Ed Waffle

The two examples of classic works that had been modernized are A Masked Ball and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Below are two links with reviews of Ballo including one with a photo of the infamous opening scene. http://www.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,...,655612,00.html http://www.musicweb.uk.net/SandH/2002/Feb02/Verdi_masked.htm One problem is that directors don’t think in terms of their audience—like many academic poets currently writing they attempt to impress their peers. If it is shocking and well executed it works. If the production points out an aspect of the work that had been heretofore buried, all the better. That this new approach uncovers something that only the director is capable of seeing is beside the point. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a work many of us have seen many times as a play and also as interpreted for the ballet and opera. It is a standard of the rep, as it should be. It contains some of Shakespeare’s most memorable poetry. (It is the one about the king with the three daughters isn’t it? One of them wants to marry a Montegue but is stabbed on the Ides of March by Sir John Falstaff, who is defended at the trial by Portia?) I am sure that great ideas abound for interpreting it. The other work, Ballo is one that I can’t say much about, since it is the sole work of Verdi’s late period that I don’t like—why I cannot say. It does not, however, deserve the ignominy of the production as described. There are ways to produce works from hundreds of years ago that actually serve the creative genius at their core while not insisting on performance practice ossified in past decades. Don Giovanni set in Spanish Harlem did not work, possibly because it is such a dense work that Mozart and Da Ponte simple overwhelm any attempt to tamper with it. The Don Giovanni described in the linked reviews sounds disgusting and over the top. Rigoletto set in Little Italy on the Lower East Side of New York worked quite well. The director showed that Verdi’s idea of a Renaissance princely court full of intrigue, backstabbing, sexual violence and general loathsomeness could be transported to the circle of a Mafia don. I don’t think that updating as such isn’t bad—just updating for its own sake, or because you can do it is.

I hope that CBC covers the lighting of the ceremonial bong at the snowboarding half-pipe venue.

Praising The Red Shoesto this forum is like carrying coals to Newcastle, preaching to the choir or some other extraneous endeavor. However, having just watched it from beginning to end for the first time in years, I found once again it to be a revelation and worth an afternoon or evening. It works as a tragic love story as well as a movie centering on ballet and is a great example how filmmaking in the middle of the last century differs from what is done now. Character development and exposition are done at what now seems to be a leisurely pace, but are extremely effective. There is time and space for extended ballet sequences, and not only the “Red Shoes” ballet. Characters that are both outlandish and believable—and not believable to those who might have known or read about ballet in the distant past, but also because Boris Lermantov, Julian Craster and Victoria Page were presented as people we became involved with and cared about. Structurally it is allegorical with Lermantov representing total commitment to art and Page as innocence corrupted but finally redeemed in death. I would think that Lermantov also stood for Diaghilev. So in addition to characters, both are types and are beautifully realized by the actors and the script. Could Irina Boronskaja have been Nijinsky, at least in being fired for marrying?. The special effects, especially those done optically when Victoria Page was looking into the audience from the stage and seeing a crashing ocean, or Craster, the conductor, rise from the pit and partner her are stunning. When Grischa Ljubov partners her as a man made of newspapers it is astonishing. I won’t comment on the dancing. Moira Shearer is stunning, of course, with the great mane of red hair and seeing Leonide Massine is a revelation. If you haven’t seen this movie in a while it may still surprise you.

My initial response was "You mean there are people who don't cry at the ballet?" For me there are a few situations that will always do it, but often not related to the dramatic situation being portrayed. I fall in Farrell Fan's second category, tears of happiness at a glorious performance. Just the privilege of being in the same room (albiet a very large room) as a ballerina doing almost anything sometimes will bring at least a catch to my throat. I love ballerinas--on stage they are as close to perfect as a human being can be. I once teared up just watching Karen Kain breathe--she had just finished a very athletic solo in "Don Q" and was standing at stage right, downstage, holding a rock solid position watching some peasants cavort while hitting about 25 deep breaths per minute. Much of "Prodigal Son", "Dark Elegies" Gisele's death, the Adagio from "Swan Lake", actually a lot of stuff will move me to tears or close to them. When I was much younger, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Mahler would do it, and almost any good performance of the late Beethoven quartets, especially op. 127 still will do so. My Italian is terrible and my German non-existant, so I am not put off by the often poor diction which seems to abound in opera houses. There are two specific scenes, one in "Rigoletto" and one in "Fidelio" that always move me to tears--every time I see them, even in relatively poorly sung or acted productions. And I am a stoic compared to my wife, but that is another story. [ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Waffle ]

My initial thoughts were recasting Tonight We Sing. Hurok defined the term impressario. He had contacts all over the world and seemed to give excellent value for the money he made. He also had a strong sense of who was important. As I remember the hoardings in front of the Auditorium Theater in Chicago those many years ago, "Sol Hurok Presents" was generally in larger type than anything else, including the featured soloist or company. There isn't anyone like him now. The movie itself is an artifact of the days when filmgoers would pay to see ballet dancers dance and opera singers sing--possibly as part of a double feature with a gangster or cowboy picture.

Recently unearthed a tape I made from the American Movie Classics broadcast of Tonight We Sing a biopic portraying in Hollywood terms the life of impresario Sol Hurok. The tape itself is quite dark and the sound is thin. The highlight is Tamara Toumanova dancing (I think) the adagio from Swan Lake. I will watch it a few more times, but Toumanova, who portrays Anna Pavlova, seems to be grace personified in this snippet. She is as one with the music as anything I have ever seen. She must have been enthralling in person and it is great that this filmed evidence exists. There is also a scene between David Wayne, playing Hurok and Toumanova in Pavlova’s dressing room. It was hard to concentrate on the dialogue, since Wayne was doing a very broad Russian Jewish accent and Toumanova’s voice, no doubt dubbed, was uninflected Standard English. Part of the fun of movies like these is casting them with today’s performers—and in this case, deciding who would play the players. For example, Toumanova. I would suggest Susan Jaffe, but only because I would suggest Ms. Jaffe for any role in anything that involved ballet. Those who know more about both current dancers those of bygone ages will have better suggestions. Enzio Pinza was Feodor Chaliapin in the movie—Currently, perhaps, Bryn Terfel would play Pinza. Isaac Stern was Eugene Ysaye—I would nominate Anne Sofie Mutter for Stern, or at least as an appropriately gender bent violinist. Roberta Peters played Elsa Valdine—how about Sumi Jo as Roberta? And Jan Peerce was the voice of Gregory Lawrence—I think Ben Heppner would be an acceptable Peerce. By the way, both Ms. Valdine and Mr. Lawrence are unknown to me as singers—there may have been rights problems with sopranos and tenors, and not violinists and basses, so they were created as suitable stand-ins.

A quick note to Brendan McCarthy and Mashinka (with apologies, if appropriate, to Alexandra). I can see where the last paragraph of the post in question can be seen as anti-Irish or anti-Irish dance, which it wasn’t meant to be. Four of my great-grandparents were born in the Emerald Isle and the neighborhood in which I grew up on the South Side of Chicago was an Irish enclave surrounded by other ethnic-American enclaves (Greek, Mexican, African). The faux-Irish “entertainment” that has flooded the U. S. in the past few decades is what I would exclude, with Michael Flately being just the worst example.

If I were to hit the lottery or discover I had been switched at birth with a Rockefeller.... First, buy an opera house. Actually buy some existing building, gut it and create performance, rehearsal, school and administrative space within it. The Edward Waffle Opera House would be the basis for everything to come. The first person hired (after the architect and general contractor) would be the music director. She would have led from both pit and on the podium, would be respected by singers and soloists throughout the world and would have had significant orchestra building experience. The music director would be in charge of opera programming as well as the occasional symphony type series. She would be responsible for creating an orchestra that can play on stage as well as in the pit. Since even lottery winnings are limited, the band would not be as large as the typical symphony orchestra—the permanent roster of players would be large enough for Mozart, with free-lancers being hired as necessary when we programmed, for example, Strauss. Her principal assistant would be responsible for the opera chorus and have some conducting opportunities. The general director of the ballet company would be the next person hired. He will be a choreographer with a distinct style (one that I like) who will have artistic control of all matters involving dance. He will hire the dancers in the initial company and be responsible for employing ballet masters to insure continuing quality. Not sure if we will have a school or affiliate with a few in the area. The autumn opera season will run from the last week of September until the week before Thanksgiving. It will be run on the stagione system, with each work being presented for two or three weeks. The music director will program the season, with veto power from her boss (me). Scheduling Wozzek, Lulu, Mathis der Maler and From the House of the Dead would be an adventurous and welcome change from typical programming. Producing them one after the other for the fall season would not be a good idea. The day after Thanksgiving, of course, The Nutcracker takes over the stage—and the ballet company would continue to occupy the house through mid-February. January and February programming would be up to the ballet director. At least on three act story ballet would be done, and Valentine’s day (or the weekend closest to it) would be a non-subscription evening of excruciatingly romantic (or Romantic) dance. The opera would be back in business from mid-February until mid-April. On April 15 there will be a production of I Masnadieri (the Robbers) or Il Pirata. Every March 29, on the anniversary of its original production, Fidelio will be given. The ballet season would resume in mid-April and run until the end of May. Swan Lake would be given every year, either in the winter or spring ballet season. Summer would be given over to festival type productions—French Grand Opera as originally presented in Paris, for example—the type of things that only a festival, with long rehearsal time can offer and independent fund raising, can offer. Both the opera and ballet seasons will be scheduled so that chamber music, modern dance and vocal series can be given. There will be at least three concerts with the pit orchestra on stage in works the music director will chose (Beethoven symphonies, Mozart piano concertos, etc.) and at least two concerts featuring the opera chorus, led by the chorus master. The opera house will have one rehearsal space for opera and one for ballet. Each will have an area the same dimensions of the stage. There will be areas for classrooms, administrative offices and other necessary but secondary functions. There will be a smaller theater for lectures, student productions and community activities. It will be available several times per year free of charge to members of the company or employees of the house who wish to produce concerts. Charlotte Church, the Three Tenors or the Lord of the Dance will never play there, nor will any group with the words "Irish" and "Dance" in its name. If this last restriction means we will miss some otherwise wonderful production, so be it.

Kathleen O’Connell’s observations about the audience for "Rigoletto" at the NYCO and some of my experiences here in the Motor City make me think that the acknowledged classics of the rep (or warhorses or "not that again", based on your point of view) may be the best way to get young people to the opera or ballet. Middle Verdi, Puccini, Mozart plus "Carmen" for the lyric stage, "Swan Lake", "Giselle", "Romeo and Juliet" plus some American classics for ballet. Easy stories to follow, big tunes that have been used for commercials and cartoons for years and which have been plundered for crossover hits. "Madame Butterfly" and "La Traviata" sell out in Detroit even on weekday evenings. For Saturday night performances the standards draw lots of younger couples who buy tickets for that show. Our subscription for Saturday nights are in the nosebleed seats—the last ones in a row in the upper balcony without an obstructed view of the stage. One standards nights, the even the obstructed view seats are filled, generally with high school or college age women. On the other hand, more adventurous (for Detroit) programming doesn’t attract the kids. Our matinee subscription is in a much more expensive section of the house. Our immediate neighbors are several seventy-something ladies who have been going to the opera for a long time and have heard many "La Traviata" productions. They were much more enthralled with "Peter Grimes" by Benjamin Britten, a work that played to acres of empty seats at the Detroit Opera House.

Calliope wrote: The first time I went to the ballet was because the orchestra was playing Tchiakovsky, whose music I had fallen in love with. It was the ABT on tour in Chicago and was a LONG time ago. The hook for us was an evening long Pyotr Illych concert--the ballet was a bonus. Whatever his faults, Tchiakovsky is a hyper-romantic master of melody. I am listening to his Op. 50 Piano Trio as I type this. Some bonus--we were hooked on ballet from that evening. At about the same time I read a weekend feature piece in the Chicago Daily news about the "greying of the audience" for serious culture--ballet, opera, symphony, chamber music. I thought it was odd, since many of the people with whom we shared the far reaches of the Auditorium Theater or the Civic Opera House were as young as we were. The ABT still tours, the Lyric Opera is as successful as it ever has been and the Chicago Symphony has been a musical money machine. The Daily News went out of business about 25 years ago. [ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Waffle ]

Lillian wrote: Perish the thought. The tone at BalletAlert would be the least of our worries. It would have been covered like the end of the world. Fox News would have Geraldo Rivera in Salt Lake City and the New York Post would be uncovering links between the offending judges and Bill Clinton. The Nation would show how market capitalism had ruined figure skating while the Wall Street Journal would show that only free enterprise could clean up the mess. The New York Times would assign 37 reporters and eight editors to the story and run ten-thousand word articles with several sidebars each day. CNN would pick up the Times coverage for 15-second snippets. Sports Illustrated would pursue the American version of Jennifer Sale to be the cover girl in the next swimsuit edition. All Congressional investigations of the Enron bankruptcy would cease so that every committee of Congress could demand testimony from everyone involved in the scandal. President Bush would say he could not cancel his state visit to Japan, Korea and China but had temporarily relieved Condolezza Rice of all duties at the National Security Council so that she could co-ordinate an interagency task force to investigate. John Ashcroft would announce an alert and the FBI would detain all foreign nationals involved in judging ice skating. They would be held at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo and not be given prisoner of war status. And that is just the start.

The Olympics now being contested in Salt Lake City cry out for treatment on stage. The events so far could serve as material for a number of libretti for opera or ballet. One approach could be to use the bribery scandals of a few years ago as a prelude. Members of the International Olympic Committee were given college tuition for children, taken on shopping sprees for which bills never arrived and allowed access to huge amounts of plunder not generally available others, all in order to secure their votes for Salt Lake City as the site. The scandal of the judging would be shown as a necessary result of this corruption, with the corrupt officials from both the IOC and the organizing committee appearing later in disguise as skating judges. Lots of dramatic roles. Or, one could focus on Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the French judge. It would have a great role for a ballerina who can dance and act with an extended mad scene. There will also be plenty of room for Ben Stevenson type effects, with Gougne’s demons hurtling around the stage (flying by Foy) accompanied by stobe lights, smoke bombs and fireworks. It would be both ridiculous and sublime, so its structure would mirror, comment upon and even clarify these Winter Games. It would be a self-deconstructing ballet. Both approaches, of course, would have an act devoted to the two pairs of skaters/dancers performing. It would be a choreographic tour de force to have the Canadian pair dance a difficult looking pas de deux but still make it mistake proof for any pair of dancers, since a slip would spoil the verisimilitude necessary in an edifying work. In an opera, there might be a crowd scene with several of the principals singing and a Russian official either meeting or just failing to meet Gougne downstage—it could be left ambiguous, impossible to say if they actually did meet in the tumult of (for example) the melee after the opening ceremonies. Not sure how this would be handled in ballet. Character roles abound. ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta, with his horrible toupee is one. President Bush would be another. A chorus of Canadian reporters would be necessary. This is just a bare outline, but there just has to be a decent libretto here.

dirac writes One could follow the example of Donizetti and Giuseppe Bardini, his librettist in Maria Stuarda. They simply had the two of them cross paths in the courtyard of a castle. Mary, Queen of Scots, is treated with contempt and disdain by Elizabeth; Mary calls her a "vil bastarda" and a stain on the honor of England. Elizabeth summons the guards and swears to be avenged. Works beautifully in the opera, would probably do as well on the ballet stage. That it didn't happen can be overlooked if it is effective theater.

A different view of skating judges, from a judge. A lot of the article rings true and a lot is obviously self-serving. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/olympics/15JUDG.html

Lillian wrote: You are right, I am taking a free ride and shouldn't be critical. As far as NBC goes, I would pay to avoid watching their coverage from what I have heard about it and seen in the past. The Olympics can be a wonderful event to cover and watch, especially sports that get almost no coverage in the U.S. like cross-country skiiing in the winter and rowing in the summer. The CBC remains in a different universe from the U.S. based networks. Additionally, here in southeast Michigan the only radio station I can easily pick up that carries the Saturday afternnon opera from the Met is the CBC from Windsor, Ontario. They carry opera in that time slot year around--an example of what enlightened public policy of government funding for broadcasting. What surprised me most about the controversy over the judging is the depth and breadth of it. Most people in the U. S. are interested in ice skating during the Olympics--every four years interest peaks. But within the relatively small world of top flight competitors, coaches, choreographers and officials this could not have been that great a surprise. That judges could be coerced, bribed or otherwise influenced, that votes might be traded and that the final outcomes determined in advance must not, one would think, have started with this Olympics.

One would think from the tone of the Canadian coverage on Tuesday afternoon and evening that S&P had been ritually slaughtered at center ice. We wanted to see live coverage of speed skating and cross country skiiing. Instead we got the umpteenth rehashing of how terrible it all was and what could be done about it and don't you fell horrible and won't this have a bad effect on all the young skaters coming up. Enough. I don't know a toe pick from a tow truck, but do know any sporting endeavor in which the outcome is based completely on the decision of judges will be subject to the incompetence or corruptibility of the judges. And ice skating may be the only sport that is so based. Diving is judged, but each dive is assigned a degree of difficulty that serves as a multiple of the judges's scores. Prizefighting (my favorite sport) has judges, many of whom are corrupt in one way or another, but a fighter can preempt them by knocking out his opponent. All three medalists were great. For what it is worth, Sale said she brushed a toe pick on the ice during one landing--this may be the "two footed" one that is under discussion here.

Time permitting, you may want to look at (and listen to) the role of Octavian in "Rosenkavalier"--at least the first act. It begins as a standard trouser role. Octavian makes love to the Countess, but then has to disguise himself as a maid, Mariandel. As Mariandel, he (she) must fend off the crude passes of Baron Ochs, the Countess's cousin. So there is a female singer playing a male character who has to impersonate a female.

Not sure if this forum will cover ice dancing, but here is why you won't have to watch to know the finishing order of the "competitors" This url actually works if you cut and paste it into your address window. If not, the article is below. http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMA...ral&vg=BigAdVar iableGenerator&slug=wxfida&date=20020212&archive=OLYMPIC&site=OLYMPICHome&ad_page_name= BY BEVERLEY SMITH Salt Lake City -- The outcome of the Olympic ice dancing competition has already been determined, sources believe, and Canadian champions Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz will likely be shut out of the medals. Allegations of prejudging and deal-making have been made in the past, such as four years ago at the Nagano Games, where the nine-time Canadian champions finished fourth. This time, they are slotted for fifth place behind Italy, Russia, France and Lithuania. Some expected a last-minute push to get the Russian ice dancers, Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh, into position for the gold ahead of Italians Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio on Friday if Elena Berezhnaia and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia hadn't won gold in the pairs event last night. The Canadians will face trouble right from the start, when a group of judges will agree to try to force Bourne and Kraatz into fifth place after the first compulsory dance. Canada does not have a judge on the panel. The draw for judges was made three months ago and also excluded the United States and France. Continuing allegations of improper judging led Richard Pound of Montreal, a former vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, to call again in December for the removal of ice dancing from the Olympic program. He first suggested dropping dance from the Olympics in 1998, after judging scandals marred the event in Nagano. Pound, who is aware that judging is still an issue, suggests replacing the ice-dancing competition with a team event, including men's, women's and pairs skaters, in a format similar to a gymnastics team event. He said there are fewer problems with singles and pairs skating. "The competitions are won on the ice and not in clandestine meetings before the event takes place." The Salt Lake competition will have judges from Russia, Italy, Israel, Ukraine, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria and Poland. On the panel is Yuri Balkov, the Ukrainian judge who rattled off the order of finish before the free dance at the Nagano Games to Canadian judge Jean Senft, who recorded the conversation. When Senft presented the evidence to the International Skating Union, she was suspended along with Balkov. Balkov showed up at the world championships in Vancouver last March and managed to get accreditation and take over from another Ukrainian judge. The only competition that seemed to break the alleged mould of predetermined judging was the Grand Prix Final in Kitchener, Ont., in December. Five of the seven judges placed French skaters Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat first after the first free dance and Bourne and Kraatz first after the second. Bourne and Kraatz ended up winning the event, while the reigning world champions, Fusar-Poli and Margaglio of Italy, were placed fourth after skating the same program that won them the world title. The five judges at Kitchener were asked to write multiple letters of explanation by Russian referee Alexander Gorshkov, who will also referee the dance event at Salt Lake. There was no Russian judge on the panel for the Grand Prix Final. A Russian substitute judge placed the Italians first in all segments of the Grand Prix Final competition, but his vote didn't count. Gorshkov's placements also put the Italians first overall. The president of the International Skating Union, Ottavio Cinquanta, was said to be very annoyed that Fusar-Poli and Margaglio weren't on the medals podium at the Grand Prix Final. Cinquanta, an Italian, lives in Milan, where the Italian dancers train.

Alexandra wrote: “Conductors, too, can make a difference.” A huge difference. After the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater performed Ben Stevenson’s “Dracula” in Motown a few years ago I spoke with a member of the Michigan Opera Theater Orchestra who had been in the pit for all the rehearsals and performances. He is a very skilled musician with years of experience in playing and teaching and also runs a chamber group in the Detroit area. He had high praise for Akira Endo, the conductor with the PBT—which was doubly interesting, since he also had contempt for the music. The music is “by Liszt, arranged by John Lanchberry and I cannot remember a single bar of it. The MOT pit band (which is quite good) played this score as well as they could, due largely to the efforts of the conductor. I have heard them hack through the scores for other ballets as if they were sight reading (some may have been) but also make the great Tchiakowsky and Stravinsky masterpieces sound divine. One big problem with music in ballet, of course, is that it is just accompaniment. This is very different from opera—or at least most of the standard rep. In the works for the lyric theater of Wagner, later Verdi, Strauss, Bizet, and Tchiakowsky, the orchestra was as important as any of the singers. In great opera the music from the pit can contradict, reinforce or even comment on the words and vocal line of the singer at key moments. Some of the best orchestral writing Verdi did was for the ballets for operas at the Paris Opera. The intra-act music for “Carmen” is played at symphony concerts. The importance of the orchestra in opera also gives the conductor pride of place. He will win almost any artistic fight, since he controls the tempo, tone and most importantly the volume of sound coming from the pit. He decides which edition of the score will be used, if interpolated high notes will be taken (always a major point with singers and audiences) and if a singer will be heard as she wishes to be. While there are leaders who are just timebeaters, they are the exception. Which is not to say all opera conductors are good, just that almost all of them are assertive and in control. Less so, I would think, in ballet. Alexandra also wrote “… the audience for the arts has become more segmented -- dance people only seeing dance, etc. -- rather than the goodolddays audience where "cultured people" (banned phrase) attended theater, ballet, concerts, opera and therefore had a more universal standard for things like music, design and acting.” This has the ring of truth, even though the “goodolddays” probably weren’t really as good as we would like to think. Audiences have been specialized or segmented for a Opera long time—I know people who have gone to the Metropolitan three or four times a week for thirty years and have never been to a ballet performance—but it does seem that we will put up with substandard aspects of a performance if the core parts of it are intact. The real test of the importance of music in ballet, though, is the use of taped music—here it is obviously no more than accompaniment. It isn’t done in opera—very small organizations or student productions will have a piano reduction of the score. Other than ballet there are few artistic endeavors that involve music in which taped music is accepted.

A few notes concerning yesterday evening’s pairs short program on CBC. Unless something horrible happens on Monday, either Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze or Salé and Pelletier will have the gold medal around their necks. They seem to be the class of the competition. While Shen and Zhao are a thrilling team, what is considered artistry in pairs figure skating is missing in their routine. The Chinese are still just filling time and space between the jumps, spins and throws. They will probably get a LOT better. They remind me a bit of the great Japanese singles skater Midori Ito when she first burst upon the scene in Calgary. Not so much in attitude but in athleticism and almost unlimited potential. Paul Martini, one of the CBC commentators, said that the U. S. media was putting too much pressure on Ina and Zimmerman, the leading U. S. pair, by writing and broadcasting that the Americans were favored to be on the medal podium. One of the most heartfelt, unrehearsed but still controlled screams I have ever heard came from Barbara Underhill when the Canadian pair collapsed to the ice at the end. The CBC were their usual balanced selves in commenting on the action but they have a strong rooting interest in Salé and Pelletier. That one lift toward the end of the Canadians' routine was the highlight of the evening for me—especially when it was shown in slow motion. They covered a lot of ice and at the very end, it looked as if she simply dove toward the ice, to be caught be her partner at the last minute. Great theater.

Regarding Jeannie's remarks on Candadian TV coverage of the Olympic Games: The Olympic coverage available in Canada and the northern United States from CBC is quite different and in my opinion superior to that offered by the U. S. networks. While the Canadians are beginning to adopt some of the worst parts of the U. S. packages—for example the generally egregious, intrusive and uninformative "Up Close and Personal" profiles of athletes—their main focus remains the competition. What they do best is point a camera at an event and describe what is or has happened. And the “has” happened is one of the joys of our northern neighbors’ coverage of figure skating. They don’t do a running commentary during the skating itself. You just get the image and the music. Afterwards they describe what they think is important, generally with taped highlights. The Canadian commentators are Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini, who are excellent. Those of us on this board old enough to remember the 1980 Winter Games (or was it 1984?) will recall the horrific collapse they had during the long program. Underhill fell during a side by side spin, then somehow undercut Martini, who was still spinning, so that he fell and both were tangled on the ice. It was a disaster of astonishing proportions and one that must have been very difficult to recover from. I think they actually got back up and finished the program. Another wonderful aspect of watching Canadian coverage is that good sportsmanship is still important. A typical U. S. interview after an event in, for example, track and field, might begin something like this: “Well, Carl, you won your third gold medal of these games by setting a new Olympic record in the 100 meter sprint. However, you didn’t break your own world record over that distance. How disappointed are you with that?” A Canadian interview would be more along the lines of “While you didn’t quite get into the medal round for the 100 yard sprint, you still ran a personal best in the semi-finals. You must be pleased with that—how do you plan to build on that for the future?” So if you are in Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle or other areas that regularly get Canadian TV coverage you are in for a treat. I had planned to skip most of the Winter Games coverage this quadrennial, but a broken fifth metatarsal (ouch) is keeping me much closer to the television than planned. I haven’t been following the competitions at different venues leading up to the Games, so will be watching from a less informed but possibly fresher point of view. Lots of information about figure skating in general and the Canadian team specifically at http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/sports/figure-skating/

This is from an opera list I read. It is from the International Herald Tribune, but I was unable to find a link to the article at that site. **A Russian composer has drawn inspiration from the Monica Lewinsky affair for an opera based at the Kremlin. The Saratov Opera has agreed to show "Monica in the Kremlin" by Vitali Okorokov, who said the penultimate scene of the opera will be when Lewinsky meets with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and is revealed to be a double agent working for the KGB and the CIA.** There is one from an Indian news site: http://headlines.sify.com/530news3.html This is even better (because true) than the parody opera based on "Don Giovanni" with Bill Clinton as the Don, James Carville as Leporello, Monica Lewinsky as Zerlina, etc.

This is Sergei Prokofyev from beyond the grave. You might have missed the fact that I died, since another Russian of some note (not a musician) shuffled off this mortal coil on the same damned day as did I. [ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Waffle ]

This is Sergei Prokofyev from beyond the grave. You might have missed the fact that I died, since another Russian of some note (not a musician) shuffled off this mortal coil on the same damned day as did I. [ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ed Waffle ]

Leigh and list-- Here is why this is not a good time to even consider a ballet company in your growing, medium sized city: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/nyregion/11BONU.html The world has changed and not for the better. The fact that bonuses are down on Wall Street may not cause many of us to shed a tear, but consider the amount of support for the ABT and NYCB in New York that comes from financial institutions and their employees. And it isn't as if the money saved by the investment banks will be used for something else, like underwriting an Ashton season at the New York State Theater. It just isn't there anymore. The hinterlands, including Sim City, would face the same problems as New York just not in such stark relief. No matter who are the big employers in town, they have been laying people off, cutting back operations and losing money. And will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If companies are dismissing employees, cutting dividends and closing operations (which they are) arts funding will be cut also. It will be difficult to justify keeping a company's name on the local Nutcracker production while laying off the parents of the the kids on stage. The same situation applies to Sim City itself, as well as the county and state in which it is located--tax revenues are down, demands on services are up (income support type expenditures are skyrocketing) so it would be hard to come up with the money for ballet funding. I think this will be a very tough time for any meaningful new funding for ballet or other arts.