it went into the 70s, 80s and 90s. And the form always stressed the importance of a match of lyrics and music, I don't think the person who wrote the music was ever the one "in charge", or the "important one". The form has changed once more, I have to admit I'm not too interested in many of the shows put on today, they seem more spectacles and/or adaptations than anything else. A new Sondheim show today would probably be as hard to accept as the shows Styne wrote after Funny Girl.

I don't have the experience or knowledge to discuss this, but somehow I FEEL that Patrick is right. What do others think? Well, I think this is wandering into the area where the eternal question comes up: "Which comes first, the words or the music" Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics which Bernstein, Styne, and Arlen where primarily composes of the music ONLY. So I don't think it's a balanced comparison. I think one of Sondheim's great, and yes I will use that word, strengths is his marriage of notes and text. To me it's a more impressive achievement. And there's the whole "body of work" issue, to quote a term that was discussed a lot on the Academy Award thread. Sondheim's achievement here is impressive to me, a long list of wonderful shows: Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along, etc. Sondheim's strength is not really writing catchy tunes, though, I'll admit. Arlen and Styne composed the music to some wonderful shows , to be sure. But they were also writing in a genre that was not being questioned or challenged, they wrote during what I would call the golden period of the American musical and there was plenty of ore left to mine; by the time Sondheim came along, the old format of catchy tunes had pretty much been exhausted, Jerry Herman saw to that, and Sondheim was left to redefine what the American musical actually was. And I think this was another of his great (to use the term again" accomplishments. Bernstein was a genius to me, but a problematic one. And again he didn't write the words, just the tunes. I really think he only has two great works for the theater; West Side Story (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim!!!) and On the Town. The music for these two just knocks me over. But Bernstein couldn't really decide what he wanted to be when he grew up and he spread his talents a bit too thin. Plus as the years went on, he got just too bigged down in his own importance and whatever he did became almost bloated. His operas were problematic, his symphonic pieces seem very thin to me. And I dislike his late-in-life takes on two of his earlier works, the recordings of Candide and West Side Story (I really regret the overblown, operatic, approach he took to these two, but this isn't a really widespread opinion so I won't go on with it! ) So, yes, I'm willing to jump into the Sondheim boat and yes, to me he is a genius!

Ha ha, so true! I can keep track of a few, but certainly not all of them!

Book problems are so often what sank musicals. Now I think the musical shows are produced more as spectacles so as to draw attention away from the book. Sondheim adored Lee Remick and I believe fantasized about marrying her. He was devasted when she died of cancer while only in her mid 50s. As far as her singing, I heard her do Phyllis in Follies and she did well, but that music requires more a strong rhythmic delivery of the lyrics rather than soaring vocalism. A few years back, probably at Sondheim's 75th birthday, I saw a tiny, fringe company do Merrily We Roll Along. I missed it when it was on Broadway and was always curious as to how a show's plot could work from end to beginning. Well, it does, and it's amazing to see characters "undevelop", or go from bogged down by life's struggles back to the optimism of youth. Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim!

And in what I'm guessing is no coincidence, NY City Center Encores will put on Anyone Can Whistle during April. This , with music and lyrics by SS and book by Arthur Laurents, was a huge flop when it opened (and quickly closed) in 1964, but afterwards became almost legendary, a kind of cult piece. It was too early for my theater going days, which started a few years later, but I saw performances in later plays by the three leads, Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick, and Harry Guarino and ACW was prominently mentioned in their resumes in the Playbill. Possibly the piece was just ahead of it's times, as I believe SS's later show, Follies, was. I'm hoping to find out next month. The Encores performances are often truly terrific events.

New York City Opera put on Platee about 5 years ago in a wonderful production staged by Mark Morris . It was delightful , very funny with a touch of cruelty which somehow worked. Perhaps because the silly, vacuous diva is a travesty role sung by Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, a French high tenor rather than a soprano, we don't feel so guilty about laughing at her silly, vain antics. Platee is a very unusual piece but is well worth seeing. This just reminds me of how many wonderful events NYCO has presented. They have announced a 2010-2011 season but I won't take this further by going into details.

The situation sounds very frustrating to you. I hope it turns around.

I agree, the Met is being pretty risk averse with the productions they slot for the HD candidates. They go after items with the biggest, widest popular appeal. But you'd think it wouldn't be hard to include at least one sort of experimental choice , wouldn't you? I'm not sure, though, The Nose was really ideal for the HD treatment, I haven't seen it by it sounds like a very busy show with the text flashing all over the set. This can be pretty thrilling if you are in the auditorium but trying to catch it effectively on film doesn't always work so well. But who knows. The Nose is a coproduction with Aix and the Lyons' Opera so it might wind up being filmed for DVD anyway

Yes, agreed. And hopefully she is beyond caring about any mentions at award ceremonies!

This production has gotten an awful lot of very positive buzz. Here's a link from the New York Observer which discusses Kentridge's approach to the staging, including his use of the libretto, which is flashed all over the sets and even costumes . All this is in addition to the by now familiar Met Titles, which displays a translation of the text being sung on an individual display for each ticketholder (yes, even the standees have them). http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/nose# And the Met is doing some creative tie ins, drawing in the perspective ticket buyer from the ranks of the MOMA crowd http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/sea...n.aspx?id=10378 "As a special offer, ticket holders to The Nose receive 50% off tickets to the career retrospective William Kentridge: Five Themes at the Museum of Modern Art. This large-scale exhibition surveys nearly three decades of work by the artist, including works related to his staging and design of The Nose. Present your ticket to The Nose at MoMA through May 17, 2010 to receive 50% off admission." I love to see this kind of imaginative effort and it's nice to see it's paying off. Ticket sales at the Met this season have been very variable with rows and rows and rows of empty seats at many performances. Only the productions with the big stars have been in any kind of demand but The Nose has sold really well. For the remaining five performances,looking at the availability in the largest section, the orchestra, there are only a scattered handful of tickets left; only for the last performance is there anything other than one or two single seats.

I'm really looking forward to the repertory programs, there are more than in the last few Met seasons (but perhaps this was done deliberately to compensate for the very limited season last fall and the nonexistent one this fall in NYC) Whatever the rational , I'm for it, and I'm looking forward particularly to the Classic Masters program and the All-Ashton one. There's lots of Ashton, and ABT seems to have made room for a fair amount of Ashton lately, and I for one am happy with that. I'm approaching Lady of the Camellias with a bit of trepidation, it seems like an odd piece to me, and I'm not certain it's just me. Why didn't they do this before Ferri retired? Come to think of it, Ferri did dance it at La Scala shortly before she hung up her toe shoes and I read quite a number of reports from Milan that found the piece bewildering . It's nice that Osipova and Cojocaru are scheduled. I loved Cojocaru's Aurora when I saw it with the RB in DC a few years back.

It's puzzling to be sure. I sort of think that changes might be noted first on the website with revisions to the pdf doc to follow. That hints to me that Obraztsova might be out of the program on March 27. I would say it would pay to compare the website with the pdf to look for hints on what's actually going to play. To make things even harder to guess at, Obraztsova is currently listed on the PDF for the March 26 date as WELL AS the website. Go figure. It would seem odd she would appear on the 26th and not on the 27th!

The De Sica film is very sad but also very atmospheric. I've never read the book either but was moved by the film.

Thanks for the recommendation on this. It came in last week to the the library where I work and I'm going to try to grab it as soon as it's cataloged. Right now I'm reading Tchaikovsky by Roland John Wiley. It's tough going, there are alternating chapters of chronological events and the technical analysis of the music written during those events. My own background in music is limited; I can read music but just barely so much of the detail here goes over my head. It's also very heavily peppered with source citations which are noted in a complex way. Also a lot of details are presented in bullet point, which seems a bit unusual for a biography. All this is to say that I'm probably not the real target audience for this volume. Still, I can skim over parts and focus on a lot of very rich detail. I'm finding Wiley's analysis of "missing" documentation, (i.e. letters and other correspondence) which Modest and other "groomers" made disappear also interesting. At this point I'm in the last five years of Tchaikovsky's life and so I'm getting swept along in that.....

Yeah, it does. And it also sounds like the old smaller opera companies (ie Fortune Gallo) that toured as well as certain types of theater troups. There are still groups that tour, for instance Jenny Kelly's different groups: http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/ There are a couple of factors here. Many locales in the US can only support one or two nights of this kind of event so it's "move in today, move out tomorrow". And there is the geography factor. The US covers a vast space, the cities that can support these kinds of attractions are separated by many, many more miles on average than they would be, say, in Europe. So that tends to mean long drives between engagements . When you read performers memoirs that describe doing this type of thing back in the 30s,40s, 50s and so forth, like the BR example that sandik gives, they often speak of the hardships as well as the less than generous monetary conditions. The Russian Orchestra tour sounds almost like a throwback to this really hard kind of life. I don't know the specifics but I would think that Jenny Kelly's singers and dancers may be treated a bit more generously than their counterparts sixty years ago. On an opera list that I follow, a MExican tenor that sings with JK's Teatro Lirico d'Europa (or something to the effect of that kind of colorful title) would speak about the touring a bit and never mentioned it being arduous.

WNET, our PBS station for NYC just played an episode of "hide the telecast". The HD Turandot was announced for this past Sunday, Feb 28 at noon. It just didn't happen. Searching the webside for Turandot reveals nothing. It probably serves me right, I was going to watch the thing just to see how awful it was. I heard an audio broadcast back in the fall with the HD cast and hated it. Guleghina is one of the worst sopranos hunching her shoulders in front of the public today and the Calaf, Liu, and Timor weren't as bad but were still not very good either. And I HATE, HATE, HATE the Zeffirelli production. Next up on PBS for us is Hoffman too and I'm looking forward to seeing that for Joseph Calleja's Hoffman which I heard broadcast and liked a lot. the Olympia and especially the Giulietta aren't exactly top tier though. But they were replacements for Anna Netrebko in those roles. Speaking of replacements and shifting the thread a little more to what is a believe the next Met HD event in the cinemas, the Met announced that Natalie Dessay is out of all performances of Thomas' Hamlet; she'll be replaced by Marlis Petersen who was originally going to sing one performance and cover the others.

Be thankful........ I respectfully disagree. The first time I saw WM (with Villella, which is significant), it changed my life. It is entirely dependent upon the performer and on the viewer's ability (which, alas, I don't always have) to become fully immersed in the very slow action on stage. I will admit I was being flip. I only saw this once, when it was brand new . I absolutely did not have the ability at that time to become immersed at that tender age( )and the piece was nothing more than torture for me. Was I perhaps a bit shallow at the time??? Perhaps!!!! In all honesty, after all those years have passed I think I have gained an ability to absorb works in many more ways; but at this point I have also become somewhat impatient. I don't know if Watermill would work any better for me today, but for different reasons. Two steps forward and one step back, as they say...... But I'm certainly clearer on understanding that different viewers come with different sets of criteria and what may work for me may not work for someone else and vice versa.