volcanohunter
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Posts posted by volcanohunter
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Thank you, silvermash. You've reassured me that the system works as advertised and that my chances of success are quite good.
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I wonder whether anyone could give me some advice about this. I've never dealt with ticket returns or exchanges at the Royal Opera House. This is what the ROH web site tells me, but I would appreciate insight from people with first-hand experience with returns and exchanges.
Can I exchange tickets?
Exchanges can be made to tickets within the same price band or higher and are subject to availability. You may only request an exchange by telephone or in person, for productions in a Season that is open for public sale. Successful exchanges are subject to a £2 fee per ticket exchanged plus the cost of the new tickets. The original tickets must be returned to the Box Office no later than three working days prior to the performance; these tickets would then be fully refunded to the original purchaser. Exchanges are not permitted within three working days prior to the performance. Please note that tickets to productions by The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera cannot be exchanged with tickets to productions by visiting Companies.
If returning a ticket for a Saturday or Sunday / Bank Holiday performance, the ticket must reach us in the post on the Friday as we have no deliveries on weekends or Bank Holidays. Otherwise, customers need to return unwanted tickets in person.
Can you sell a ticket for me if I no longer need it?The Royal Opera House cannot guarantee the sale of any tickets returned to the Box Office regardless of ticket availability and/or demand. Returned tickets will only be offered for re-sale with the authorisation of the original purchaser. Returned tickets will only be made available for re-sale at the management’s discretion, providing that the original tickets are returned in good time prior to the performance. If returning a ticket for a Saturday or Sunday / Bank Holiday performance, the ticket must reach us in the post on the Friday as we have no deliveries on weekends or Bank Holidays. Otherwise, customers need to return unwanted tickets in person. Returned tickets are sold subject to customer demand and ONLY if there are no more tickets available in that part of the theatre or in that price band. Returned tickets may be withdrawn from re-sale at any time at the original purchaser’s request and/or at the management’s discretion. Any refunds will be made to the original purchaser. If returned tickets are successfully re-sold, a £2 fee per ticket re-sold will apply. This fee is charged to the original purchaser (the fee does not apply to rehearsal tickets). All refund payments will be made using the original method of payment, where possible, upon the successful re-sale of the returned tickets. Otherwise, a refund cheque in pounds sterling will be issued (except to overseas patrons – please allow up to 28 working days after the performance to receive a cheque).
The Box Office will write to you within 28 working days of the performance if your returned tickets are partially or fully re-sold. If your tickets are not re-sold we will still write to you enclosing the original tickets. If you do not hear from us within 28 working days of the performance, please call the Box Office on +44 (0)20 7304 4000.
Please be aware that there is always an implied risk that your tickets may not be re-sold. The Box Office sometimes receives returns from contractual obligations and other sources near the time of the performance. These tickets are always made available to purchase before tickets returned by individual patrons are offered for re-sale.
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Did she come to NY on tour with POB?
No, she was among the dancers who remained in Paris to dance in Ashton's La Fille mal gardée.
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The Bolshoi is filming a lot of stuff, but it has been slow to reach DVD. Since 2010 they have filmed 15 ballets in HD, but thus far only four have been released commercially, and they're not necessarily the ones I would most like to have. Of the ones still sitting in the vault there are a half dozen I would buy in a heartbeat.
The Bolshoi will give Jewels the HD treatment in January. Just as long as they don't give us Svetlana Zakharova in "Diamonds." Oy.
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It could be an issue if ABT decides to program Swan Lake and/or Don Quixote. Then, for fear that audiences may opt for the Bolshoi production rather than ABT's, the non-compete clause may come into play. But, frankly, I think there would be a risk of audience defection regardless of casting.
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The Bolshoi Theater unveiled its plans for next season today. On the ballet front there will be new productions of Pierre Lacotte's Marco Spada in November, John Neumeier's The Lady of the Camellias in March and the world premiere Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew in July. There will also be a revival of Yuri Grigorovich's The Golden Age in January, though it hasn't exactly been absent from the repertoire. The company last performed the complete ballet in 2009, and in January 2012 a large chunk was performed at a gala celebrating Grigorovich's 85th birthday.
Planned tours include Swan Lake in Singapore on November 17-26, Lost Illusions in Paris on January 4-10, a gala concert in Tromsø on February 1-2, Giselle in Washington, DC, on May 18-25, and Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Spartacus (as well as a concert performance of The Tsar's Bride) in New York on July 12-28. There is also mention of a Japanese tour of Swan Lake, Don Quixote and La Bayadère in November and December, presumably of 2014.
In Moscow, in the meantime, the Paris Opera Ballet will perform Paquita in September, and the Royal Ballet will visit with Manon, Raven Girl and DGV while the Bolshoi is in New York.
The press release in Russian:
http://www.bolshoi.ru/r/6D5270C4-3317-476D-99FD-954604FE7251/plans-238.pdf
P.S. For interested opera fans, the Bolshoi Opera's new productions will include Der fliegende Holländer directed by Peter Konwitschny, Don Carlo directed by Adrian Noble, a double bill of Iolanta and Mavra directed by Irina Brown, a revival of The Tsar's Bride, and Così fan tutte directed by Floris Visser.
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Yes, it's funny that the Bolshoi should have tried to dismiss or diminish the pro-Tsiskaridze protesters for being overwhelmingly female precisely because ballet's audience is predominantly female. We also know from official surveys that women constitute the majority of the audience for all performing arts forms in the United States. Even in the case of jazz music, which proportionally speaking has the largest male audience, women still make up the majority of its patrons. So it's unfortunate that the Bolshoi should have employed a sort of fallacious logic here: Tsiskaridze's fans are women; women are hysterical; Tsiskaridze's fans are merely hysterical. Nothing to see here...
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What a splendid Lescaut he was too.
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How terribly sad. May he rest in peace.
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The other man on the scale is the Bolshoi's general director Anatoly Iksanov. http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/persons/management/1643/ Can't say anything about the flower.
Incidentally, for some reason the Bolshoi press office thought it necessary to point out today in its daily dispatch of news that most of the pro-Tsiskaridze picketers were women. I have no idea what they were trying to imply.
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As of yesterday, the Bolshoi Theater press office is publishing a daily English-language newsletter in PDF format. You can sign up by sending a request to newsletters@bolshoi.ru.
Today's newsletter includes a quote from Sergei Filin, who says that he has no vision in his right eye and about 10% vision in his left eye. The information comes from a statement he made to the ITAR-TASS agency. http://www.itar-tass.com/c9/772823.html
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The POB was releasing a lot of stuff until relatively recently, which makes it all the more mysterious.
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Unfortunately I'm totally ignorant of the economics, but I don't understand why the broadcasts are not available as downloads. You Tube pirates are uploading the stuff anyway, and ballet companies won't make a cent off that. Why not try to control the process instead?
Still, if a broadcast is not shown in certain--or most--countries, and the performance is not made available in any recorded medium, I can understand why YouTube users on both ends of the data stream do what they do.
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The POB routinely films three productions each season for television broadcast. This year, in addition to Don Quixote and The Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler, which were also shown in cinemas, the company filmed the Gillot/Cunningham bill, which probably wasn't considered commercially viable for a cinema broadcast.
I understand why companies believe that movie audiences would rather see a full-evening narrative ballet than a triple bill of plotless works. The obvious problem is that their number is limited. There is a reluctance to repeat repertoire, probably because of an assumption that duplicate performances would be unlikely to sell on the DVD market. So thus far the POB has been slow to re-film anything already out on DVD. I did film a new Don Q this season, and it will film a new Sleeping Beauty next season, but they haven't yet reached the Royal Ballet's willingness to repeat popular repertoire even if there is almost no likelihood of subsequent DVD release. Next season the Royal Ballet will film its fourth Nutcracker, third Sleeping Beauty and third Giselle in less than a decade.
Mind you, POB DVDs traditionally came out on TDK and Opus Arte, and since Arthaus Musik swallowed up TDK and the Royal Opera House bought Opus Arte, there have been practically no new POB releases. The current backlog of unreleased telecasts goes back some five years. This is an extremely frustrating state of affairs.
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Rumor has it that this will not be a new film of La Sylphide at all, but rather a screening of the existing film with Aurélie Dupont and Mathieu Ganio. The distributor's web site does not come right out and say this, but the conductor named is Ermanno Florio, who conducted the previously filmed performance, whereas this year's run is being conducted by Philippe Hui.
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The article states that Lunkina has permanent residence in Canada by virtue of her husband's Canadian citizenship. She requires no visa to live and work in the country and is eligible for virtually any job she likes. (As it stands two-thirds of the company's principals are immigrants to Canada.)
As for the ballerinas who have "paid their dues," I won't name names but they include a dancer whose entrechats don't clear the floor and another who has the flimsiest fouettés I've seen from a principal dancer. Karen Kain is nuts.
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Yet to dance is still her priority and, if as seems likely, a return to the Bolshoi proves impracticable, Lunkina would like to base herself in a company rather than piece together an international career as a freelance artist. “I’m not a ballerina who has to dance at any cost.”
Could that base be the National Ballet? It would certainly be a coup for the company to have Lunkina on the roster, but the prospect is dim.
“I don’t have the budget for an extra principal ballerina,” says Kain. And even if the money was there, Kain explains that with a limited number of performances, accommodating Lunkina would mean denying someone else stage time.
Kain remains sympathetic: “This is her time. It’s a sad situation for a dancer, not being able to practise your art when you’re top of your game.”
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Did the web site originally list Ivanchenko? We sort of assumed he would be in the film because of the trailer, but when the Mariinsky finally posted casting three weeks before broadcast it was with Askerov as Siegfried, and the decision to pair him with Kondaurova may have been made some time earlier than that. Even with adequate rehearsal time the fact remains that Askerov is a young dancer, five years out of school. My guess would be that when the producers considered what giant 3D close-ups would look like, they figured that Ivanchenko would look too mature for a prince officially coming of age and decided to go with Askerov, who is, after all, young, tall, good-looking and photogenic.
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The camera boom and other cameras were just as much in evidence at the Wed. matinee with the identical cast as the 3D broadcast evening and there were no glitches (that I could tell) in the partnering etc. at the matinee performance, certainly no obvious slip ups. In fact, I thought that even some of Kondaurova's solo dancing in Act II may have been a bit stronger at the Wed. matinee. I tend to suspect nerves played a large part in whatever went wrong in the Act II adagio on Thursday night--and whoever's fault it was. And in fact, most of the black swan pas de deux seemed to me a bit better on Thursday night, by which time any nerves may have settled down. But that's just a guess.
Maybe they were just tired. Asking a ballerina to do Swan Lake two days in a row is asking a lot, even of Kondaurova. I realize that emptying out half the orchestra to make room for the crane was a major undertaking and inconvenience, and I also understand that the film crews were not cheap. But since the Mariinsky was going live (or at least same-day) into hundreds of cinemas internationally, you'd think the priority would be the quality of the performance, and to that end perhaps they should have given their leads a day off between filmings.
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On this particular point I can't agree with the source's argument at all. There are plenty of dancers--Aurélie Dupont, Marianela Nuñez, Maria Kowroski and I could go on and on--who don't go globe-trotting much but who don't lack an "international reputation" as a result. This individual may think it's great that Svetlana Zakharova gives only about a third of her performances in Moscow, but I am more inclined to admire Maria Alexandrova for dedicating herself primarily to her home theater. This sort of loyalty shouldn't be besmirched.
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At the Cinderella performance we even saw scuff marks already marking up the wood in front of us on the balustrade of the Belle Etage which seems to indicate that nothing has been done to protect the wood from the inevitable scrape of shoes by people in the first row.
A Russian photo-blogger has documented what he sees as examples of shoddy workmanship on the theater's facade. Some of it looks prematurely damaged, too.
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It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts, whether in fact "double dipping" constitutes forfeiture of a lifetime contract. It strikes me as a very novel concept. If it were possible to terminate the contracts of older performers this way, why would proposals to test for "professional competence" even be necessary? If this "loophole" stands, will dancers opt to protect their permanent contracts by delaying drawing on their pensions?
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In the interest of fairness Ms. Brown should also have published a translation of Elena Andrienko's laudatory interview about Tsiskaridze. She, at least, went on the record.
The situation in which Nikolai now finds himself seems intolerable to me: we cannot afford to squander professionals. We should not hold on to these people; we should aim to be like them and take our example from them, so that future generations can gain experience. I know Nikolai only from his best side. He's a wonderful professional. Kolya is not even 40 years old, he has a lot of strength and energy, he gives himself to his work without holding anything back. I do not understand why it is always necessary to offend professionals, rather than to protect them, so they would not leave for other countries and instead remain here and pass on their experience to their country's younger generation.
http://izvestia.ru/news/551737
Boris Akimov, meanwhile, believes that Tsiskaridze's pupils will adapt to new coaches, noting that Denis Rodkin prepared the parts of Prince Kurbsky and Spartacus with other teachers. Marina Kondratieva reinterated her opinion that what Anzhelina Vorontsova needs is to lose some weight and find a female coach.
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One way of dealing with intermissions is to delay the start of a transmission. When an opera or ballet is broadcast "live" in many countries, the broadcast actually begins with a delay of 30-45 minutes, which often allows for the elimination of intermissions altogether. During the 100th anniversary performance of The Rite of Spring in Paris, conducted by Gergiev, the "live" online transmission actually started 50 minutes later than the announced start time at the theater, and a pre-recorded intermission feature was still included. With Gergiev on the podium I guess the broadcasters wanted to be super sure that there would be no "dead air."
Bolshoi: London 2013 (29 July-17 Aug) @ Royal Opera House
in Bolshoi Ballet
Posted
Here come the Bolshoi cast changes. Merde.