volcanohunter
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The video is available on demand at the Medici TV web site. It costs nothing to view, though you need to create and/or sign in to a user account.
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The opera is also streaming live on the Paris Opera site.
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Medici TV will be streaming Bellini's La sonnambula, starring Natalie Dessay, Javier Camarena and Michele Pertusi, live from the Opéra Bastille on Monday, February 15, at 19.30 Paris time/1:30 p.m. ET. I'm not sure whether the live feed requires a Medici account, but it's very easy to set up and costs nothing.
http://www.medici.tv/#/a/520/la-sonnambula...5/br-the-opera/
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Wayne McGregor's production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, performed by the combined forces of the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet, will air on BC's Knowledge Network on Wednesday, February 17, at 9:00 p.m. PT, with a repeat showing at 1:00 a.m. (Bell ch. 268, Shaw Direct ch. 354)
The RB dancers featured are Olivia Cowley, Melissa Hamilton, Cindy Jourdain, Iohna Loots, Kristen McNally, Samantha Raine, Paul Kay, Brian Maloney, Steven McRae, Xander Parish, Liam Scarlett and Johannes Stepanek.
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Radetsky hasn't completely severed his connection with the Dutch National Ballet. This month he's scheduled to dance three performances as Basilio in Alexei Ratmansky's new production of Don Quixote in Amsterdam.
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Opus Arte will soon be releasing a performance of MacMillan's Mayerling with the Royal Ballet taped in October 2009. The UK release date is March 1. The North American release typically follows two months later.
Crown Prince Rudolf: Edward Watson
Baroness Mary Vetsera: Mara Galeazzi
Princess Stephanie: Iohna Loots
Emperor Franz Josef: William Tuckett
Empress Elisabeth: Cindy Jourdain
Countess Marie Larisch: Sarah Lamb
Baroness Helene Vetsera: Elizabeth McGorian
DVD http://www.opusarte.com/pages/product.asp?ProductID=332
Blu-Ray http://www.opusarte.com/pages/product.asp?ProductID=333
Watson also appears in Wayne McGregor's production of Handel's Acis and Galatea with Lauren Cuthbertson, Steven McRae, Eric Underwood and Paul Kay, set for release the same day.
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Here's a French television report about a Rwandan competitor at the Prix de Lausanne.
http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse/19150...nse-de-lausanne
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What does the back of the box say? If it's region-free and NTSC, it should play on any American or Japanese player. There was a time when Opus Arte produced separate PAL and NTSC versions for different markets, but the Region 0 NTSC format has become standard for them.
I don't shop at Amazon.co.uk that often because the prices are generally much higher than they are in North America, but once in a while they do offer very deep discounts, and if you're ordering from North America, the VAT is deducted. I've found that if I order five items, the deducted VAT usually covers the shipping costs. If I order six items or more, the discount is even greater, so I end up paying less than the listed price.
There's always a risk of getting zapped with customs fees on arrival, but it happens to me infrequently.
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The opera is now available on the Arte site also, Emmanuelle Gaume's slightly giddy commentary included.
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Arte will be streaming the final of the Prix de Lausanne online on Sunday, January 31. The final is scheduled to begin at 15.00 CET (9:00 a.m. ET), so I'm not sure why the Arte timer is counting down to 23.05.
http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Finale_du_...ix_de_Lausanne/
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Knowledge Network, British Columbia's educational channel, will air the Royal Ballet's Giselle, starring Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg, Marianela Nuñez and Martin Harvey, on Wednesday, February 3, at 9:00 p.m. PT, with a repeat broadcast at 1:00 a.m. PT. Additional Opus Arte titles are set to follow, including Swan Lake and Wayne McGregor's staging of Dido and Aeneas.
Canada-wide, Knowledge Network airs on ch. 268 on Bell and ch. 354 on Shaw Direct.
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The opera is now accessible on Medici TV. In order to watch it, you need to set up an account, which is free.
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Today, Tuesday, January 26, the Paris Opera will be streaming a live video feed of Massenet's Werther, with Jonas Kaufmann and Sophie Koch, starting at 20.35 Paris time (or 2:35 p.m. ET). Sorry for the short notice!
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I've been searching for ballet DVD's on Amazon and I noticed that Bel Air Classiques has discontinued most of its DVDs. They were supposed to release a boxed set with three performances of the Bolshoi Ballet but it was discontinued even before it was released.
The set has probably been delayed rather than discontinued. It happens quite frequently with Bel Air and can be very frustrating when attempting to pre-order a DVD. I wouldn't be surprised if the set were to re-appear on Amazon in a week or two, though perhaps under a different catalogue number.
A number of titles originally released by Image Entertainment have reappeared on Arthaus Musik. To illustrate with a non-balletic example:
http://www.amazon.com/Puccini-Madama-Butte.../dp/B00005R5HG/
http://www.amazon.com/Madama-Butterfly-Yas.../dp/B000GNOTZI/
Arthaus Musik owns the European distribution rights to the Giselle, Le Corsaire and Sleeping Beauty you mentioned, and I wouldn't be surpised if eventually the company were to issue region-free versions of those ballets in North America. They do seem to be taking their time, though.
About a year and a half ago Arthaus Musik purchased TDK Music DVD, which had been releasing lots of stuff from the POB and La Scala. Since then, TDK releases have been reduced to a trickle, which is unfortunate, and Arthaus has been re-issuing many TDK titles on the Arthaus label. Perhaps this is slowing down the re-issue of the old Image Entertainment titles.
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As far as I know, there isn't one available. Somewhere deep in the archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation there is a film from the mid-1970s of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet dancing it, with Violette Verdy as Louise, if I'm not mistaken. I doubt it was ever available commercially.
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Maksim Wojtiul has made big progresses since he left Canada.
I'm very pleased to hear it. I thought he was wonderful, but his situation in Toronto was madness. He was already a principal in Warsaw, but the National Ballet of Canada hired him as a member of the corps de ballet. I remember watching him as Benvolio in Cranko's Romeo and Juliet and thinking: No, no, no, he should be dancing Romeo. He was by far the best male dancer on the stage.
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I'm also very sorry to hear about Philips Neal's retirement. Not only did I never come away from his performances disappointed, I made a point of seeking them out whenever I returned to New York. I always found his dancing extremely satisfying and particularly admired how he combined the classic virtues of the American dancer with an Old World elegance. I wish him the best of luck in his next career.
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Here's a video report on the company coinciding with its recent engagement at the Paris Opera.
http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse/18511..._opera-de-paris
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CTV, which is broadcasting the games in Canada, has been promoting the Cultural Olympiad on its networks pretty heavily these past few days. Wouldn't it be something if it decided to broadcast some of the stuff? I mean, CTV-owned Bravo is supposed to be an arts channel...
(That's the sound of me not holding my breath.)
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The film will soon be airing on PBS. Most affiliates appear to have it scheduled for Wednesday, January 20.
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I wish he hadn't!
She is lovely of course but I think it ruins Act 2. She just sort of hops up and gets involved in everything and it detracts rather than adding to it in my opinion.
Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm so sorry he did it. Though I think it's actually Wright's fault. It reflects what he did in his production for the BRB.
A couple of years ago Alastair Macaulay reviewed both the Wright production and the Nureyev production for the POB. Having recently seen films of both with the same casts Macaulay saw, I have to say he was right on the money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/arts/dan...7nutc.html?_r=1When Mr. Wright first staged his Covent Garden “Nutcracker” in 1984, his first point of emphasis was to show that the story is about old Drosselmeyer’s efforts to get his beloved nephew back from Nutcracker form. His second was to make at least one part of the ballet into just another love story between the young Nutcracker and little Clara, even though both are supposed to be children. Yet these elements did not obtrude unduly. There was nothing much wrong that he and his designer, Julia Trevelyan Oman, could not have put right. Their original production demonstrated an incomplete but interesting intention to honor much of the 1892 original.In 1999, however, Mr. Wright overhauled his own production, giving the Nutcracker and Clara much more to do (they spoil almost every divertissement dance in Act II by trying to join in) and making Drosselmeyer a flamboyant master of ceremonies throughout, with a red-haired assistant who upstages everybody before vanishing. Almost nothing is left that makes “The Nutcracker” different from other ballets, and parts of the story, especially in the party scene, are badly told.
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He also changed Benno into a female "Friend." You get the feeling that the hero is suffocated by a gaggle of females. Why Bruhn didn't transform the Tutor into a domineering School Marm is beyond me.
It's been years since I've seen the production, so I may be fuzzy on some of the details. The characters all had generic titles rather than names: Prince, Swan Queen, Black Swan, Black Queen, Prince's Friend. There was a brooding solo for the Prince toward the end of Act 1. Bruhn used Tchaikovsky's oom-pah ending to the White Swan pas de deux, but otherwise the choreography of the adagio was pretty standard. The Black Swan pas de deux was rechoreographed significantly. He used Tchaikovsky's original adagio (the one used in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux), and for the Black Swan's variation he used the same oboe-themed music as Grigorovich. The Prince's variation and the coda used the usual music and choreography, so the pas de deux was a strange hybrid. The national dances were pretty standard, except for a Neapolitan pas de deux à la Ashton. In the final act the Prince committed suicide on his own, leaving the Swan Queen permanently trapped in her avian body. This struck me as particularly ungallant.
Somewhere in the CBC archives there is a film of the production, apparently abridged, starring Lois Smith, Bruhn and Celia Franca, but it was made before my time, and the CBC never airs stuff from its archives, so I've only seen clips of it in documentaries about the National Ballet of Canada. The company replaced Bruhn's production with James Kudelka's in 1999, and for all the flaws of Bruhn's version, I think Kudelka's is infinitely worse.
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That scene will be worth the price of the DVD.
If it's going to be a Bel Air DVD, that price will likely be quite steep.
Olympics: dancers' takes on figure skating
in Ballet News & Issues
Posted
Years ago, when A&E still did arts programming, they broadcast highlights from the 1982 International Ballet Competition from Jackson. Commentary during the variations was provided by Dick Button and Jacques d'Amboise, who, along with Marge Champion, also did backstage interviews.
Much like figure skating coverage, the program was edited to emphasize a "rivalry" between juniors Gigi Hyatt and Katherine Healy, who fell at one point, leading to lots of speculation about whether this had "cost" her the gold. There were also the obligatory parent reaction shots from Healy's mother. Quite a bit of film was dedicated to senior gold medalist Janie Parker, and both Button and d'Amboise were clearly taken with silver medalist Alexi Zubiria.
A&E never did it again, so I'm guessing the program didn't go over all that well.