papeetepatrick

Have to admit that's pretty irresistible, all long white gloves and the rest. I much prefer it in this environment than in the opera, which I find an irritating and contrived work despite the music. Here. it's as if the Johann Strauss and Lehar waltzes find their fulfillment in the Rosenkavalier, and you don't even have to think of Octavian.

Just spotted this. Never thought of it, but by George, I think it would! But the Wagner music has to be properly treated, none of that horror we heard of hodgepodges of Liszt in 'Mayerling', including that prestissimo Mephisto Waltz: That would have been fine for Mighty Mouse cartoons. Plus, I like very much the idea of an Isolde who is considerably more svelte than Birgit (I know, I know, she's not the only one, but I can't get her out of my mind.) But this opens the possibility of a lot of operas that might be excellent as ballets in themselves, possibly even including something that is developed from ballets already within operas that could be made into fully autonomous pieces (but that runs into difficulties, since the big ones are often for spectacle..) Of Wagner, 'Flying Dutchman' also comes to mind, but I don't much like the idea of that music being arranged, that glorious overture, Senta's aria which follows the spinning girls' delightful song. Maybe not, but Tristan und Isolde--brilliant if someone can figure out how to do it.

Exactly. And none too overstated either.

Absolutely, and although this isn't the right place to say much more about Darci's controversial lateretirement, if somebody knows why she did hang on so long, I'd like to know. I wondered whether she had really wanted to keep dancing long after she would have known she was declining in technique (I noticed it in 2004, but then thought she was wonderful in 2006, so I don't know), or whether there was pressure to keep her because of having been the last of a few of Balanchine dancers back in 2005-2006, and after Nichols, Soto and Boal were gone, she was the only one (as well as the most famous, perhaps, of the four, in having been a kind of muse.)

Yeah, I agree. But especially after she DID go ahead and, clearly out of desire for an opportunity for herself, do the piece, it's tacky to keep talking about how she didn't like the music. That should have been left behind. The way she handled it afterward is even worse than that it apparently failed. Once she worked with the music, she should have shown it respect. Frankly a bit revolting, you know.

Black Swan Waltz (although I don't think it's called that), that's like pure Champagne. And all the Ravel Waltzes in Balanchine's and Ashton's 'La Valse' (they both have 'La Valse', but Balanchine's also has 'Valses Nobles et Sentimentales'.)

I doubt Darci is worried about La Rocco, and maybe not even Toni Bentley. After all, she's already done the Gold Watch Angle, albeit a Movado Commercial Fantasy in which she was 'peering like a blonde widow out of a black web'. What's to worry after somebody's written that about you? That she'll get a Gold Retirement Watch story, replete with overdoing the 'not retiring soon enough' from La Rocco? or maybe ' peering like a black widow out of a blonde wig' from somebody? To give Toni her due, at least she did have that marvelous line 'I remember when the pterodactyls were flying'. That was a great choice of creature for the NYCB Golden Age, especially since Darci was one of the last of those. But NYReview of Books should be ashamed for that paragraph which could be called 'Poor Darci Having Sunk to a Movado Commercial', except that I'm sure Darci doesn't need to be braced for anything after she read that and somehow refrained from suing.

Thanks for that excellent and thorough review, which is like a nice bit of prep work for me. Yes, I'm looking forward to this and esp. Hallberg and Part. Really a great way to finally get familiar with a good chunk of Ashton live, since I've seen so little.

Yes, much like 'Principal' (the label--which some bring more substance to than others.) All the Principals are called 'Principals', but some are definitely more Principal than others. No matter what the 'non-star system' that Balanchine always espoused, Suzanne Farrell was unquestionably the exception--even there. (aside from whether one thinks she's the greatest, etc.) A 'farewell performance' is not the end of someone's life or career even. It was a performance. Nobody reviewed Alicia Alonso's performance at her 90th birthday celebration (although it could well be some sort of 'farewell'), because it was an appearance--it was all about her admirers, worshippers, etc.. Borree can go on to many things. Once you are a Principal at NYCB, all the doors are open to you, whether you got there by talent alone, 'nepotism', or whatever combination or neither. That is quite sufficient for some of us. Borree obviously has a fanbase herself. A 'farewell performance', by the way, is not necesssarily a sad thing anyway, and what does it matter what some critic says (apart from whether or not you agree with what the critic said) if you have confidence in yourself. She danced at NYCB for 22 years (I think I read), that's plenty reward. Not that I think that she should be trashed (or anyone else) just for the doing of it, just that I think if she didn't dance that well in the farewell performance that it ought to be reviewed just like when she danced on any other occasion. Furthermore, it's obvious plenty of Borree's fans were there to support her. So, she wasn't a darling of the critics like Bouder and Mearns and Kowroski, but in Farrell's day, the other ballerinas weren't to quite that degree either. That's life. As for comparing Nilas and Borree, that was just because they are both NYCB Principals who have gotten a lot of criticism and are not usually considered the brightest lights of the company. Such things as this remind me of old conversations of Charles and Diana, they used to use the term 'royal kremlinologists', when you'd hear every tiny piece of trivia taken very seriously by those who knew them, often only very tangentially. I would imagine Ms. Borree has quite a bright future. A review like that is sort of like not winning an Oscar or something: It was already a huge honour to be nominated.

Could also mean she wasn't really a Principal except nominally, though. That's the impression Nilas Martins gives me. Vaguely parallel to A-list and B-list film stars. Some are thought to be 'A-list' and are basically pretty 'B-list' (or there's a whiff of it) if you look hard enough at them. I don't know when that nomenclature got started, but take a couple of old stars like Lana Turner and Tyrone Power. They were both definitely considered to be 'A-List', but there's a big touch of 'B-list' about their very frequent respective banalities when you compare them to Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper. Which doesn't mean the 'Soloists' are not often great, or the B-listers are not sometimes stupendous. Maybe it just means that the 'A-listers' and 'Principals' who aren't great almost all the time are a particular category--which is different from an off-night, which anyone can have--Farrell had them, Nureyev had them... Then there are just B-Listers who are never A-listers but they can be great too: I wouldn't take anything for every single performance I've seen Barbara Nichols do

I don't agree. I thought it was an excellent and thoughtful review. It was a performance just like any other and has always to be reviewed like any other. It is not a 'Features' or 'Publicity Sentimentality' section. And Claudia La Rocco was extremely generous in some of her praise anyway. I've seen Ms. Borree a few times in 2004, she was adequate, just as I thought Jared Angle recently only adequate. What would one want for Nilas Martins's farewell performance? nothing but fulsome praise? I think not, and about 2 years ago Macaulay did point out how it seemed to him rather incredible that both Nilas and Hubbe (I believe this was even before Hubbe announced his departure, but anyway he was still dancing) were doing some of the same roles. The criticisms in recent years by Macaulay and others of NYCB do not seem to me to be ill-advised. I started, like other New Yorkers and especially musicians, with NYCB and Balanchine, which was then an unusual way to get familiar with ballet (now it's not, with many regional companies all populated and run by Balanchine dancers), most people have seen 'Giselle' and the Petipa 'Swan Lake' long before 'Liebeslieder Walzer' and 'Mozartiana'. I'm not sorry I did it the 'less normal' way, because I would not have seen NYCB when it was truly electric--I mean as an institution, I don't mean it doesn't still have great moments and some great dancers. But everything that's been going on at ABT is by now far more alluring to me--you really don't have to do more than read the threads here at BT about Don Q, about Osipova, about Part, about Hallberg, about Corella, about Gomes to see the difference--and I never thought I'd say that. I thought ABT was the 'hokey company' and I don't see that anymore (with exceptions of that 'Swan Lake' and the sets of the SB, whether or not still 'Burger King' in appearance here and there.) I do not any longer think of NYCB as 'my company' the way I used to, but part of what they were always all about is non-sentimental attitudes and less about 'diva allure', etc., not to mention almost anybody that wants to see really great male dancers would go to ABT (I am this weekend), not even bringing into discussion the other 5 or 6 top companies of the world. But Balanchine's stark and modernist attitude still has to apply, and it just doesn't have the charisma it once had. He gave it that, along with his greatest dancers, and that lingered into the mid 80s; it's just not there anymore the way it was. I don't see why the various aspects of this obvious decline should not all be discussed as freely as are those along the lines of infinite complaints about Peter Martins. Not that I think it will help all that much, but if there is still going to be this 'serious NYCB', which it is supposed to be, then it has to prove itself capable of a lot of reversals, and I think moderate criticism on a minor dancer's farewell is hardly inappropriate.

That review is why I went and read the whole Don Q/Osipova thread. I don't think I ever read more of a rave, but didn't post it because I was pretty sure it already had been. Would I ever like to see her! She sounds like something brand-new, like some new variety of comet.

Well, that's all very nice, Natalia, but at least I got to see CUBANMIAMIBOY in Central Park for THREE HOURS, and we had a fine time drinking, eating and generally living up to our reputations as EXEMPLARY BTers! But I do wish I had gotten to this, and leonid's mentioning Alicia at 65 made me remember seeing her 'Carmen' when she was about 60, and yes, that was very magnetic.

sandi--I thought of my mother, who had me at 40, because she was older than the other kids' parents (so was my father, same age), until I was in high school and didn't see it as so strange anymore. A few years ago, I found out my 'half-uncle' and 'half-aunt' were born when my grandmother (my mother's stepmother) was 44 and 46 years old, respectively. I didn't know that was possible except in those 60 Minutes reports about new developments, but that's definitely pretty old to be bearing children, and my 'half-aunt' turned out especially well, so anything can happen with those things.

Happy Birthday, Mme. Alonso! I think it's great that you are all going, and am sure it will be a grand occasion. I still love those clips leonid put up a few weeks ago, of La Fille Mal Gardee and Odile.

Regarding age of the actresses, I only ever saw 3 episodes on some vhs's from the library, and automatically thought Kim Catrall was the only obvious one playing a person, say, 8 years her junior? Is that correct? I had liked her very much (along with the rest of the cast) in the 1993 Oliver Stone/Bruce Wagner miniseries 'Wild Palms', which I think is a visionary TV masterpiece still (amazing venomous perf. by Angie Dickinson), but seems to be largely forgotten (it was very sinister and made you a little sick; there were books at B & N continuing the story, somewhat like a Scientology brochure, one of its themes, but the phenomenon quickly fizzed). Actually, I never saw Catrall in anything but these two things, but that was the only interest in it for me. I can't say I enjoyed the series at all, but that there was one single scene I liked, only one.

Well, that may have to do with whether it's a sense of total freedom or police that ensues... Just wanted to add that one of the charms of this was the way it's shot so that you have to keep working at knowing who's singing, you get the singers and the groundlings very easily confused in these, as they say, 'anti-romantic times'...

But that is what she's doing, and so the second thing you've outlined, more naturalistic, might be finding her way toward 'another music'. She can never meet this music 'on equal terms' no matter what she does, unless she decided it matter more to her than opera-then maybe she could get out in Madison Square Garden or some stadium and fill it out like Annie Lennox does. Then maybe somebody will take it seriously aside from her huge fans. I had somebody shoving her down my throat around 2002 constantly, I'm surprised I ended up liking the few things I've listened to as much as I do, but I don't find her personally charismatic (although she is beautiful visually.) I have yet to hear an opera singer do anything well but B'way and operetta, which are close enough and formal enough. They do not know how to 'swing' as if they were born with it, and that's what it has to have. The term is imperfect, but it's the best we can do. 'Concert music' is sometimes used, but it doesn't cover quite as much, I don't think it includes opera or even ballet music unless performed by just the orchestra in a concert hall. I'm just glad we can agree that it also refers to Haydn, Mozart as the 'classical period' and that the term doesn't get us any more confused than we are. I can't see too much in that argument. And jazz people who "speak simply of 'the music'" are at least as imprecise as 'classical music (the term)', and it even sounds a little 'insider-smug'. Broadway music is not 'classical music' and neither is rock nor r & b nor jazz. What does happen is we get 'classical music for dummies', like much of the minimalist music, which is very often like one refined migraine after another (who'd know that Andriesson's 'De Staat' was about Plato's Republic without reading the programme notes?). In any case, I used to know people who were involved in pop-rock but whose only concert-going was Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Maybe we do have a transition, and the crossover didn't work (although it's considered to have.) And esp. if you talk about pop artists going into classical music as Classical Barbra did, you have a problem because, to a great degree, pop artists cannot even do a bad job of, say, opera singing or lieder. I'm sure Barbra's is presentable and technically adept or she wouldn't have allowed it into the public arena, but even though there are highly skilled jazz pianists, with fingers as good as any classical player, I do remember Gary Giddins in his book from about 2000 talking about the technique of a classical pianist being something that wouldn't automatically follow for a jazz player. And it does work the other way around (at least technically, if not quite as authentically as, say, McCoy Tyner or Red Garland--there are some good, if not great, classical pianists who can do jazz well). Not unlike the technique that modern dancers not trained in ballet just are not going to be able to do. You may have the most superior dance sense and creativity, as Martha Graham did, but there was never any question that we'd see her doing Aurora or Tchai Pas de Deux.

Yes, very cool, because they're the real singers, but dressed just like everybody else--I had to recheck to make sure that really was the Opera Co. of Philadelphia. Sounded great too. First time I've ever liked a flash mob, the ones I've known about just did dumb things, little better than the radical ironing people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/arts/mus...sover.html?8dpc Here's more, for anyone interested. I will read it later and see if there's anything worthwhile in it.

It may well be that performance art does offer a kind of sanctuary for this kind of public masochist, who is sometimes a 'mutilant' as well, like the ones I mentioned, and also Orlan, whom my friend Christian saw and found totally depressing, like she was being dissected. ONe of my best friends here thinks Ms. Abramovic is AWESOME, and these people definitely have their audience. I think what occurs to me more about these types recently is that I don't think they are nearly as profound as I once did (and I never liked the public flagellation), but they're often extremely agressive and 'in-your-face', but some people think this is an 'intense experience'. Clearly, the perf. artists like this themselves think it's 'living intensely', as with Ms. Abramovic telling people they could do anything to her they wanted, and that guy holding the gun. It's all a bit too rich for me, I guess. Theatrical forms of inflicting misery seem contrived to me, it's hard enough to just ponder the oil spill, and one's personality and narcissism has nothing to do with that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/arts/design/31diva.html?hp I don't like a thing about this kind of performance art, have no respect for it, so I'm glad I heard about it from someone who does only 3 days ago (and won't mention it to her), and just now read the above to find out it's closing. Some of Stelarc's performances have interested me, being hung by razor-thin blades through the epidermis of his back over some cross streets of Alphabet City for a few hours nude sounded sort of thrilling for him, maybe some sort of Winged Victory. But he remained intact. The kind I dislike Ms. Abramovic has been involved in too, participants punishing themselves by hurling themselves against walls, Chris Burden lying in shelves for 3 weeks, a man in 1977 inviting guests to a SoHo gallery to watch him cut off his penis and die; another man in the mid-80s doing something like that, but just getting beaten by 80 or so equally pretentious people. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, Marina stabbed herself. maybe that's where Hanneke got the idea for the Piano Teacher. I can't believe these psychotics acting out in public and making a career of it. Mentioned in this was that she was going to do something with Robert Wilson that was the closest thing she'd done yet to 'scripted theater', and that seems to be the only kind of performance artist I respect (and not all of those), but Karen Finley is one of the most thrilling creatures on the whole planet, and I bet her 'George and Martha' (Martha Stewart and George Bush at a hot-sheet motel) that I saw in 2004 was better then any of this morbid business. Tim Miller is good too, but Karen is the best I've ever seen. She was so hilarious I thought I'd have to go to the hospital from laughing so hard--she did this alphabetical 'rose's turn' show-stopper nude, listing all of the things she 'owned' as Martha Stewart, at high-decibel level: 'I GOT BREAKFAST...AND I GOT BRUNCH' and "I GOT CHAIRS...AND I GOT CURTAINS!' I love this woman, she's out of her mind, but in a happy way. Anyway, sorry if I've offended anyone who takes this artist seriously, or maybe even sat across from her. Opera indeed. It was no such thing, whatever else it was. There were 'repeat people' who wanted to be part of this business, I couldn't believe it! She didn't sound all that 'present' or that 'artist' to me, but rather absent. It sounds sort of Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home to me.

http://www.cafefrida.com/Menus.htm I love this for food, atmosphere and service, although I wouldn't go if I was just looking at the website, all in light yellow and white so you can barely read it. I splurged on the Filet, and it is excellent, before going to see NYCB once in 2006, winter. http://www.urbanspoon.com/ps/3/6990/New-Yo...oln-Center.html That link gives you some additional choices, although I've only been to Cafe Fiorello, a very central Lincoln Center place, and which has very good salads. I know someone who worked at Picholine, who said it was marvelous and elegant, probably pretty pricey too. I think she said a lot of the ballet people go there. Gabriel's is popular and trendy with media people (Time Warner), but I've heard the food isn't that good, even though one friend just loves to go there. that reminds me that I recently discovered there is a sort of restaurant that sometimes prides itself on having mediocre food, this I totally do not get nor ever care to: There was one reviewed on the East Side that attracts the city's richest people, and the NYTimes reviewer said the food was barely edible. I guess it's a 'scene' thing. Who needs it? http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/restau...6560/bar-boulud Bound to be great, couldn't resist linking it, 'america's first restaurant centered on terrines'. Sounds too, too good. But Daniel Boulud is the most famous anyway. I hope now he will do one 'centered on rillettes'.

Yes. Tombeau is one of my favourite of all pieces, esp. the Prelude, which is the most ephimeral effervescent thing nearly ever written, and the Minuet, which is almost as ineffable--oh, this music takes you into a secret world. I don't doubt that Balanchine must have loved it too, and I don't know why I've never even seen it on NYCB programs, but probably it was there sometime in the 80s and 90s and I just missed it, don't know.

Thanks, kfw, I thought she sounded best in 'Mad World', but I don't basically buy this. As Tommasini says, she's managed to get this 'indie rock voice', but that is still within the classical realm of cultivating something. I mean, wouldn't you rather hear Kate Bush or the Dixie Chicks any day? There's is theirs, not 'bonsai'ed'. It doesn't come across as natural the way Deborah Harry's does. I thnk opera singers do have their best luck with Broadway, things like Bernstein, Sondheim, R & H, some Gershwin, rarely Ellington, though. TeKanawa's pop things are pretty bad if they're not B'way and even then the batting average is not that great, but at least she never gave the impression of wanting to 'get funky', this doesn't work for me, because you can't not know it's Renee Fleming, so it comes across as something of an ego trip, which is all right, but not that interesting except to her die-hard fans. She's a great opera singer, even if not my favourite. Some of the things I've heard are truly stellar, and she has a smoky sound that is very attractive sometimes. In other cases, as with the big Massenet aria 'Il est doux, il est bon' from 'Herodiade', I've listened to her version and TeKanawa's next to each other, and TeKanawa has the more beautiful timbre for that one. I probably prefer Kiri's voice and personality somewhat, although I can see what attracts people to Fleming. She probably can just afford to do this, and thinks of it as a diversion. It's okay, nothing great. I'd go a step further than Tommasini: I'd say it's not even 'crossover', it's 'classical pop/rock'. This explains what I don't like about the whole concept: Tommasini mentioned Annie Lennox, but I think we can safely say that Ms. Fleming is never going to pull THIS off. Man, does this sound hot: