volcanohunter

Rossini wrote ballet music for the first and third acts of Guillaume/Guglielmo Tell. You'd be looking for the music from the third act. On Lamberto Gardelli's recording of the French version (EMI), you'll find it on CD 3, tracks 8-11 ("Toi que l'oiseau ne suvrait pas"/danse/"Toi que l'oiseau..."/pas de soldats) . On Riccardo Chailly's recording of the Italian version (Decca), it's on disc 3, tracks 4 & 5 ("Quell'agil pie ch'egual non ha"/passo di soldati). On Riccardo Muti's live recording of the Italian version (Philips) it's also on CD 3, tracks 4-5 ("La tua danza si leggera"/passo di soldati). You can hear some pointe shoes on that one. Antonio Pappano's new recording will be out shortly. No doubt the music will be there, too. The original music includes choral singing that doesn't appear in the pas de deux. I'm not sure where you'd find the arrangement Bournonville used. I can tell you that Gardelli's tempi are completely unrealistic. Muti's tempi, since there was actual dancing on stage, are probably the most sensible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vhUnW2GoZs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqqdqAYG1AE

Thank you so much for recounting this incident! I can relate to that child because Coppelia was the second ballet I saw live. To my five-year-old eyes it was utterly enchanting, and like Cristian I still adore it.

José Martinez's Les Enfants du paradis (called Children of Paradise in the U.S.) will be beamed live from the Palais Garnier to cinemas on Saturday, July 9, at 1:30 p.m. ET, or 19.30 Paris time. The scheduled cast: Baptiste Mathieu Ganio Frederick Lemaitre Alessio Carbone Garance Isabelle Ciaravola Nathalie Muriel Zusperreguy Lacenaire Benjamin Pech The Ballerina Nolwenn Daniel The Count Christophe Duquenne Madame Hermine Caroline Bance Desdemone Miteki Kudo http://www.operadeparis.fr/cns11/live/onp/Saison_2010_2011/Ballets/spectacle.php?〈=en The Ballet In Cinema site, which lists screening locations in the United States, is exceedingly difficult to navigate. http://www.balletinc...s-opera-ballet/ So, here are links to the primary locations. Big Cinemas Manhattan Carmike Cinemas (encore screenings on July 20 at 7:30 p.m. local time) Laemmle Theatres Emerging Pictures has not scheduled any further feeds from the POB, so this may be the last chance to see the company at multiplexes for a while. At least this broadcast will take place on a Saturday afternoon, which may help boost audiences. (If the intention was to appeal to the broader public, perhaps Mme. Lefèvre should have programmed something other than in-house choreographers.)

Turner Classic Movies will air Jean-Benoît Lévy's film La mort du cygne, a.k.a. Ballerina, starring Yvette Chauviré and Mia Slavenska, on Monday, June 27, at 6:00 a.m. ET. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3207/Ballerina/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0143749/ The Hollywood remake, The Unfinished Dance, with Margaret O'Brien and Cyd Charisse will follow at 7:30 a.m. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1300/Unfinished-Dance-The/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039938/

Some rehearsal footage of Bart's Coppelia with Gilbert and Heymann http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse_classique/36694/a-l_opera-avec-coppelia-le-17-juin-sur-france-3

It may be that people complained to the Cineplex chain in Canada about the picture quality, and that it was fixed for this screening. It's not the first time I've seen it happen. I'd watched several Opus Arte ballet presentations at a particular venue that looked terrific. But when it came to the Cojocaru/Kobborg/Nuñez Giselle the aspect ratio was suddenly all wrong, and everyone looked very squat, with limbs that looked unnaturally elongated when extended to the side. This was extremely frustrating and continued for several presentations, even though everyone I complained to about it--the multiplex manager, the person organizing the presentations for the movie chain and the people at the company providing the stream--assured me that they'd heard of the problem and were working to fix it. I've since seen all of the offending performances on DVD, and the problem was not in the film itself but in how it had been projected. My guess would be that Coppelia was being filmed with the 16:9 ratio of widescreen television in mind, but was being projected in the wider 1.85:1 or even 2.39:1 ratio typically used for screening movies. You'll have to excuse me since I'm not well versed in the subject, but after the "humpty-dumpty" Giselle had been screened, I mentioned it to my brother-in-law who works in video production, and his best guess was that the aspect ratios of the film and projector didn't match.

I have to agree with you. Her Swanilda is one scary girlfriend, she's so ferocious. (Perhaps it's not that difficult to understand how Franz could be draw to a quiet, bookish girl.) Osipova displays a couple of my pet peeves: raising the leg so high à la seconde that the torso is whacked out of position and the supporting leg is turned in, and a couronne position with elbows locked straight and hands bent at the wrists at almost a 90 degree angle. Of course, she is not unique in this regard; I can point an accusing finger at an awful lot of dancers for doing the same thing. What is unique is her enormous jump, which is literally breathtaking to behold. My non-dancing date came away much more impressed by Vyacheslav Lopatin, and I can't disagree with that either. His jumps are weightless, his turns are silky smooth, and he has a sweet naïveté that's completely right for the role. As I was watching the first act, it occurred to me that this performance would probably become the new standard on video. Though the mazurka looked a little ragged, the csardas looked fantastic. By the second act, though, I wasn't so sure anymore. This had to be the least spooky version of Coppelius' workshop I'd ever seen: a stately sitting room with a few flasks neatly placed on a side table, populated by equally stately looking "dolls." I don't fault Gennadi Yanin in any way, for he must be the least malevolent and most subtle Coppelius I've seen in a very long time, and his acting registered best on the big screen. But being accustomed primarily to descendents of the Royal Ballet production, I found the Bolshoi's mime to be less vivid and less specific than what I'm used to seeing. I gather there's a bit of leeway in this area. During the first intermission Sergei Vikharev explained that while the dance steps in Sergeyev's score are recorded in Stepanov notation, the mime is described in longhand in Russian. In the third act I was really puzzled by having young students of the Bolshoi school as the brides and bridegrooms. Surely pre-pubescent marriage was not the norm in the Austrian Empire. The variations were danced by Anastasia Stashkevich (Dawn), Anna Nikulina (Prayer), Anastasia Yatsenko (Work) and Anna Tikhomirova (Folly). I thought that Nikulina's downcast eyes looked nervous rather than serene. Perhaps she shouldn't have been raising her legs higher than she could comfortably control either. I was also a little thrown by the Folly variation to the valse from the third act of Sylvia, not just because the music was alien to the rest of the score, but because it struck me as an odd symbol to insert into a wedding pas de deux. There were a couple of big improvements over the Bolshoi's stream of Don Quixote a couple of months ago. This time around there was no distortion in the aspect ratio, so everyone looked true to size, and there were no interruptions in the stream itself, so there weren't serious issues with synchronization. I do think there was a tiny discrepancy between picture and sound (heel stamping seemed to occur a split second on screen before it did on the soundtrack), and this presents a challenge in any attempt to broadcast ballet live into cinemas. I also have no complaints about the camera work this time, except perhaps that they followed the dancers in motion so closely that it was impossible to gauge just how quickly they were moving through space, much like the way that close-ups of figure skaters on TV obscure how quickly they're moving over the ice. Hopefully the spelling of "Enricco" Cecchetti will be corrected in the opening credits. I definitely intend to buy a DVD if it comes out. The stream in my city was on a three-hour time delay and was playing at two locations. I'd put attendance at about 35 people where I was, and it had been about the same at the other location for Don Quixote. This time around, though, there were more children in the audience, which is encouraging.

The North American release date is June 28. Amazon has the title filed as Sylphides / Giselle.

I think if you're willing to hold out for the American release, you could get it for a lot less. ICA DVDs sell for $22.49 on Amazon.com, and the release date is usually delayed by only a month.

This is fantastic news!

I vote for the Australian Ballet DVD with Lisa Pavane and Greg Horsman. It has the things you ask for, except perhaps a great orchestra. The Kultur transfer isn't great--it looked better on VHS--and there are practically no chapter breaks, only one for each act. So if you can get hold of the Faveo (Opus Arte) European release, which is a region-free NTSC disc that will play on all North American DVD players, I'd recommend it: better colour and lots of chapter breaks. Mazurka the wheat thing Swanilda and friends Csardas "Coppelia's" Waltz Waltz of the Hours, Dawn & Prayer Brides and Bridegrooms Pas de Deux http://www.kultur.co...use-p/d2114.htm http://www.opusarte....s-coppelia.html

An e-mail from the Martha Graham Center indicates that the online response to the doodle was big.

As of midnight ET the Graham doodle is running on American Google sites.

Owing to the death of Jackie Cooper, the May 13 showing of The Mysterious House of Dr. C. has been pulled in favor of Treasure Island and The Champ.

Yes, indeed. Theoretically, could Cranko's version be revived?

The American release date is May 31.

Carreño, Stiefel, Corella and Beloserkovsky were all imported.

The New Year's DVD with Act III is back at Berkshire Record Outlet for $14. Since shopping via the Amazon search box above supports this board, I should also point out that the DVD is selling there for far less than it once did. http://www.berkshirerecordoutlet.com/search.php?row=0&brocode=140748&stocknum=&submit=Find+Item&text=&filter=all

Lily, there was indeed a separate thread on the screening, but for the life of me I can't find it.

I thought it was quite charming. Naturally, there was narration. Unfortunately, the narrators also recited occasional poems over the music, and, worse yet, sang some lyrics, too. I suppose there's nothing that remains uncorrupted once the film industry gets involved. But I thought there was more than enough to compensate, especially Claudia Corday's delightful heroine. (I was astonished that she could perform such beautiful fouettés while wearing an enormous bouffant.) I'm not at all sold on giving Coppelius a (young!) love interest, but someone must have thought that Walter Slezak couldn't come away empty handed. Personally, I never feel much sympathy for Coppelius, though I know that many people feel that the youngin's are too hard on him. The choreography is credited entirely to Jo Anna Kneeland, though Alicia Markova is listed as an artistic consultant. Much of the ballet was rechoreographed, so I think that's fair. Like the orchestra, the ballet company came from the Liceu, and it was most agreeable to see real ballet dancers on the screen. So often what had passed for ballet in old musicals was beyond cringe-inducing. Here the dancing was presented pretty much straight. The film was shot on 70mm film, and the widescreen picture is spectacular. So, in the U.S. the film was followed by Tales of Hoffmann. In Canada it was followed by Invitation to the Dance. Hooray! That's a lot more ballet than I've seen on TV in a very long time.

The scheduled cast for Coppélia on May 29 is Natalia Osipova as Swanhilda, Vyacheslav Lopatin as Franz, and Gennadi Yanin as Coppélius (interesting!). http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/season/ballet/repertoire/detail.php?&id26=283&act26=info&dynact26=afisha&dynid26=2597#dyn

Here's a report from French television with Nanette Glushak rehearsing her company for a program that includes Scotch Symphony and Raymonda Variations. http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse_classique/34918/dans-les-coulisses-du-ballet-du-capitole On a related note, the company in Nice is presenting a program of American works this weekend, with Balanchine's Allegro Brillante, David Parsons' The Envelope and Gene Kelly's Pas de Dieux. Comments from Eric Vu-An and Claude Bessy. http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse_classique/34840/les-choregraphes-americains-a-l_opera-de-nice

Though it's not listed on the TCM web site, my onscreen TV guide tells me that Invitation will air on the Canadian version of Turner Classic Movies this Sunday at 9:45 p.m. ET/6:45 p.m. PT. Maybe or maybe not.

The stream quality isn't especially good, and I don't know whether there are any geographical restrictions, but the ballet will be available on the Knowledge Network site for the next week or two. http://www.knowledge.ca/program/the-fiddle-and-the-drum I can't watch this thing without some bitterness because to my mind Alberta Ballet's been on a downward trajectory ever since. I'm convinced that the only really good thing the company's produced since is Yukichi Hattori's Seven Deadly Sins, and it distresses me to no end to see Jean Grand-Maître fritter away his talent on pop extravaganzas, Olympic extravaganzas, and so on endlessly.

I doubt it, not if you consider what sprinters, wrestlers (the real ones), swimmers, divers, etc. wear these days. Not to mention ballroom dancers.