richard53dog

.I too am disappointed not to see her in the casting lists as Aurora. She was on my "to see" list. Oh well, ballet casting is highly unpredictable, to say the least.

My best wishes to all on BT for a Happy and Healthy 2007

I'd say Freddie Franklin. And I'd name three roles; Friar Lawrence, Madge , and the tutor in Swan Lake. He does the first and the last with such enate kindness. And as Madge he avoided the "over-the-top-ness" that seems to plague men doing female character roles.

No one has replied. I've seen a couple, maybe a half dozen, live and then several other pieces on video. I would say they tend to be......er......dated. Happy 80th to Maurice none the less!

Joseph, depending on where you live and what kind of playback equipment you have, you will need to take into account the format and region coding. I believe you can watch most DVDs on a PC, going beyond that becomes a bit more complicated. For instance Nero will do a format (PAL/NTSC) conversion, but in my experience it balks at touching encrypted (Copyright) discs. But my version is 6.0 and a newer one may be more tolerant.

no---too smelly My cousin emailed me Christmas Eve and I said I really had no intention of ever eating baccala again (unless the strong taste and smell is covered up.

Yes. Dame Margot and Nureyev at least 15 times Maximova and Vasiliev once in London in 1969. There have been very vew partnerships in Giselle in my opinion to match Fonteyn and Nureyev even though legitimate criticisms have been made of their dancing. In almost every performance I saw of them, there were moments when you could not breath less it dispel the magic. Fonteyn was truly a great dance actress whose perfection in the interpreation of was supported by her innate and intense musicality of movement, acting and mime. In the early 60's after having cured his noisy landings, Nureyev matched Fonteyn with Romantic ardour and intensity of expression that made the pulse run fast and the adrenalin to flow as the drama vividly unfolded before you. How could you not believe what was happening on stage, was not absolutely a real event. Nureyev was virily physical in his dancing with an added grace that lent masculine poetry to his dancing. He was Errol Flynn and Richard Chamberlain at the same time. His execution of a series entrechat six in Giselle at that time was the stuff of legends. (Parodied by Nadia Nerina in Swan Lake shortly afterwards, when she performed entrechat six to the whole of the Black Swan fouette variation). When passion and poetry meet in ballet, who can ask for more. For me, for a number of years, Fonteyn and Nureyev were able to do this in Giselle. I never saw Vasiliev and Maximova in Giselle, but I did see Fonteyn and Nureyev. I can only concur with Leonid's eloquent description of F&N. That magical partnership in this piece and others was what really hooked me into ballet back in the later 60s

what, no baccala??????

Well, I'll say this. These brief clips DO give an idea of what the show was all about, except for Maliphant's Me-And-My-Shadow solo. I guess they needed to concentrate on Sylvie. But I don't think I would go back a second time.

I clicked US under Locations and Tickets, but can't find a screen that lets me scroll through a list of venues -- what magic did you perform? Try clicking on a particular opera after you've clicked on Locations and Tickets. You will then see one opera only on the screen. There is a link for "theater locations" but I would skip that, it's only a list. Up at the top is "buy tickets" and you can search by zip and also purchase. It seems to me like a lot of screens to have to go to, but maybe I'm just thinking that because it's new to me.

No, neither do I. It's sort of surprising. I would have guessed that they would have pushed this tour as high art. But maybe the promoters couldn't decide to try to tell audiences they would see something good for them or instead something enjoyable. (Some things never change.)

Is this Merrill Ashley doing Carabosse?

A 20 minute aria, yikes! You're right,about the stamina for a dancer and a singer being timed differently. But a way around it would be , in say a 20 minute piece, to have the dancers used in a relay fashion. Dancer one starts, dances for a few minutes, dancer two, or a grouping of dancers, takes over, and so forth. I just saw something like this last month in Dark Elegies. Each of the Mahler songs was asigned to a group of dancers, but within the song the dancing was divided up a bit.

This has puzzled me too. Here in NJ there is only one theater showing the operas. It's not all that far but then NJ is so small geographically that I don't think you could start driving from any point and still be in the state 300 miles later(unless you got lost alot!) We do have the option of going into Manhattan, at least some of the operas are being shown in Union Square. Going back to the theater selection, I wonder if it had to do with finding cinemas that were willing to give up 4 or so hours on something that the management may see as a loss, particularly when they could possibly squeeze in 2 showings of a popular saturday afternoon feature .

Let's hope that they're paving a road, not striding forward into the wilderness with no one following behind. I hope so too. It's amazing how fast they got the rights to archival broadcasts. Think too that Gelb is having current operas played in movie theaters around the county. I hope a lot of this work sticks and other performing arts companies can do other innovative things .

I wish so too. Most of the Grand Operas written for Paris in the mid 19th century had ballets; it was a required element, as it were. Even Wagner had to write a ballet for Tanhauser for it's Parisian permiere. I remember seeing on a video a ballet of dead nuns from Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable. Wild stuff. I have to disagree though on adding say Verdi's ballets back into his French operas. For me they are just too long. I've really cut back my opera going because I get to antsy at these 4 hour evenings, particularly at the Met where the intermissions are interminable. Also in that era, attendence was much more casual. The audience would feel free to come late, leave early and wander in and out during the performances. They weren't the (somewhat) more disciplined things they are today. And let's not talk about the length of Meistersinger!!!! I'd rather see the ballet music lifted out and used on it's own.

Maybe Miranda read the NYTimes this morning and decided "time for a change" Seriously, all good luck to her in her future endeavors!

An artist willing to take risks in order to grow! Shades of Nureyev and Barsyknikov! Good for her. Perhaps this article could be spun off to start a new thread, not only because of the interest in Ansanelli, but also for the impllications it raises about styles, training, etc. I thought it was a very heartening interview , too. I was surprised to see how Ansanelli had expanded her range when I saw her last Summer with the RB in DC. Evidently she is still working very hard at this. I give her great credit. Think of the range of styles she'll be able to encompass!

This seems to be evolving into one of those situation defined by the saw "there is no such thing as BAD publicity" (at least for Alagna)

Back in 2004, the NYPL at Lincoln Center had a wonderful tribute to Margot Fonteyn. Many photos from all periods in her career but also a few videos, which ran all the time. There were also exhibitions of some of her costunes as well as her personal clothing and finally lots of memorabilia. It was a lovely tribute and the photos were the core.

This is delivered with a very strong Southern accent. "Ahh jus washed mah hehr" I think this was the last movie Davis made under her longterm Warner Bros contract. From then on she mostly freelanced. Sorry if this went a bit

Yeah, Decca, La Scala, and Alagna are all threatening lawsuits. It will be interesting to see if Alagna enters the theater for the next performance (I think Thursday). Can Decca issue the DVD? Maybe if they have enough rehearsal footage to provide alternate material to what was taped at the prima. Think of the publicity it already has!!!!! It seems like Bolle came out of this mess the best, publicity wise, at least from what I've read

Ha, I was driving around Jersey City last night, soooort of lost. But I went by the Hyatt Regency and thought "this looks pretty nice". And the PATH into Manhattan ; and as Cabro notes , it's a fast pretty quick. I use the PATH a lot these days to get into Manhattan from NJ.

The Wild Boy? The Wild Boy! I thought it was gone forever... I thought the same about The Combat!!!! It just goes to show you that you never know.

Agree on Benjamin. I like this DVD a lot. And Carlos Acosta is Franz.