richard53dog

Like vipa and abatt, I'm not thrilled with the pre-curtain announcements in opera. As I look at it, you are either up for the perfomance or not. I don't get a reduced ticket price because you are singing over a cold. Unfortunately, these announcements have become traditional, I doubt they will go away. And singers seem to use them as a kind of pressure valve, often they sing better after the announcement has been made. It's sort of perverse, "now that you know I'm sick, I can sing more like I'm well". Oh well. Going back to Osipova, if she was a singer rather than a dancer, there might have been an announcement at her DC Corsaire. Particularly since she seemed to be feverish (and perhaps exhausted), it's a bit different than the more common dancer problem of soem kind of injury. I'm hoping to catch her with ABT next year, but I'd rather see her as Kitri than Aurora or Juliet. I guess she's sort of tired though of the role.

Just for curiosity I checked alibris.com, a used book site I've sometimes found great deals at, but there the copies start at $199. So maybe the one on ebay will turn out to be a buy!

These two are both quite colorful, I think and the press has been following their ups and downs for years. There were rumors some years ago that they had separated but then they started taking engagements together again and they died down. There are other interviews too, Angela was interviewed in Corriere Della Serra, the big Milan daily. It's in Italian, which I can read haltingly, but Gheorghiu comes across rather unsympathetically in this one. http://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/09_novem...44f02aabc.shtml Just a bit: "Vengo da una famiglia bene dov’ero trattata come una principessa; loro, gente umile, è venuta fuori la differenza, dispiace dirlo ma è la verità». La gelosia è stata la molla? ...... Non sa­pevo mai come comportarmi. .... Perché l’uomo non sopporta una donna vincente al suo fianco? Quan­do ho inciso Madama Butterfly , è sparito dieci giorni. Però mi faceva le poste per vedere se ero fedele». "I come from a well to do family (her father was a train conductor!), I was treated like a princess; he (Alagna) comes from humble people. I'm sorry but the difference mattered." Jealosy was a factor ....men can't stand a successful woman..... When I recorded Butterfly he vanished for 10 days.....But he checked up on me to make sure I was being faithful.... There are other snarky parts in this, she complains of how his daughter treated her and finishes mentioning that two composers are creating two new operas based on her a Bonnie and Clyde opera and a Draculette opera (two nicknames Mr and Mrs Alagna picked up in the press) " If they are good, I will sing them, why not!?" "All we need is a tenor" she finishes. Obviously Bobby and Angie are both performers!!!!!!!!

The tour is wonderful news. I hope they bring some interesting rep!

My only exposure to Zoritch was on the film of the two Ballet Russes companies in the 30s, 40s, etc. And he came across to me as a real charming man, lots of charisma.

And remember, some corps were let go a little earlier to "save money" This part reminds me a bit of the corporate world. Lay off the worker bees and promote the managers. Same idea as your example...lots of chiefs and not so many indians.

This is a fine "roadmap" of how the casting seems to have worked for the recent past. I never noticed these trends before myself but I think they are quite valid observations. Let me throw in the obvious....injuries/indispositions/substitutions. These can and do turn the casting strategies upside down. I went to one Nutcracker last December, thinking I had carefully avoided my "MUST NOT SEE" SPF and was going to see one of the dancers I wanted to see but alas my choice was out and sure enough my "must avoid" was the replacement. I'm willing to do standing room so this year I will wait until the "day of".

I was surprised to see Bee Wilson's name in connection with this book as I know her too as a food writer. I recently read her "Swindled: the Dark History of Food Fraud", which was pretty discouraging. But perhaps she is has a major interest in ballet.

Fonteyn was very generous about autographs. I was an obnoxious autograph hound when I was in my teens and collected autographs of as many performers as I could. For the fans at the Lincoln Center stage door, Fonteyn would sit in her car and sign everything that was requested. Well, maybe not quite everything. I remember some photos from a ballet she appeared in ,Poeme de L'Extase, were a bit unflattering. She wouldn't sign a photo taken during a performance of that piece and said it was a bad photo and I should get my money back from the photographer. (In those days photographers like Luis Perez would sell copies of the photos they took directly to collectors at about a buck a pop) And at that point Fonteyn signed always as Margot Fonteyn Arias

Massimo Murru is Albrecht in this performance. I do agree this is a wonderful perfomance on Ferri's part and certainly supports her reputation.

Maybe Amazon is in the process of updating their information of this item and not quote everything has caught up yet. Just from following the links on the amazon page, I wandered into Warner brothers' "shop". They are advertising the DVD for about $20 so that may be a better deal than the one Amazon is offering . http://www.wbshop.com/on/demandware.store/...amp;src=GGLHMOD

Congrats to Allegra. There's a lovely photo on the zine's site. Also I noticed a nice article on MCB's " dazzling jewel", Jennifer Kronenberg

rg, I found the item by entering the title in the amazon box at the top of the screen. I was intrigued by this, I'd like to see it but let me add that it doesn't seem Amazon is selling this on a regular release. The item is offered only by several Amazon merchants instead, this usually means it's either not in stock at Amazon or not currently in print. All five sellers are asking about $40 which put me off but these things are always subject to supply and demand. Here's a link: http://tinyurl.com/yjyqu6h but I think it's more advantageous to our site to go through the Amazon window on the screen. A question for the administrators of the site. I searched through the window above and found the item. So the link was created using the portal. Does BT still get a commission if someone uses the link I created or is it necessary to manually enter through the window on top of the screen? I've been curious about this.

There's definitely a cultural component here and on it hinges how the piece communicates with it's audiences. I don't think it's necessary to have that culture as part of one's background, but the viewer has to be able to meet it part way. I can think of theater/dance groups I've seen from cultures very different from my own such as Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, the Moiseyev troup, Kabuki, Noh theater. I didn't have a lot to go on in advance but you have to accept that the culture and background is different and be prepared to let it "take over" you. And they can succeed, I remember a performance of the Noh at the Met in the 70s and the audience was spellbound. But clearly the "home" culture to these types of forms "gets" the fullest, most complete version of the groups' impact. Almost all performing arts forms require a "suspension of disbelief", they are not realistic and so you have to accept that they are communicating in a non realistic way, whether they are declaiming, dancing, or singing to get their point across to their audiences. I think the actual forms themselves are also a part of this. And these are often based on culture. Even something as basic as ballet (for us here on this board) involves the need to surrender to the form itself and sometimes the culture also. To flip the coin, I find it amazing how much appeal there is for opera and ballet in the East Asia countries such as China, Japan, Korea, etc. Obviously this is very foreign culturally ;it's not for every individual but certainly has built an audience. I have videos of opera performances by Italian troups in Japan from the late 50s on. It's actually a very terrific coincidence. Because technology has been so advanced in Japan since the post WWII period, the technology to telecast and preserve videos was available. And because the Japanese were so nuts for opera, many performances were taped . These are the major video records of a lot of Italian opera with many of the post war stars in much greater variety than in the West.

Do you mean the one credited to ABT with the very controversial cinematography? I think that one is a fine performance but for me Act 1 is almost unwatchable. Act 2 I can deal with. I agree on Seymour. I saw her as Giselle about 7-8 years before this was filmed, her dancing was a bit stronger technically than in the film but that was almost beside the point. She gave Giselle a wonderfully complex, multi-faceted characterization. I agree today the technical achievements are more stressed which is one thing, but I miss the rich, detailed characterizations from some of the older ballerinas.

This isn't a list obviously, but a Makarova Giselle WAS released officially or commercially, one could say, some years ago. It's based on an ABT production with Baryshnikov. Currently it's out of print but commercial VHS copies are available on Ebay or from Amazon merchants. For example: http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Giselle-VHS-Mik...v/dp/6303100791 Certainly there are many others, a good method would be to use the "search amazon" window at the top of the page .

I believe you are exactly right regarding the traditional history of financial support for the arts. What is a bit different is the level of public awareness. We have so much more information available to us today via the media and the internet and people are able to make connections that would have been much more difficult, say, twenty years ago. Take for instance Alberto Vilar, who was a philanthropic icon in the 90s. Would he have seemed like such an unbelievable gift from the stars today? Perhaps but perhaps not. Note , I'm not making any kind of a comparsion about the political/economic position of either individual but both seemed to get things named after them!

Here's a link on another piece from the NYTimes Art Beat. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/...ra-this-season/ This is some more info on the renovations at the Koch Theater, although it really pertains to the NYCO. After years of controversy, and in light of (hopefully) some acoustical improvements, the sound enhancement system (read "amplification" ) used for City Opera performances has been done away with! Ding , dong, the witch is dead!

So far, those of us who've seen it seem to be in agreement on that point. If I were a regular Met attender, I'd actually look forward to seeing different casts, the real test of any production intended to have long life. I'm not so sure that the Met management sees this as a production that will have a long life. I see the Met moving in the direction of the European opera houses which mount productions as a package with a director, maybe revive the production once or twice, and then discard it or sell it. Personally I don't see this as a bad thing, I like a tightly directed, (hopefully ) well prepared performance and that only seems to come these days with the premiere of a new production. Revivals tend to be more casual with less musical and stage rehearsal with a more generic blocking taken from the production book. It still seems to me a bit wasteful that the only way to get this kind of extended rehearsal is with an entire new production, you'd think that it should be possible to take an older production and give it 4-6 weeks of rehearsal but that just doesn't seem to happen. New productions have a lot of box office appeal and in the Met's case, that's music to Peter Gelb's ears. As long as he has the financing behind him, I'm guessing that's the direction he will be going in.

Some of these can be viewed on the ABT website. There is a "ballet dictionary" http://abt.org/education/dictionary/index.html which isn't the easiest thing in the world to use nor is it very complete. But one thing I like about it for my own very non-technical background is that there are tiny videos of ABT dancers (in a studio setting) demonstrating the particular step in question. I find this helpful even with the low-tech format used.

I read the Lash volumes when they came out years ago. FDR Jr was also co author, probably the reason so much very interesting detail about Eleanor's early life was included. I found it very interesting and evocative so this one may also be a possibility for you. The second volume IS slightly less interesting but covers her years with the UN and other themes of her later years. The Lash/FDR Jr volumes contain very little "controversial" material. Back in 1972, a lot of very private information wasn't necessarily included, or even thought appropriate to include in biographies. It was a very different way of writing about public figures. And Eleanor's son was included in the authorship duties which would have limited sensational details even more. So there is practically nothing about either Eleanor's or FDR's emotional relationships with others or other types of back office stories. Even Grandma(FDR Jr's grandmother, that is), Sara Delano, is given a fairly light treatment. All that being said, I still think this version captures a lot of what made Eleanor tick. Much of the narrative is very vivid with detail, you often feel you are sitting in the room with her. The book states that Eleanor's private papers were used, which I'd imagine added much to the books.

Ha, Pamela , you make a good point about the finite number of clips. After a while I start to get confused and can't tell if I've seen this PARTICULAR documentary before or I just remember the material from another one. The various Maria Callas documentaries have me completely confused. It's the same issue. How many times can you shuffle the same cards.....

Maybe not for NYC audiences at that stage. They had a bit of experience with opera at that point with regular companies performing frequently since the 1870s or so but I believe ballet performances were less regular. I got a chuckle out of that definition of Swan Lake too!

I'd rather have seen her as Kitri too, over Aurora or the Macmillan Juliet. But who knows how complicated her Bolshoi schedule is? Remember there was a lot of noise last spring over her dates with ABT at the Met. And the Bolshoi shuffled around her performances in the DC Corsair. So let's wait and see. It looks like she's zooming in for two isolated performances and a lot can happen in eight months

I'm looking forward to the Ashton program. I hope ABT can get up to speed , stylewise. At least the Sylvia revival this year had a better look than previous years.