Klavier

Some random thoughts on the R+J, for which I had three pair of tickets & exchanged the second two pair for repertory.

The main set piece resembles more than a little the restrooms at the Central Park Zoo.

The costumes would look a lot better without that graffiti all over them (as might the set .. well, maybe not).

Robert Fairchild might just grow up to be the dancer I had hoped Angel Corella would turn out to be.

The production and choreography could do with a massive amount of tinkering. Restoring the first curtain to after the balcony scene (& keep II & III together so we don't lose the dreaded streamlining effect) would be a start. Act I seems interminable enough without adding a scene to it & the two marketplace scenes make more sense coming together with the wedding sandwiched in between. They are mirror images & need to be seen together. More differentiation in the choreography for the balcony and bedroom scenes is a must.

It's probably too much to hope for, but Wheeldon's input might bring a hint of romance to the fore.

I agree with most of this, but not with your proposed intermission point. Done that way, only one major event (the meeting of the lovers) occurs in Act One, making whatever follows intermission too rapid and abrupt. To my mind, the mistake was taking a musical-dramatic structure designed for three acts and fitting this square peg into a 2-act round hole. Why not two intermissions? After all, many of the repertory programs have two breaks and the audience is out in 2.5 hours in total.

Not to beat the horse -- and at the risk of being for too long -- I just want to clarify one plot point:

I take your point about Capulet later in the play, but circumstances have changed: Romeo has killed a member of the Capulet family, which is not the best way to score points with one's girlfriend's father. And Juliet is starting to behave very defiantly, to her father's eyes.

But the Capulets don't know that Romeo is involved with Juliet. (Although, of course, the audience does.)

It's the shocking fact of Juliet's defiance alone, for which the parents can think of no other explanation than Tybalt's death, that provokes the parental rage.

Capulet leaps rapidly and direcly from smug pleasure in the deal with Paris to threatening violence against his own daugher. This is, I should think, almost impossible to make plausible for a modern audience. It may, however, explain Prokofiev's chioce of such dark, driving, ominous music for the court dance that introduces the Capulet ball. Big strides for the men. Rigid lines of dancers advancing towards the audience. Perhaps that's all there to tell us something about the brutality that lies just beneath the glamour, hierarchy and formality of the Capulet's world.

This is a little stale by now, but I wanted to get my response in. First, I don't think this kind of discussion is off topic at all, for both Prokofiev and his various choreographers including Martins are using a very familiar play, and how they handle character and incident is inevitably seen in relation to the well-known original.

I don't find Shakespeare's Capulet implausible at all, either. Rather, he seems to me a familiar type: the domineering patriarch or boss figure who is mild one minute and quick to anger the moment his authority is challenged, after which his affability returns with equal rapidity. Since (alas) I work for someone like this, the personality does not seem far-fetched or unrealistic to me in the least.

Your Hobbesian idea, too, of the "brutality that lies just beneath" the Capulet surface sounds more to me like the world of King Lear than of Romeo and Juliet. But even in Lear, amid all the brutality and inhumanity, there are abundant moments of generosity, self-sacrifice, and empathy.

Thanks Dale.

Looks like Hallberg will do SB with Diana. He'll perform it twice on the 9th, first with Gillian and then with Diana.

Then I'll get Hallberg the evening of the 9th. But is that too much for him on one day? Or is the part considered less strenuous than (say) Romeo?

Virtually always, I just pick up the car and head home. Excitement consists of getting the traffic reports on 880 and 1010, then playing whatever CD I've brought along that day. If I use the garage on 59th just west of Columbus I might stop before I hit the road and pick up a snack at Starbuck's.

I know.

In case it missed your mailbox, NYCB is offering registered users of its website a chance to buy $60 orchestra tickets, $40 Third Ring tickets as follows:

If you are not a registered user, perhaps this will spur you to become one.

I just registered, but didn't get any emails from them and don't see any way to get that offer. Apparently, unless you have a clickable link, you still get the ticket page showing list prices even when you log in.

I also found the wobbles by the corps in the shades scene of Bayadere disconcerting - uniformity is critical to the effect. Why can't America's national company find 24 corps girls who can hold an arabesque? Or at least put the ones who can't in the back. I love this company but right about now it looks to me like they need some tough love!

Sounds as if you're echoing some of the complaints by the French viewers when ABT opened with this scene not so long ago in Paris.

The idea that the play could have a happy ending if R and J had behaved differently my be attractive to modern audiences. But is it plalusible in terms of the period?

I think it's plausible in terms of the drama Shakespeare created. (As a Shakespeare professor of mine said regarding the "period," "Shakespeare's understanding is less Elizabethan than Shakespearean.") Of course, there's no way really to know, even had Romeo controlled himself. But consider the timing too: the Mercutio/Tybalt murder occurs immediately after the wedding. I take your point about Capulet later in the play, but circumstances have changed: Romeo has killed a member of the Capulet family, which is not the best way to score points with one's girlfriend's father. And Juliet is starting to behave very defiantly, to her father's eyes.

True, Klavier, but the actual text Martins or any other choreographer is working from is Prokofiev, not Shakespeare. I don’t see why in principle the conception of any character has to conform to Shakespeare’s as long as it makes sense in the context of the story and the score.

Yes, but the post I responded to was discussing Shakespeare, not Prokofiev.

By the 1590s, Shakespeare could assume that his audiences, even the nobles among them, would identify with Juliet, not her authoritarian family.

Let's not forget, though, that Shakespeare's Lord Capulet is by no means as rigidly authoritarian as your statement implies. In conversation with Paris early in the play (before Juliet shows signs of being refractory, and before The Slap), Capulet is much more inclined to take matters slowly and to emphasize that what matters most to him is Juliet's happiness:

PARIS

But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?

CAPULET

But saying o'er what I have said before.

My child is yet a stranger in the world.

She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.

Let two more summers wither in their pride

Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

PARIS

Younger than she are happy mothers made.

CAPULET

And too soon marred are those so early made.

Earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she.

She's the hopeful lady of my earth.

But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart.

My will to her consent is but a part.

An she agreed within her scope of choice,

Lies my consent and fair according voice.

A speech like this, as well as Capulet's refusal to throw Romeo out when he crashes the Capulets' party, is an indication that the young lovers' marriage could have ended more happily had they kept their heads. And Friar Laurence marries the two not because he believes Romeo is truly in love, but because he hopes the match will reconcile their families. But instead, by killing Tybalt to avenge Mercutio's murder, Romeo himself dashes any possibility of a hopeful resolution for himself and Juliet, and the tragic events mount ever higher as the play continues.

Perhaps adding support to NYSusan's suggestion, the slap of Ms. Peck was so alarming that I quickly picked up my binocs to see her face close-up, and was surprised that I saw no redness.

Just back from the Saturday matinee with Pereira and Peiffer, and a few words from me:

1) P+P were an entirely convincing pair of young lovers. She is a tiny little thing, innocence personified; he a gangling, ardent youth (and far better looking in person than his web site photo).

2) I believe the slap was a stage slap. Soto turned his back to the audience when he "slapped" Juliet, and I saw no welts or other marks on her skin. A real slap by Jock Soto would have sent tiny little Erica flying into the orchestra pit.

3) As seen today from orchestra row D center rather than second ring row E, the set fills the stage space better. But seen close up it's if anything uglier.

4) Tybalt's costume still makes him look like a Colorado potato beetle.

5) The Capulet's ball scene today felt long and tedious.

6) The best thing in the whole ballet is the Act One PDD for R+J. The part near the end when R is balancing J on his shoulders, then letting her down, is beautifully imagined.

7) Gwyneth Muller (replacing Dena Abergel) was more convincing as the Nurse than Gina Pazgoquin, perhaps because she looks more mature and Erica even younger than Sterling.

8) Martins seems to have forgotten that Mercutio is not a Montague but the Prince's kinsman. Albert Evans shows no interest in Mercutio on his second entrance, whereas doing so would have given some dimension to what is a stick figure in Martins's version.

9) Martins's bedroom scene for the lovers is a bad mistake, as Juliet shows no reaction to Romeo having killed her cousin. In the play, Juliet hears the news from the nurse and reacts by speaking of Romeo with such oxymoronic epithets as "Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! . . . a damned saint, an honorable villain!" Working some of this emotion into the second PDD would have deepened the tragic irony of the lovers' impossible situation. Instead Martins just settles for more indiscriminate lyricism.

10) I was less annoyed by the 5 little kids than on opening night. At intermission, this being a beautiful spring day, I walked outside and looked down Columbus towards the stage entrance, to see 5 young boys emerge from the stage door, wiping off their makeup. I got a chuckle out of that.

11) This time, the "slap" scene was not so much shocking to me as (frankly) close to farcical. All the mimed gestures reminded me of a silent movie starring the Maiden in Distress. I wasn't convinced at all (especially following point 9).

12) Early in Act I during the duel, Tybalt tosses Mercutio a sword (which on opening night Danny caught but today had to let drop before picking it up). But why on earth would someone toss their unarmed opponent a weapon?

13) Craig Hall was good as Tybalt, but Joaquin snarled far better. (See also point 4 above.)

14) The events of Part II move too quickly in Martins's version, just like too much time is spent on inessential stuff in Part I (see point 10 above). Of important events in Shakespeare, we are given nothing to match Juliet's rejection of the Nurse, Friar Laurence's attempt to get a message to Romeo, Friar John's inability to deliver said message, Romeo's macabre scene with the apothecary who sells him poison, Romeo's failure to check his voice mail or e-mail before offing himself.

15) I'm still a sucker for just about anything Daniel Ulbricht does.

16) Ask LaCour looks even more ridiculous as a Jesuit friar than did Nikolai Hubbe.

17) Poor Jonathan Stafford's Paris is another character Martins treats as little more than one-dimensional.

18) Yes, Macaulay should have not gotten into the Martins/Kistler domestic dispute today.

19) Macaulay would have had a field day had Martins choreographed Othello, as in that play Othello strikes Desdemona, and Iago stabs Emilia to death.

20) Despite all, I was very moved by today's performance. Whether was was due to Pereira, Peiffer, Prokofiev, or all three I can't say.

Not a ballet story, but my oddest "applause" incident occurred in Prague, where I had gone to see Puccini's Tosca (performed in Italian with Czech supertitles). This was in 1996 as I recall, prices were dirt-cheap, and the theater was maybe half full. I remember the sets being utterly meaningless, as if the producers just had three or four sets to choose from and plonked the first one they could think of onstage. The oddest thing was that the tenor got no applause. He was no more horrendous than anyone else that night, but they didn't applaud his aria in Act I, they didn't applaud his aria in Act III, and he got no applause at the end.

Years later I described this bizarre incident to an acquaintance, who remarked, "Was he German?"

I'm curious, Klavier, as to what you thought of these comments from Lobenthal's review:

[1[ ... Musically, Mr. Morris and Gluck are not a perfect fit, because of the choreographer's preference for responding to notes as much as phrases; this approach tends to fracture Gluck's long-breathed melodic line with a gratuitous amount of ticks and twitches. Dance doesn't have to conform to its musical partners, and there can be welcome tension in opposition.

[ ... ]

[2] ... Perhaps it's a question of context: What would be welcome on Mr. Morris's own stage becomes intrusive in this environment.

In honesty, Bart, I don't understand Lobenthal's comment. First he says M+G are not a perfect fit; then he seems to contradict himself by saying dance doesn't have to conform to the music, and there can be tension in the opposition of the two. The fact that the "fit" between collaborators isn't always "perfect" is what makes collaboration interesting. I for one didn't find the dancing intrusive, but seen from the balcony section of the Met's enormous auditorium, what dominated the stage picture was above all the two huge movable bleachers for the chorus, and perhaps if I had been in the orchestra section (which would have cost $300 or so rather than $80), I would have been more conscious of any "intrusiveness" from the dancers. Perhaps drb has more pertinent thoughts.

Photos for the 1st week of Romeo + Juliet are up.

That costume for Jock Soto is absolutely horrible.

By concensus thus far, the outfit for Joaquin De Luz (Tybalt) is winning that particular contest.

Kirkland's appearances have been announced in Sleeping Beauty.

Cool. I'll be seeing Vishneva, Malakhov, and Kirkland all in one night (6/9).

Regarding promotions - wait for an official announcement. The fat lady has not yet sung.

The information I supplied was taken from a published article by the chief critic of the New York Times.

And I'm delighted to wipe all the egg off my face, 'cause the fat lady has weighed in, and Sean got his promotion after all. As did Craig Hall, and Sterling Hyltin and Daniel Ulbricht are now principals. Way to go, guys!!

As for R. Fairchild versus Suozzi's promotion..... I love both dancers, but R. Fairchild is a more diverse dancer...

Is he really? I'll grant you Fairchild has the "romantic lead" dimension (if Sean were an actor or singer, he'd be more a great Tony in West Side Story - Romeo as a feisty kid from the streets), but Suozzi has shown a good deal of range in a variety of featured roles: e.g., Melancholic in 4Ts, Sarabande-Step in Agon, Romeo, Puck, Russian Seasons, Puss in Boots, doubtless more. Has Fairchild matched that?

DanceViewTimes did something rather fascinating: publishing reviews of 3 different casts byi 3 of their regular reviewrs.

Gay Morris (Hylton/Fairchild) is the most positive, finding "many good things" and singling out the sets and costumes for praise.

Susan Reiter (Peck/Suozzi) offers a more mixed review, but finds the production "serviceable and ugly" with a number of lost opportkunities.

And Mary Cargill (Morgan/Ozra) is most skeptical about the project. Her conclusion: "In NYCB's math Romeo + Juliet may equal boffo box office, but it also adds up to an artistic zero."

Here's a LINK to All Three DanceViewTimes Reviews -- a chance to read them side by side and to compare !!!

Ms. Cargill out-Gottliebs Gottlieb:

even Tybalt (Tyler Angle, who in a better world would be a natural Romeo) did the same jumps and beats as everyone else. He just scowled a lot, probably because he was not happy at having to dress like a bright yellow ducky.

The mandolin dance had real children, but also no dramatic sense. Prokofiev wrote it as part of a wedding celebration, and the innocent and happy young couple show Romeo the bright future he thinks will be his, until the tragic fight destroys everything. Martins has done away with this dramatic contrast, and a group of young ballet students (the smallest one barely as big as the mandolin he carries) appear out of nowhere in a calculated, gratuitous, and meaningless show of cuteness

I do recall saying similar things here myself.

--

A quick update this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/arts/dan...e.html?ref=arts

Mr. Macaulay has bravely sat through all four casts for this new production. (Good thing he didn't have to buy his own tickets!) And some surprising news concerning recent promotions. Is Robbie Fairchild really ready for soloist after less than one year in the corps and only one major role? Assuming Macaulay's information is accurate and complete, did a very talented, more seasoned dancer like Sean Suozzi deserve to be passed over yet once more? But be that as it may, one thing I'll say is that the Times seems to have found a new chief dance critic worth one's reading and one's respect.

I am by no means a balletomane and have only been attending regular for 4 or 5 seasons... My presence on BT is to be able to learn more about what I am seeing and what I find so often stunningly beautiful. I was very excited about this production, but was disappointed even with little to compare to except my recollection of the ABT production with Herrera and Hallberg. One doesn't have to be a balletomane to respond to the sets, costumes and how the ballet follows Shakespeare... or how effectively his central themes are presented.

The fight scenes were impressive but not ballet... so in the end there was precious little ballet and lots of other distractions. I don't see this production as a success. It wasn't a disaster... but it was a let down. I liked reading the 3 reviews in DanceView... which in total seem to capture the experience we had. It should be interesting to see the ABT's version in a few weeks again.

Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff are not always faithful to their Shakespearean originals, but they work superbly well on their own terms. I'm not necessarily concerned that the Romeo ballet doesn't follow Shakespeare, so long as it succeeds on its own merits. Of this I'm somewhat skeptical - but seeing the raves given here to Erica Pereira, I will try (Romeo/Benvolio-like; in Shakespeare at least, Mercutio - who is the Prince's kinsman, not a Montague - was in fact invited to that masked ball) to crash that party this Saturday afternoon.

I saw the very young Kathryn Morgan, and beautiful Kathryn Morgan, and the only thing I disliked was Tybalt's costume.

I love Darci's legs.

I think some of you much smarter than I balletomanes have been reading too much Gottlieb..

I'm heading back on Thursday too see Tiler.

Jim

If the implication is that some here are just dry-as-dust intellectuals who are incapable of enjoying something beautiful for the sheer pleasure of it, I don't think that comment is justified. Fact is, no one in the press so far (I have yet to read Gottlieb) has given this production a strongly positive review, and most of the praise both here and in the press has gone to the appealing young dancers rather than to the choreographer or designer.

This site (program notes from BalletMet) gives a useful summary of balletic versions of Romeo and Juliet:

http://www.balletmet.org/Notes/ROMEOAND.HTM

Seen in this light, what Martins has done seems among the least perverse treatments.

if it's beautiful and it works

Yes, that's the whole point. To borrow from Shakespeare's Touchstone, "much virtue in if."

You guys are tempting me. Next Saturday matinee is sold out, I'm expecting a repairman in the morning, but I guess I'll have to tempt fate and beg, borrow, or steal at the door to see this.

I also think the group of five children is artistically valid. After all, there must have been little kids all over Verona.

Sure, and there also must have been horses, donkeys, and pigeons all over Verona too. By that reasoning, it would have been artistically valid to bring on stage a horse, a donkey, and/or a pigeon. Or maybe even a quintet of each.

The point I have been trying to make about those children is that their presence is not artistically valid because it is dramatically irrelevant. They are there solely because SAB has some talented children, and because Martins felt showing them off was more important than developing his story. And in a well-constructed drama all the details, including choice of characters, are present because they contribute to the dramatic action. A dramatic action is necessarily selective; it can't include everything, and everything it includes needs somehow to be dramatically relevant.

Could Martins have used those children in a meaningful way? Possibly. Here's one scenario: two or three Capulet children could have entered from one side of the stage (we can tell they're Capulets because they're all in green, or is it all in red); two or three Montague children enter from the other (we can tell, because they're all in red, or is it green). Maybe we also get Tybalt's little brother in a ghastly yellow outfit with black piping. All these kiddies have their own little duel, to Mercutio's boundless amusement. Romeo, however, having just found Juliet and proposed to marry her (in Shakespeare, remember, Friar Laurence agrees to marry the two not because he is convinced Romeo is in love but because he thinks the marriage will reunite their feuding families), is now in peacemaker mode. He convinces the fighting children to make up and the little episode ends happily.

At least in my scenario the episode helps to illuminate Romeo's character, and it thus has at least some tangential relevance to the action. If Peter Martins is reading BT, let us hope he recasts his children's episode along such lines.

But my proposal is artistically sloppy too, because Romeo's intention of being a peacemaker is used with far more dramatic power in the all-important upcoming scene where he refuses to engage Tybalt in a duel. It is only after Tybalt kills Mercutio that Romeo loses his head completely, slays Tybalt, and by doing so incurs his own exile and sacrifices the possibility of a happy future for himself with Juliet.

And thus my scenario for the children is also artistically invalid, because it is redundant.

No, I'm afraid Martins's use of children fails all possible tests of relevance. They should have stayed home and surfed the Net or played video games.

Marc Morris by the way is planning a version of Romeo and Juliet with a 'Happy Ending'. I really like the idea, but I am already ducking from the feedback I might get from this remark.

And why not? Charles Dickens did it in Nicholas Nickleby in an astonishing redaction ostensibly by the redoutable actor-manager Vincent Crummels for his family acting company. Juliet lives. Romeo lives. Paris lives. Tybalt lives. Mercutio lives. Old Capulet and Old Montague come on to shake hands and everything is peachy-keen!

In a similar vein, in 1687 one Nahum Tate (also librettist of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) rewrote the ending of King Lear so that Cordelia survives and marries Edgar.

Thanks very much, Klavier. Joel Lobenthal takes a more measured view, which sounds plausible. (Meaning no disrespect, Klavier. )

My guess is that someone who isn't in tune with Morris's tone of affectionate irreverence (or irreverent affection) is not going to like this production, just as they might not like his Sylvia. My feeling Morris that he loves these works too much to play them 100% straight, which would just result in a solemn realization, where instead he catches the viewer always a little off guard. The question I have heard raised is "what does this huge panoply of costumed historical figures have to do with Gluck?" And my answer is that they are at once the spirits of the dead that he encounters in the underworld, as well as a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the action. You can get an idea of the set and the choral placement from this page:

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/new...es/contest.aspx

- and if you like you can even enter the Name the Chorister contest. I wonder if anyone will get them all correct.