richard53dog

OK, here's my take on the two you mentioned. T&V and Diamonds (from Jewels): I think the choreography of either would be fine without costumes (Diamonds less so, but T&V definitely interesting in practice clothes); however, Tchaikovsky's music more or less demands the whole shebang for both of them: women in tutus, men in princely regalia, a chandelier or two. Whenever I see Diamonds -- live or on DVD -- I feel like I should be dressed in a satin ballgown, strappy heels and long white gloves, and it's the music that does it. Rubies could certainly be performed without costumes. Emeralds, certainly not. Emeralds shares with Les Sylphides a combination of music, choreography and costume to create an atmosphere that, as richard53dog points out, would be missing without all the parts. PeggyR makes an interesting point regarding Jewels. While both Emeralds and Diamonds to a greater or lesser degree have an element of an evocation of a past era, Rubies was close to a contemporary period piece when it was new. (Of course 50 years from now, assuming Jewels is still in repertory, Rubies will then have a evocation component, that of the mid 20th century!) Ok, both Jewels and Theme and Variation have a component of calling up a long gone era. But I look at them a bit differently than Les Sylphides. Sylphides to me seems purely a perfumed evocation of the past. Actually, I don't find the choreography all that interesting except that it serves its purpose of being a strongly evocative element that works along with the settings, costumes, and even the slightly artifical attitudes the dancers strike. The Balanchine pieces are a bit different. The choreography is very prominent and very complex, even Emeralds which shares (roughly) it's "period" with Sylphides. So while I see no reason to do Jewels without the costumes, I believe the sets are expendable. Same with T&V . I just think the choreography is a weightier component in the Balanchine pieces than Les Sylphides which is a very careful balance of elements.

Sounds like there may be a Cinderella in the works. I wonder if they will revive the Kudelka version or do something different. As I recall both Reyes and Abrera had big successes with the Kudelka. And it's something that Julie Kent should still be able to be able to do a fine job with. (Hearing the inevitable but still sad news of Carreno's upcomming retirement, I thought of Julie; I think she is the only 40+ year old principal left in the company)

innopac, I don't follow Intermezzo's blog all that closely but from the somewhat secondhand information I had, the issue was over images rather than videos; photos and production sketches of an upcomming production of Adriana Lecovreur. Not that there is all that much difference in principle. The letter from the ROH legal team was rather sloppy with some obvious mispellings including a reference to the "Royal Opera Hose(!)" In any event there was a significant amount of complaint directed to the ROH and the ROH has issued an apology to Intermezzo. Personally I think it is rather short sided to attack blogs, particularly those with a good reputation and large following. The lawyers tend to come off as bullies, particularly when the blogger has no financial interest in the information posted on the blog. It would be one thing if Intermezzo was charging 20p for a look at the set and costume sketches but that's not the case here. A few years ago, La Scala went after the Milan based blogger operachic because she used the La Scala official header as the header for her blog. I can see that one a bit more, it was similar to unauthorized use of a trademark. Going back a few more years to the opening years of this century, the MET's lawyers went after a fan website that provided Met historical information such as a list of all the MEt broadcasts and telecasts going back to 1931. Again the legal team came off as thugs, the website owner was merely a fan and was only displaying information that was available in the public domain. I myself wrote an email to the MEt board complaining about the heavy handed, thuggish behavior of their legal team and as in the Intermezzo case, they apologized. I think there is a lack of real understanding on just how important some of these really widely read blogs are. They do a lot to stimulate interest and in most cases there is no financial gain to be had by the blogger. To be sure, these performing arts outfits need to protect themselves and their copyright/trademark information and images but it becomes a very, very fine line. The ROH press release of their apology to Intermezzo follows: http://www.roh.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Press_and_Media/Press_Releases/INTERMEZZO.pdf

I think Sylphides needs the costumes and settings. It's really a bit of an artificial piece in that it is an early 20th century evocation of an earlier era. The whole thing is designed to call up an image of Romantic Ballet and the settings and costumes are an important component in giving the viewer a peak into that long gone era.

No, not necessarily. And that was the point I was hoping to make. Sometimes the very edgy opera directors such as Neuenfels accomplish as little in bringing an ensemble of singers into a motived, electric dramatically motivated performers as the very old fashioned, "motions by the book" directors. Some of the Konzept productions end up all novelty and little else with performers mugging and jiggling as they would in a high school pageant. And this is as counterproductive as having an assistant stage director trying to traffic the cast on and off the stage based on the production book from a premiere 23 years earlier. I consider both extremes here uninteresting and really not worth my time although what does happen is a performer (such as Lloyd) taking matters in their own hands and at least illuminating their own piece of the puzzle. But how much better to see a whole cast that can interact in this way. And that's what I'm looking for and I'm not so concerned about the physical attributes of a production as I am about the electricity provided by a cast of singers that are all dramatically alive and working together to truly bring a piece to life. To tell the truth, I'm willing to take less than really thrilling singing if this happens. To cite an example, about a dozen years ago, my Met subscription yielded a new production of Eugene Onegin production that was directed by Robert Carsen and included pretty much a Met "a" cast except for the Lensky, who was the cover (and much less known in those days) Clifton Forbis . The ensemble was beautifully directed and the production was pretty minimalistic rather than traditional although not at all polarized, and I was pretty much swept away by both the dramatic energy and the fine singing of the cast. And I wasn't not that bothered by getting the cover Lensky rather than the much starrier Shicoff, the role is not that long. But I left the performance most impressed by Forbis. Evidently Carsen had mined a vein in Forbis (the cover often figures prominently in rehearsals of new productions that the lead performers get "excused" from) and had struck gold. With a less than really glamorous voice, Forbis sang a Lensky that was the most tragic and touching I've ever seen in a live Onegin. But the singer has to have the basic vocal goods, no amount of ardent conviction mitigates wobbly or off pitch singing. And I agree with all that posted that in ballet, the original choreography is the really non-negotionable component. But here this idea is really only getting widespread agreement in the last 20 years or so. Prior to that, choreographers felt free to show their own "versions" either closely or loosely based on the original. It would seem that opera got a more authentic treatment than ballet throughout history but even opera was freely messed with up until about 100 years ago. Rimsky rewrote Mussorgsky and Borodin, Wagner rewrote part of Bellin's Norma, Berlioz rewrote Gluck, Richard Strauss added new scenes to Mozart's Idomeneo and Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride and the list goes on and on. I'd love to see a stronger "historical reconstruction" movement in ballet myself. It looked for a while as if the MT was spearheading such a movement but they seem to have recently taken a very different direction, canonizing those K Sergueyev mid 20th century versions. Too bad. It looks like perhaps the Bolshoi might take this up, given a bit of a flurry of reconstructions. I hope so.

Well, let me throw in my thoughts on the first part of your post, based around the interview with Gelb. I think a lot of ridiculous statements are being tossed around today about opera composers "original" intents and their enthusiasm or abhorrence for theatrical creativity with regard to either following or adapting the details described in their librettos. First of all, I think Gelb is erring in even combining Verdi and Puccini, (and Wagner as well as whoever else you might want to add into the mix). the two Italians came from different eras, with different staging conventions and traditions. Puccini came from a period where realistic (or probably more accurately "heightened realism") theater was in fashion. He admired Duse and Bernhardt and was very taken with contemporary theater, ie the Broadway plays of David Belasco. Verdi came from an earlier era where drama was still more stylized. But all of this background aside, I think the only honest answer is that we can have no idea what they would have thought of contemporary stagings of their works such Turandot staged in a modern Chinese take-out restaurant or Hans Neuenfels's bumblebee Nabucco. Or even, to try to rein this in a bit more towards ballet, Don Carlos with the ballet staged as the dream of the pizza delivery boys. Or to switch to the other extreme, Zeffirelli's gaudy Chinatown junkshop production of Turandot where he left the singers to do whatever stage business they wanted to do(or at least were able to do given the constrictions of the bulky costuming) Both composers were men of the theater, and here Gelb is sticking with proven fact. And they both accepted compromises to meet practical theatrical, or in Verdi's case censorship requirements. For example, Verdi reset his Swedish and French royal settings for Boston (Ballo) or Mantua (Rigoletto) to get around censorship issues. And both men tinkered with their pieces after the premieres failed . Puccini reworked Madame Buttterfly over a number of times until it was finally a success. And Verdi also reset La Traviata in the 18th century when the idea of a current day courtesan was too scandalous for modern (mid 19th century) audiences. (La Traviata) All of this sort of goes along with the kind of script (almost surely someone wrote it for him) Gelb cites. On the other hand, there are countless examples of correspondance where the composers wrestle with their librettists or the opera house managers (no real stage directors in those days). But it's just just as much of a conjecture to claim that Verdi or Puccini would have howled with anger if some effect in their libretto wasn't followed exactly. My take is that both were realists , some details were more important to them than others, and both were extremely practical (unlike, to return briefly to him, Wagner). So who really knows? I think neither man envisioned their works still having such prominence in the 21st century, opera in their day was constantly evolving, with new works in new styles constantly appearing. And the idea of an opera house's season based on works more than a hundred years old may have been quite unbelievable to them. 19th century opera house seasons were mostly contemporary works staged in contemporary staging methods. And new operas were usually dropped after their premiere to make way for the next new opera. So again, how can we really guess what these composers would think of some of todays stagings? And how sacrosanct was a particular detail? My own take is that they would be thrilled to see their works still so prominently featured in todays opera houses. And the bottom line is that they would want these modern audiences to relate and respond to their works. Perhaps Puccini would have been horrified to see Tosca omit placing the candles by Scarpia after she has killed him; perhaps he would have said, "Geez, that's old Sarah Bernhardt shtict, it's been done a million times, if it doesn't mean anything anymore, let's change it to something fresh" And this is the very heart of the controversy that Gelb is trying to address. How do you do this? And WHICH segment of the audience do you try to relate to? The very conservative one that is looking for something they are comfortable with or a more progressive one that wants to opera to be dramatically motived and wants to understand what makes the characters evolve the way they do? The very varied makeup of todays opera audiences is far more polarized than it was back in the 19th century. And to add a personal opinion, I am not tied to either sleepily conservative or uber-edgy Konzept productions if the piece fails to connect with me. I want what I see on stage to be ALIVE, however that is accomplished. I would add more on how this relates to ballet and the choreographer's intent, but my post is already too long. Briefly I think it's a different kettle of fish. At this point there is a long, long convention in ballet world to modify the original choregraphy, the characters, even in many cases which music is used. It's only really recently that the idea has taken hold in peoples' minds of what the original version of Swan Lake looked like.

I think my thoughts sort of go along with cmb on this.... I had this video briefly a few years back. It just seemed too creepy for me and I didn't think it was something I thought I would want to return to so I donated the DVD to a library.

I'm no expert on this, but Ballet Theatre didn't do a lot of full length ballets early on did they? Other than Giselle, my understanding was that they mostly did mixed bills. When I saw their Swan Lake for the first time in 1969, I understood it to be still pretty new (ca 1967 or so) and also the first full length staging of the piece they did. Similarly, their Coppelia around this same time, was also pretty new, and their first stab at the piece. Looking at the repertory archive on their website, the only other extended work they did back throughout the 40s and 50s was Fille Mal Gardee, which appeared in various versions. (I saw the Martinez version in 1972 when it premiered and I gathered it was a bit of a distillation on the older versions BT had already done). Also no full length Sleeping Beauty until 1976!

THE NUTCRACKER Choreography....... Little Prince's mime choreographed by Lev Ivanov. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me just say again how much I enjoy this scene....and enjoy the kids in the audience's reaction to it. Too bad it is done in such a clunky and unmusical way by Macaulay Culkin in the filmed version. Almost all the SAB boys that I've seen do this scene do a better job. I also wonder a bit why Balanchine included it. I would have guessed beforehand that he would have omitted it as oldfashioned, as so many others have done. And he often claimed to want to distance himself from "stories" But maybe, once committed to a "story" ballet, he decided to do it as a needed requirement. And he didn't shun mime from MSND and Coppelia either. But I also wonder, as non-sentimental as he appeared to be in most things, if the Prince's number (as well as Candy Cane) was a bit of nostalgia for him?

The think the issue here is that the term "star" is pretty debased. Bristol Palin has had her private life on display in tabloids over the last couple of years , I can't agree that even under the very current meaning she's a star, but I could streach it to "celebrity". I'd rather see "Bristol Palin (on-again, off-again fiance of Levi Johnston, model for Playgirl Magazine...)" but somehow I think that would promote a MASSIVE hissy fit

All in all GREAT NEWS. The more ballet on American TV, the better!

I bought this on DVD a number of years ago and after one viewing put it up for sale on Ebay. Aside from the choreography which I found sort of uninteresting, the physical side of the production seemed very unattractive and even amateurish to me and I couldn't get over the Prince appearing in what looks something like red flannel pajamas!

I haven't heard those recordings. Here's a sample. First an encore (presumably she had warmed up!) from one the 1973-74 tour dates. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvrHxQ3qjAE I find this immensely sad although tickets were sold at very high prices for these concerts so it's possible to be angry also. Callas is in very, very poor shape, parts of the voice were unavailable, pitch was awful, the top was squally and she sang very tentatively as she tried to find something to grab onto to stabilize her sense of line, all to very little success. I was a very young operagoer and I idolized Callas as only the young can be fanatic about their idols but I left the concert dazed and felt almost betrayed. MAny years later I have a different perspective she wasn't doing the concerts for her fans but for her own emotional survival, which sadly didn't work. I have a recording of one of the concerts on the tour where Di Stefano cancelled and Callas went on by herself. She sounded quite a bit better, not really great, but not the the shambles of the video I posted above. This suggests that carrying Di Stefano with all his insecurities and clownish antics took a big toll and without them she could concentrate better. She continued, up until her death, to work on her voice. Occasionally she would go into a theater in Paris where she lived and sing for small groups of friends looking for encouragement and some signs that she might be able to make one more return to the stage. Here's a 1976 (the year before she died) recording of the first part of Beethoven's Ah Perfido, self accompanied. It's certainly not prime Callas but at least it is recognizable as the bold, gutsy singer that she was. While there are a few rough spots here and there she sings with a lot of drive and propulsion. It just seems a world better than all the many clips floating around from those 1973-74 tour dates.

Well, someone had created a stand alone google link for the schedule and I thought it might just be a little easier to use than maneuvering through the links of the Met site. Sometimes they are real straightforward and other times less so. I figured it couldn't hurt!

I came across this link on an opera list I frequent and thought they might be enough people on this board interested in it as well, so here goes: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=j00j366av2qppekuhkotsnm9m0%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

I don't know what she thought. But all her accomplishments seemed to turn to ashes. I saw an interview by Barbara Walters of Callas during that sad last tour and it is SO downbeat and hesitant. The interview was never shown on tv for reasons that were pretty clear to me. She discusses the tour itself, her current singing, and her partnership (the late version) with di Stefano. She seemed like a sad figure who had more or less given up. And when Onassis died a year or two later I think it was more nails in her coffin. She continued to try to work on her voice in those last few years from 1974-1977. A little surprisingly, some privately recorded takes on her singing Ah Perfido and bits of LA Forza del Destino shortly before she died were far more convincing that the sorry, tentative singing she did on that 1973-74 tour, giving evidence that at least part of the problem was that her self-confidence had been devastated. Without an audience, and the albatross that Di Stefano, she sang much more boldly.

I had completely forgotten about the tv version of Ravel's Spellbound Child. Yes, it was during the early 80s, I can place it because I had a vhs tape of it and bought my first videorecorder in late 1979. Just as an aside I remember how horribly expensive the vhs blank tapes were. I used to wait until they were on sale , when they sold for about $15 each. Also very few stores carried them. Most of the time I bought them in Manhattan rather than NJ. I remember one time I needed a tape on short notice to tape some treasure or another (which I've completely forgotten about) and was forced to pay $25 dollars for a blank tape.

I only recently learned (from an earlier post in these forums, most likely) that the Marzipan section represented Denmark. I was under the misapprehension that they were supposed to be French. Also, and this is new to me here, I had thought the Commedia del Arte-inspired Polichinelles were Italian. Nor had I understood that the Flowers were also actually sweets. Carbro...I even knew LESS than that...I didn't even know about the candy canes-(yes, I knew about Balanchine's claim, but wasn't sure about it up until I saw Mel's transcription...My previous experience with the Russian Dance had been Alonso's Three Ivans/Trepak). And that's exactly my point about the ideal reconstruction. In between the candy canes, bonbons, marzipan, icing cake flowers and the rest, along with what I supposed would be self explanatory original costume and set designs, I think this ballet could finally make so much more sense, and the story could finally be "seen" in all its glory... In the 1958 Playhouse 90 telecast of the original Balanchine version I mentioned earlier there is a lot of narration. The way the show is laid out, June Lockheart is telling the story to her small daughter and the dancing is fitted in between the narrative sections. It's a bit annoying for me but was probably done that way to make it a little more accessible to an audience which included a lot of people with no exposure at all to ballet. Anyway, the narrative plays up the delicious, edible quality of all the numbers in the Land of the Sweets. So maybe it wasn't so dumb after all!

I looked up some info in Wiki on the source for the libretto E T Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King . There Clara is described as Clara Stahlbaum. I don't have a feel for how conclusive that info is though. And whatever the original story contained it's pretty much fair game for change in the process of adaptation into another media. Names particularly are very much changeable. I like to see what the original source material shows. To keep this somewhat in the bounds of this forum, I was reminded that the same Hoffmann "Tale" is the source material for Coppelia as well as the Olympia story in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. There the doll is named Olympia, her creater Dr Coppelius, there is no Swanhilda and no Franz. That episode, indeed the entire Offenbach opera, is pretty dark unlike it's much sunnier ballet cousin.

I'm fuzzy on the details but I thought the interference from the Lincoln Center umbrella management was more a hindrance in building a new theater in the new building behind LC on AMsterdam Av. But you may be right in that they jinxed the deal downtown too. Whatever has taken place it seems like there has been a sad long sequence of things that have gone wrong for NYCO. They are a special company to me, I saw my first operas there many, many ,MANY years ago and have always enjoyed the varied rep they've done. Also back in the 60s and 70s there were so many edgy, compelling productions of standard rep; Frank Corsaro's Traviata's , Faust, and Butterfly were terrific takes on bread and butter rep. But I don't think they were ever really all that welcome at Lincoln Center. The theater has always been unsuitable for them and Rudolph Bing at the Met did everything he could to block their move from City Center to Lincoln Center. At this point I'd like to seem them get a break.

Well, whatever the actual mechanics were, it's an unfortunate step for NYCO long term if they are ever to lengthen their performance schedule. If short term it solved the problem of paying the immediate bills, it's still a bit like cannibalizing your young. YEah, you have to eat, but your baby's gone. If it's a permanent arrangement for those prime fall weeks, I think it may very well come down to NYCO either going under or finding a new home.

Well, in a way, it's sort of an easy way to create a spectacle, isn't it? The Carmen I mentioned was one of the late Zefferelli extravaganzas at the point when he no longer bothered much to direct the singers in being potent dramatic figures, resorting to generic spectacle displays. I lost track of how many animals appeared in that production but at that point his "technique" was to load the stage with as much "stuff" as possible and let nature take it's course. To your point, it's far more challenging for someone staging an arts production to concentrate on motivating the (human) performers rather than resorting to the sort of cheesey step of making some poor animal walk across a big, crowded stage with all the lights and noise. But there really in no end to this. I'm not in NYC all that often any more and don't know if it's still as prevalent as it used to be but my heart always went out to the poor carriage horses walking up 10th avenue in the midst of all the traffic, noise, cabs, and polution. Yeah, they look picturesque in Central Park trotting along , pulling a carriage but unfortunately they also have to maneuver along the regular city streets too . And that's not pleasant for anyone, animal or human.

Like the four cavaliers! Exactly. There is no Sugar Plum Cavalier and the SPF is partnered by Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Tea, and Candy Cane (hope I got those all right, I haven't looked at this in a while) But specifically I was surprised at seeing Diana Adams being partnered by Arthur Mitchell on 1958(!!!) national television. This was nothing very unusual for NYCB audiences but quite unusual for national tv in the 50s. He appears very, very black against her very white skin at a time when mostly inter-racial interactions were a very hot potato. In the South, segregation was still very much the norm. I remember as a kid in the early 60s on driving vacations through the southern states and rest room breaks at gas stations. I was a bit bewildered at seeing three bathrooms, men , women, and "colored". I couldn't understand that there were three sexes in North Carolina, South Carolina, etc. Also Miller, in his Coffee number, takes hits on a water pipe. Wow, a bong on 1950s American TV THis was pretty typical of Balanchine , I guess. He was pretty adept at pushing the envelop in his own sort of subtle way. And for all the publicized talk about how "american" he was, I think that was much more a matter of string ties than attitude. At heart I think he retained a European sensability.

This is a lovely synopsis. I really chuckled over the explanation of how the nutcracker broke. What a subtle distinction!

I think that those are ballet slippers. Remember, one of them has to come off. Was that on the original libretto too...? More from wikipedia, from the plot summary from Act 1: A conflict ensues, and when Clara helps the Nutcracker by throwing her shoe at the Mouse King, the Nutcracker seizes his opportunity and stabs him. The mouse dies. (In some productions, she merely grabs the Mouse King by the tail, and in others Clara kills the Mouse King when she throws her slipper at him.) The mice retreat, taking their dead leader with them. The Nutcracker is then transformed into a prince. (In Hoffmann's original story, and in Peter Wright's Royal Ballet 1985 version, the Prince is actually Drosselmeyer's nephew, who had been turned into a Nutcracker by the Mouse King, and all of the events following the Christmas party have been arranged by Drosselmeyer in order to break the spell.) Also, as I understand it, the only part of Balanchine's Nutcracker that seems clearly lifted from the production at the MT was the Prince's mime scene in Act 2. And the Prince mimes Clara taking off her shoe and throwing at the the Mouseking, distracting him so that the Nutcracker can stab him. As the story goes, Balanchine performed the Nutcracker Prince at the MT as a young dancer (Legat was 16-17 at the time he created the role at the 1892 premiere) and so knew the mime scene and recreated it in his version of the ballet. When Balanchine first staged his version of the ballet ( and I think some people would be surprised to see the version shown on TV in 1958 with several very significant and controversial differences than the version that is seen today and which was filmed in the mid 90s with Kistler and Woetzel) he wrote out the mime with the actions scanning the same way the gestures that the Nutcraker uses go. This was published in the playbill for the 50th anniversay season of Balanchine's Nut back in 2004. He ignored conventional syntax and put the words in the order the Prince would need to mime them. So instead of "she threw her slipper" , the order was "she".."slipper" ..."threw" which would be a practical aid for the boy doing the mime scene. I always get a charge when I see the NYCB Nutcracker that the audience, always filled with kids , seems to follow the mime scene easily (and a lot of Russians claim that the mime is incomprehensible) and break out in cheers when the Nutcracker mimes that he has saved the whole world and has finished his story. But then I'm a fan of mime when well done.