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Post by Mr Snow on Dec 10, 2018 6:21:26 GMT
Agreed fabulous. Since seeing it (twice) at The Menier this has become a favourite piece. The (free!) programme said it was being recorded and would be released.
The picture of him at the end showed him standing behind our conductor whom he had mentored.
A fitting tribute in his Centenary year.
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Post by Mr Snow on Dec 6, 2018 6:52:20 GMT
Just to add their are various levels of friends who will have booked before 30th Jan, so on that morning be prepared t make a quick decision.
Alos IMO the sound is fine from the first 5 rows of the Amphitheatre less so further back.
the slips offer the best value full price seats in Theatreland. Great sound but limited visabilty (Not as bad as you might fear though).
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Post by Mr Snow on Dec 3, 2018 6:29:36 GMT
Oh thank you ...at least we can all take some comfort in that.
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 23, 2018 10:44:55 GMT
specila offers to ENO tickets.
Donizetti | Lucia di Lammermoor Until 5 December Tricked into a loveless marriage by her brother, is madness Lucia's only escape?
30% off code: 1819LUOORA40 Offer valid only for 30 Nov and 5 Dec performances. Book now >>
Puccini | La bohème 26 November – 22 February One of opera's most powerful stories, this is a wintry musical and theatrical treat.
30% off code: 1819LABO30 Offer not valid for 26 Nov or 1 Dec or 16 Feb performances. Book now >>
Lehár | The Merry Widow 1 March – 13 April 2019 A millionairess widow stirs things up in one of opera's best romantic comedies.
30% off code: 1819MEWI30 Offer not valid for 13 Apr performances Book now >>
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 23, 2018 10:43:41 GMT
Black Friday offers
Donizetti | Lucia di Lammermoor Until 5 December Tricked into a loveless marriage by her brother, is madness Lucia's only escape?
30% off code: 1819LUOORA40 Offer valid only for 30 Nov and 5 Dec performances. Book now >>
Puccini | La bohème 26 November – 22 February One of opera's most powerful stories, this is a wintry musical and theatrical treat.
30% off code: 1819LABO30 Offer not valid for 26 Nov or 1 Dec or 16 Feb performances. Book now >>
Lehár | The Merry Widow 1 March – 13 April 2019 A millionairess widow stirs things up in one of opera's best romantic comedies.
30% off code: 1819MEWI30 Offer not valid for 13 Apr performances Book now >>
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 23, 2018 8:46:30 GMT
34 votes by 25 voters.... whatever happened to one person one vote? Vote early...vote often. (The achilles heel of Democracy.) Please consider me as a reserve. WLTM but... NB the Phoenix Arts Club gets a second vote from me. It's never that busy when I've been there but you are talking about pre theatre dining time.
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 22, 2018 9:13:16 GMT
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 20, 2018 13:06:30 GMT
Agree with all of above . Saw the last(?) london production with Clarke Peters and was put off the piece! So enjoyed this.
Re John Wilson, After seeing him conduct Glyndebourne Touring Opera At Milton Keynes in Nov 2016 I wrote this.
"The conducting was very interesting even though I don’t' know exactly what to make of it. This was John Wilson's Glyndebourne debut. He's made quite a name for himself as a restorer and performer of Classic Hollywood scores and so he's no stranger to the human voice. He gave a really fresh and detailed production of the score. This was no wash of grand Puccini themes but a subtle combination of a parts of the Orchestra that blended but retained their own identity. But the volume, it seemed like he'd found the control and set it at 11 at times! This may have been the theatre (certainly the coughing was the loudest I've ever heard) but I didn’t notice this back in the spring for WNO. Not to worry, Lippi could match the 11 and Son was capable of saoaring past 12. I have a hunch that we'll be hearing a lot more from Wilson."
Yes I hope ENO are back on track, Iolanthe was similarly packed and we're off to Lucia next.
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 6, 2018 7:25:02 GMT
I would have to hear a very convincing argument against Der Ring Des Nibelungen being the greatest achievement in the history of opera. Well you won't get it from me! And as I hold Opera as the greatest of art forms one might add.... The Ring involves so many ideas, so many singers, such a big orchestra, so many resources that it's inevitable there's things to criticise, but somehow the sweep and scale of it makes some of that irrelevant. If you get this, it's overwhelming. I've thought about it every day since and can't wait to go back to the Rhinemaidens...
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 5, 2018 11:17:44 GMT
It’s almost as if this was 2 plays smushed together - the Anderson/Dickens scenes felt a lot tighter and more developed than the rest of the play. I really felt the cast floundering in the earlier scenes, it seemed like they really weren’t sure how to make it funny. It certainly needed a re-write or 2, but fundamentally I am not sure that McDonagh knows what he is trying to get at himself. The plot mechanics were nonsensical, obviously, but I can’t think why he has come up with them at all. What is the connection that we are meant to draw? Maybe it fails because it is trying to say that attempts to write the present/future into the past will always fail, but it’s really not clever enough to pull off that level of self-reflexiveness. A frustrating watch. Agree with all of this. Very hard to know what he was trying to do, but I don't feel he was onboard for todays message about atoning for past misdeeds.
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 1, 2018 10:28:10 GMT
emi I don’t wish to pick you out but in theatre Juliet and Coco San to name but two, are rarely the age they are supposed to be in the plot. But the right actress/actor working with the right Director can convince us they are (or have a new perspective on the character to present). I know that’s simplistic, but that's my point. People are tying themselves in knots trying to dictate who is appropriate to play which part.
If the actor can make it work then you’ll enjoy yourself. It’s all part of the magic of Theatre and shouldn't have to be achieved by someone who doesn’t start off naturally closely resembling the known specifics of the role. What’s close enough for me, might not be close enough for you. So we make our choices at the box office. I don’t want to see plays disappear because it becomes impossible to cast someone who can shift tickets and we reduce the art. We should allow and encourage Directors to take risks with the casting, not restricting themselves to an actor who naturally looks right.
I do think this is ironic when (with the authors permission) this production makes such a basic fundamental character shift and this discussion focusses on another point about appropriateness.
Think we’ll just have to disagree on this one.
Happy Birthday!
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 1, 2018 8:14:48 GMT
At Siegfried tonight I’ve seen quite a few that were at Myerling last night. Clearly there’s quite a few that can’t leave the ROH alone. At both my Ring Cycles I've talked to the stranger sitting next to me. in events 5 years apart, they were of different sexes and races and they both managed to fit in a visit to a different Wagner Opera outside of the Ring within the same week! Some people can't leave Wagner alone!
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Post by Mr Snow on Nov 1, 2018 8:09:05 GMT
Was the perception of what it is to be '35' the same in 1970 as it now?
Was the perception of a man in 1970 the same as a woman now?
Is the current production addressing these issues?
Just how tight are these 'rules' about who can play what, being drawn?
That's the thing about Theatre, it involves a personal decison whether you go or not. If actor 'A' is not right for the part then you don't have to go. Anything else is too restrictive.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 31, 2018 5:50:24 GMT
Well that's a new perspective!
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 30, 2018 6:56:50 GMT
Quite a few of us there this week! Enjoying it a lot so far. I find watching Wagner has a strange effect on my perception of time and it was surprising at the end of Rheingold for instance to find that 150 minutes had passed. Something of a sense of humour failure last night as one of the cameras for the cinema screening was directly in front of me - a few rows in front but it did obstruct part of the stage a points and the light was very distracting. Waiting for a response by email from the ROH after I complained on twitter. Please let us know their response, it must have been very annoying.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 30, 2018 6:55:47 GMT
Nina Stemme's first UK Brünnhilde was impressive, but the wobble of her voice occasionally took away the expression (notably on her first entrance), but I feel she will be truly exceptional in the remaining operas where Brünnhilde undergoes her transformation into a woman. Not quite. www.bbc.co.uk/events/eddn3d I saw the 2nd cycle and she impressed throughout. Although somehow she seemed even better 5 years ago. Re others comments. I always look forward to Papano conducting, but agian Barenboim seemed to have more sweep and magic. None the less I was very pleased with my first exposure in the Opera house. Have now registerred with Bayreuth and will make efforts to see a Ring Cycle every 5 years or so. Wish I could be there for final two nights.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 29, 2018 17:15:34 GMT
...this play's method is to expose our hypocrisies and blindness to our past, by explicitly critiquing our revered icons...
The point I fail to see is how are we critiquing Andersen by making him a possible Paedophile and a sadistic torturer who thinks nothing of maiming his muse? And a buffoon to boot. Dickens a foul mouthed irascible sex addict, why not? Does anyone think less of the works of Dickens and Andersen after seeing this play? Outside of this 80 mins will you ever link their immortal works to “the horror, the horror” of the colonialization in Africa that occurred after their deaths? Then there’s the nonsense about making the box smaller which makes more sense if you accept it as a fiction we make up about the man to make him ever more despicable for our own reasons. I realise I’m a gallery of one, but to me this makes more sense if you imagine McDonagh is poking fun at the lengths we go to rewrite history to reflect our current concerns. Our lack of true perspective. Something that has happened since plays were first performed. (NOTE I have edited the Quote from Steve's post and somehow I can't get sf's name dissociated form it. Sorry for any confusion).
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 29, 2018 14:11:35 GMT
In future I will refer to this as
A very very very big pit of steaming dark matter. tm
I would like to declare that I am the sole author of the above and that I received no assistance from anyone else; not even another minority visiting from the future.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 25, 2018 21:17:33 GMT
I could be wrong but I’m sorry to say that le tout Londres will be in silent morning on the day after 42nd St is no more. Buck House will be deserted, The Ivy Club will be shut, Joe Allen’s will refuse to serve Burgers, Flags deadly still at half mast and even Ryan will be “At Home”. ( allegedly for the first time this millennium).Thank me for sharing this devastating news later , at least you’ll know what to expect.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 25, 2018 21:10:15 GMT
I could be wrong but I’m sorry to say that le tout Londres will be in silent morning on the day after 42nd St is no more.
Thank me for sharing this devastating news later , at least you’ll know what to expect.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 25, 2018 17:48:19 GMT
It's very much on trend at the moment, about the silencing of all but the white middle aged male voice, done in a way which for a change doesn't feel preachy but full of satire instead. Spoiler again Can’t for the life of me see how the white middle aged class voice is shown as the only one that counts here? I’ve be been wrong before and will be again but I would be curious how you came to that conclusion when my own view is that he may be trying to go against the beliefs of the moment?
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 25, 2018 8:50:17 GMT
I hope you re read this after seeing it. The review is pretentious trying to explain it as a “savage but cryptic allegory” ( ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) ), while bending over backwards trying to avoid admitting its nonsense. Don’t know how to do spoiler alerts on My phone so please do not read on if you want to avoid them If the author is (who’s previous work I really like blah, blah, blah), was trying to say something, my guess it was this. We live at a time when it’s not enough to write off the cannon because it was written by Old Dead White Guys, we are rewriting history in a PC way. So you can rewrite the history of Dickens and Andersen to involve the atrocities in the Belgian Congo (events that happened after their time) and say they stole their ideas from a pair of dwarf sisters, and people will repair to the bar saying you’ve made really interesting points ! I would guess that McDonagh holds those two in high esteem and thinks it odd that we are so ready to place our current corncwrns on them. Somewhere, however he lost the plot.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 24, 2018 6:14:49 GMT
I though this must be the inspiration behind the the asking for your money back thread? If I paid 12£ at Edinburgh fest and it lasted an hour I’d be thinking “Next”. But I paid 4 x £65 and it felt longer than The Ring. Our night was approx 1 hr 15mins. There were walkouts in a play with no interval (never seen that outside The Fest) and even those annoying creatures who self regardingly laugh very loudly were silent by half way through.
I thought Broadbent looked embarrassed at the curtain call.
I overheard a lady at ROH last night who said much the same and said she’d reviewed it on line and given 1star. But the bridge had sent a questionnaire and she didn’t want to be unkind so told them two stars! I feel many of the comments on this thread are like that, please stop being “kind” and call this out for what it is. A boring mess.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 19, 2018 15:09:45 GMT
Saw Die Incest Walkure last night, start time 4:30pm, end time 10:10pm Despite having standing tickets, I am not finding the length too bad actually, I think with the intervals it is very manageable. I just went to pret and got a coffee and read for the 80 min interval If I have one nitpick with the production so far, it is the costuming. I am sure the intent was to keep it minimalist/modern in line with the set, but I would love some more eleganza extravaganza moments. Especially for the gods!! I was unimpressed when the valkyries came out looking like basic bitches, but again, I am sure that was the intent Oh to be young again! Les Enfants du Paradis.
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Post by Mr Snow on Oct 19, 2018 10:06:29 GMT
I saw Cycle 2 and as tmesis suggests, the experience is overwhelming. I can’t attempt to critique it or describe how I feel about this experience which is more immersive than anything else I’ve ever experienced. It’s now 5 years since I saw it at the Proms and that interval seems about right. I now have my name down on the Bayreuth waiting list.
I found the late intervals meant I could just wonder down to the new Joe Allen’s without a reservation and eat one course in total comfort. ON the Bab another night.
Enjoy.
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