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Post by tonyloco on Mar 18, 2019 22:35:32 GMT
Still no reports on the actual show.
Has nobody been to see it?
I would really like to know whether it is working better now than it did when I saw it at Hayes last year when it was hugely disappointing and not a patch on the previous 1950s show.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 18, 2019 22:21:18 GMT
I have left a lot of performances in the interval, especially back in the days when I was holding down a full-time office job in the daytime and then going to opera, ballet, concerts or shows in the evenings when I wasn't playing the piano for music hall or variety. The main reason was to conserve my energy for whatever I was doing the following day and night, and I could usually tell after ten or fifteen minutes whether I had become immersed in what was happening on the stage or whether my mind remained unengaged. If that happened, then I would try to work out what it was about the show that I didn't like or why I remained detached and if I still felt the same by the interval I would go home.
No doubt I missed the occasional good second act, and on the advice of the Theatremonkey I did go back to see the second act of Wicked a few days after I had left a preview in the interval and it did certainly improve after the interval but in general I don't regret those second acts that I missed. I have very occasionally experienced a great second act after I had resisted the temptation to go home early but those occasions are few and far between and I stick by my principles, as witness my leaving the current version of Rip It Up after making the effort of dragging my old bones to the Beck Theatre at Hayes to see those wonderful boys, who alas were not being presented to advantage in a very unsatisfactory production – but that's another story...!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 17, 2019 16:53:55 GMT
I loved it too ('70 Girls 70') and saw it several times at the Vaudeville. The Kander and Ebb score was classic and Dora Bryan was terrific. I remember one of my theatrical friends saying the production betrayed its provincial origins but it gave me much pleasure.
After what had happened in the American production, there was always a possibility that one of the ancient performers on stage would not survive the performance but that just added to the fun wondering whether anybody would keel over before the end!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 17, 2019 16:29:42 GMT
I wonder if our good friend tonyloco can fill us in on the Players? There is a good section on the Playhouse in the London Theatres book. I tend not to carry it around with me, but can remember that it was owned by Jeffrey Archer for a while! Actually, despite the fact that I played for all the major London Old-Time Music Hall companies like Aba Daba, Hiss and Boo, Song and Supper, Chat's Palace, The Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal, Gaslight and Garters, Brick Lane and others, I never actually played for the Players, neither in their old venue ('Evans, Late Joy's) in Villiers Street nor in the new one that is now the Charing Cross Theatre. I attended a number of shows at both venues over the years – I think they always operated as a club but it was easy enough to join with temporary membership when making a booking, especially for foreign visitors, and I seem to remember that because it was officially a club they could continue serving drinks after the show until midnight. I knew Dominic Le Foe, who ran the company for many years, and at long last he promised me a booking but alas that was just before he got into financial trouble and the whole company folded so my performance never happened. The Players were known to me by reputation in the 1950s while I was still in Sydney and my colleagues at the Sydney University in 1959 staged a music hall show called Victoriana based on the Players shows and that same Victoriana is still revived annually in Sydney to this very day. Much of the chairman's patter at the Players was originally devised by Leonard Sachs, who went on to work on the BBC's The Good Old Days, televised from the Leeds City Varieties, and classic lines like asking Australian visitors in the audience: "How does it feel to be the right way up?" became enshrined in the patter of music hall chairmen in all the traditional companies. There is more information about the Players Company and the Players Theatres on the internet, including a Times obituary for Le Foe when he died in June 2010.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 17, 2019 15:47:44 GMT
Nobody could find the Barbican 😂 And even when you finally got inside you still got lost!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 16, 2019 16:49:35 GMT
As a counter-example, I remember a performance of Sweeney Todd in Chichester, after which a woman said to her companion that she was upset as she’d been really looking forward to seeing Michael Ball. She HAD seen him - she just hadn’t recognised him! I wonder whether that same woman also went to see Michael Ball in 'Hairspray'...?
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 16, 2019 14:17:59 GMT
May I just drop in a tonyloco anecdote about Ashton's Cinderella that I saw a number of times when I was a 'regular' at the Royal Ballet back in the 1960s. It was of course one of Fonteyn's great roles and she was never less than superb in it, but at those performances when Ashton and Helpmann danced the Ugly Sisters, Margot was always very aware of who the audience had come to see and although it would be wrong to say that she coasted through her own performance, one could always sense that on the nights when Ashton and Helpmann were not on, Margot knew that she was the true star of the show, and so she gave just that little bit extra. The balances in the climactic pas de deux were held just that tiny bit longer and there was a full portion of the unique Fonteyn magic throughout every step she danced. You really couldn't fault what she did on an Ashton Helpmann night, but, my goodness, you certainly got the full A+ show when she alone was the star!
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 2, 2019 10:05:47 GMT
Just to finish this bit of information, EMI's first international pop digital CD CDP 746 002 2 was David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' which was in fact released in December 1983 at the same time as Previn's Debussy. The very first number in the pop series CDP 747 001 2 was allocated to Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' but that didn't come out until August 1984. So Previn and Bowie actually shared the honours of being on EMI's first international digital CD releases. OOP! The correct CD number for 'Dark Side of the Moon' should be CDP 746 001 2.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 1, 2019 22:51:10 GMT
And you mentioning Previn's Planets reminds me that one of the very first digital recordings EMI tried to make was The Planets with Sir Adrian Boult but alas the great man was not able to manage a perfect take of all the movements so in the end the recording had to be released in its analogue version with some editing. So it was Previn with the Debussy Images who was EMI's standard bearer for the digital CD age. I can't put my hand on the appropriate reference but I think the first EMI digital CD on the pop side was supposed to be either by Pink Floyd or David Bowie but whatever it was, it did not appear until some months after the Previn Debussy. Just to finish this bit of information, EMI's first international pop digital CD CDP 746 002 2 was David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' which was in fact released in December 1983 at the same time as Previn's Debussy. The very first number in the pop series CDP 747 001 2 was allocated to Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' but that didn't come out until August 1984. So Previn and Bowie actually shared the honours of being on EMI's first international digital CD releases.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 1, 2019 22:43:49 GMT
I found it quite strange to see that Previn was awarded the Oscar for Best Music for My Fair Lady, with no mention of Loewe? Anyway, my dad loved the programme he did which was introduced by Tchaik 4 and so did I. Also the M&W sketch is the funniest ever, end of (as I believe the young people say). Just watch the orchestra trying (and failing) not to crack up. Yes, Polly 1, the IMDB does indeed show under the film 'My Fair Lady' that Previn won an Oscar for 'Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaption or Treatment', which is a very misleading description of what I would call probably 'Musical Direction'. Elsewhere in IMDB it lists a Music Department of 10 people who worked on 'My Fair Lady' including Lerner and Loewe for lyrics and music; Alexander Courage, Robert Franklyn and Albert Woodbury for orchestrations; Robert Tucker for vocal arrangements; and Previn for conductor and music supervision.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 1, 2019 16:02:14 GMT
Fantastic insights as ever tonyloco . I remember buying the Debussy LP when newly released and thinking how amazing it was - both sound-wise and performance. He also did one of the best versions of The Planets and Carmina Burana. I also love the Gershwin album he did with Ella Fitzgerald and the Ellington and Gershwin jazz piano CDs he did for DGG. Oh, and I mentioned in another post, that in my former life as a class music teacher I used 'Andre Previn's Music Guide' - and particularly its cassettes - which were very popular at the school in Wokingham where I was in charge of Music. Thanks tmesis. Yes, I do recall now you referred previously to André Previn's Music Guide that you used when you were a class music teacher and it makes me very happy to encounter somebody who actually found that teaching kit to be useful, especially the cassettes. The biggest headache was the Nancarrow music for player piano but we found a small American company who could supply some examples. The set was not totally classical and Previn also proved very well-informed about some quite obscure jazz recordings from the earliest days of Capitol in the 1940s, which by then was owned by EMI, so we were able to include a couple of legendary jazz names from 'in-house' sources including I think possibly Ella Fitzgerald, but I might be wrong about that. And you mentioning Previn's Planets reminds me that one of the very first digital recordings EMI tried to make was The Planets with Sir Adrian Boult but alas the great man was not able to manage a perfect take of all the movements so in the end the recording had to be released in its analogue version with some editing. So it was Previn with the Debussy Images who was EMI's standard bearer for the digital CD age. I can't put my hand on the appropriate reference but I think the first EMI digital CD on the pop side was supposed to be either by Pink Floyd or David Bowie but whatever it was, it did not appear until some months after the Previn Debussy.
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Post by tonyloco on Mar 1, 2019 12:50:04 GMT
I second everything tmesis has said about André Previn and I was closely involved with his first period of recording for EMI with the LSO. My then boss, Peter Andry, was very pleased to sign Previn to EMI's International Classical Division although at that time he was better known as a jazz pianist and exponent of film music. It was not long however before his amazing talents as a conductor and pianist in classical music became apparent and he soon established himself as one of EMI's strongest classical artists.
I remember Andry telling me how happy Previn was when they had their first discussions about what music he might record with the LSO and Andry said he would like Previn to undertake some major piece of repertoire that would appeal as widely as possible so he proposed the three Tchaikovsky ballets complete. Surprised, Previn said: "Would you really let me record those wonderful pieces so soon in my days at EMI?" Andry assured him that EMI had total faith in his talents as a conductor and was sure he would make a success of that music that would have a wide popular appeal as well as filling a gap in the EMI catalogue. Andry proved right and Previn scored a major success with the Tchaikovsky package before going on to make a raft of magnificent recordings for EMI, including the company's very first classical digital recording, which was Debussy's 'Images'. It was first issued as an analogue LP and then became EMI's very first digital CD on CDC 747 001 2. It was recorded using EMI's prototype digital recording deck, on which neither mixing nor editing was possible so each movement had to be recorded in a single perfect take – just like the old days when each side of a 78 disc had to be recorded in that way!
One of the Previn obituaries listed Previn as the author of several books including No Minor Chords and André Previn's Guide to Music but, strictly speaking, the latter was not really a book. It was actually a teaching kit about music for schools which included wall charts, work books for the pupils, and four compilation cassettes. It was released by the publisher Macmillan, just after they had finished work on the 1980 New Grove Dictionary of Music. Previn had provided the basis for the course and had suggested a number of the key recordings that he wanted to be included, choosing EMI recordings where possible, but a few items existed only on the catalogues of other companies. It fell to me to prepare the four compilation cassettes and license in the non-EMI tracks. Curiously, there was not all that much by way of printed text to accompany the cassettes, wall charts and workbooks, so the retail release of the set of four cassettes rather fell flat and it was from sales of the complete kit to schools where Macmillan made its profit. And, as a footnote, I believe Macmillan actually used Benny Green to write whatever text did appear in the work books and elsewhere in the kit.
Sadly, I never met Maestro Previn but I had and still have the greatest admiration for his wide-ranging talents, and I used to play one of his movie songs in my music hall/variety days: 'Thanks a lot but no thanks' as sung by Delores Gray in 'It's Always Fair Weather'.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 26, 2019 15:23:42 GMT
In tmesis's thread devoted to Così fan tutte, Otto Klemperer's recording of Die Zauberflöte was mentioned and I thought members might be interested in the story behind what turned out to be something of a cause celebre in the history of operatic recording.
In June 1963, the EMI classical recording producer Walter Legge, who was also the husband of soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and had founded the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1945 immediately after the end of World War II, tendered his resignation to EMI to cover a period of one year on the understanding that he would fulfil all his outstanding recording plans during that year, of which one of the later ones was to have been Die Zauberflöte conducted by Klemperer.
The sessions for Zauberflöte were due to take place starting just before Easter 1964 and involved the Philharmonia Orchestra, of which Klemperer was Principal Conductor, as well as singers like Schwarzkopf, Gedda and Christa Ludwig. In March 1964, Legge issued a press statement that he was closing down the Philharmonia Orchestra once it had fulfilled all its then current engagements. Legge claimed he had consulted Klemperer before making the announcement but Klemperer insisted that Legge had never spoken to him about it. I have it on the authority of one of the EMI senior recording engineers that on the day the announcement appeared in the press, Klemperer arrived at the recording venue Kingsway Hall for a Messiah recording session with the newspaper and declared: "Vot nonsense is this?", making it very clear that he knew nothing about the announcement until he read it in the newspaper. And until the day they both died, Schwarzkopf insisted Legge had consulted Klemperer about closing down the Philharmonia but Klemperer's daughter Lotte maintained that he had not!
An attempt was made to carry on with the Messiah sessions with an uneasy truce between Legge and Klemperer and then a couple of preliminary sessions were held for Zauberflöte to test the microphone set-up for the orchestra and chorus, and to position the soloists. The Easter weekend then arrived and Klemperer had asked the soloists to attend piano rehearsals in his suite at the Hyde Park Hotel, but he told Legge that he was angry about the Philharmonia closure and that he, Legge, was not invited to the piano rehearsals. Legge was furious and demanded he should be present in his role as producer of the recording but Klemperer was adamant and went so far as to send telegrams to the top executives of EMI asking whether contractually he was obliged to let Legge attend his 'private' piano rehearsals and the EMI executives (it was actually Legge who replied to Klemperer's telegram on behalf of the EMI Management) confirmed he was under no such legal obligation, so Legge was barred!
At this point Legge declared he would never again set foot in a building where Klemperer was conducting and he also sent word to EMI that he was no longer working for them, even though his contract had a few more months to run. He was as good as his word and various unfinished projects like Das Lied von der Erde and Messiah were taken over by other EMI producers, although Legge did come back as a free-lance producer for the rest of the recordings that Schwarzkopf made for EMI after that time, apart from Les Contes d'Hoffmann in Paris later in 1964.
Coming back to the ill-fated Zauberflöte, the EMI producer given the daunting task of taking over the recording was my colleague Peter Andry. At the first sessions with the singers after Legge's departure, there were complaints from the principals, led by Schwarzkopf, that the sound was frightful but Andry was able to explain that the microphone set-up was in fact the one arranged by Legge at the preliminary sessions. Then Andry tried to persuade Klemperer to include some of the spoken dialogue (something Legge had already failed to achieve with Klemperer) but the old man was adamant that without seeing the stage action, the dialogue was only a distraction. Schwarzkopf piped up saying that the critics would not like the absence of dialogue, to which Klemperer's response was: "Bugger the critics!". Eventually the sessions got under way, the singers all became immersed in the performance and the recording was generally considered to be a success, even with those critics who might have preferred it to have had some of the dialogue.
Historically it was a pity that Legge did not get to make his third Zauberflöte, having been the nominal producer of the Beecham recording made in Berlin in November 1937 and then he produced it in November 1950 in Vienna with Karajan. The 1964 Klemperer version would have made a distinguished completion to the trio for Legge but it was not to be and what was one of the most illustrious careers in producing classical recordings, alongside Fred Gaisberg and John Culshaw, ended in a petulant row and an unresolved argument as to whether Legge did tell Klemperer in advance about closing down the Philharmonia or not.
As to the Philharmonia Orchestra, somewhat to Legge's surprise, with the support of Klemperer the orchestra immediately reformed itself as a self-governing body under the name New Philharmonia Orchestra and continued its career without interruption. Those who notice such things will see on the labelling of certain recordings like Das Lied von der Erde the names of both the Philharmonia Orchestra and the New Philharmonia Orchestra. In 1977, the orchestra obtained the right to change its name back to the Philharmonia Orchestra, which it retains to the present day.
For those who would like to learn more about the dramatis personae in my story, the principal sources are:
Otto Klemperer, his life and times Vol 2 by Peter Heyworth (Cambridge University Press) Inside the Recording Studio by Peter Andry (Scarecrow Press) On and Off the Record A Memoire of Walter Legge by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Faber & Faber)
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 25, 2019 11:37:38 GMT
So here I go again off thread a bit to say to Dawnstar that I have several copies of different editions of Opera at Home (in addition to several Victor & Victrola versions)
Do the operas included change much over the editions? I find it very intesting in the copies I have (dated 1928 for the former & 1919 for the latter) to see which operas were popular enough at the time to have had selections recorded compared to what is still in the reprtory nowadays. There are a few operas included in there that I had never heard of previously, such as Goyescas, The Perfect Fool and The Violin Maker Of Cremona. Going off thread again, I would like to answer Dawnstar's question about how much the operas in Opera at Home and the American Victor/Victrola versions changed from edition to edition and the answer is quite a lot. Of course all the standard repertoire remains the same, but various rarities do pop up and disappear. For example, in the 1921 UK edition, there is an opera called Quo Vadis by Jean Nouguès, represented by three arias sung by Battistini. This opera had a big success at its premiere in Nice in 1909 and was subsequently performed numerous times in Paris, London, New York and elswehere but seems to have disappeared to the extent that Opera Grove does not even list it although it is mentioned in the entry on the composer. That opera would disappear from Opera at Home when the three Battistini titles were deleted since I doubt that anybody else ever subsequently recorded anything from the opera. But of course the true glory of the Opera at Home books lies in the wonderful full-page photographs of famous singers in their various roles.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 24, 2019 18:59:42 GMT
Yes, apologies tmesis for launching one of my lectures off the back of your thread about Così fan tutte although I did pick up on that as well as my comments about libretti.
So here I go again off thread a bit to say to Dawnstar that I have several copies of different editions of Opera at Home (in addition to several Victor & Victrola versions) and both the UK versions have a strapline at the bottom of the title page that says:
'Published by THE GRAMOPHONE CO., LTD., 363 Oxford Street, London, W.1'
Apart from the plethora of punctuation, the sad thing about that is the fact that almost as we speak, 363 Oxford Street is ceasing to be an HMV Record Store (again) and another chapter in the history of what was once 'the finest recording organisation in the world' (it must be true because they used to say so themselves in their publicity) has now come to a close.
And to tmesis, I think Walter Legge did well to get Böhm to record Così for EMI in 1962 after Böhm had already made a musically excellent but badly cut version for Decca back in the 1950s. I think this is partly explained by the fact by 1962 Schwarzkopf had reduced her stage roles to a mere handful but Così was among her party pieces. She had been singing it in Vienna and Salzburg just before the recording and I think both Böhm and Ludwig came along as part of the package, which was great for EMI!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 24, 2019 16:05:21 GMT
And to throw in a tonyloco anecdote, the 1962 EMI recording of Così fan tutte conducted by Karl Böhm and featuring Schwarzkopf's Fiordiligi, was one of the company's first releases in the new Angel Series (AN/SAN) where for the first time a complete multi-lingual libretto was included in the box with the LPs, although the price per LP was slightly higher then the previous sets without a libretto, which were a multiple of the CX/SAX or ALP/ASD LP prices.
So previously there were no libretti at all available with records? Or was the original rext included but no translation? God bless you, Dawnstar, for giving me an opening for a tonyloco lecture!
I am looking at EMI's 1962 Alphabetical Catalogue, which is a mine of information about all records then available on all the EMI labels in the UK. I'm not sure about DGG, but back in the 1950s when LPs first arrived, both EMI and Decca, who had by far the most complete operas on their catalogues, operated a similar system.
The opera sets were available on several single LPs with a note on the back of each sleeve although these notes might not be much more than the cast list. These LPs could be purchased separately (I bought the Furtwangler Tristan und Isolde as six separate HMV ALP LPs as and when I could afford them) or you could buy them all at the same time in paper sleeves and get a free 'presentation box' that included a small leaflet with the cast list and a brief note.
As regards librettos, these always had to be purchased separately and in 1962 in the UK cost anything between three shillings (Lucia di Lammermoor, Idomeneo, Die Kluge, etc) and seven and sixpence (Capriccio, The Decembrists, Der Rosenkavalier, etc) depending on the length of the work and whether it was in copyright. They were always the sung text in the original language and an English translation. Decca's English translations were generally of a high quality and presented in parallel columns but EMI continued to sell some appalling 'line-by-line' English singing translations that dated back to the days of 78s and were a disgrace. The EMI and Decca librettos were roughly the same dimensions (whatever a quarto page folded over is called, or something like that) and the system of selling separate librettos came to an end during the 1960s after EMI's Angel Series paved the way for the inclusion of a multi-lingual libretto, albeit initially at a higher price. I guess Decca followed EMI around the same time.
The new multi-lingual librettos generally included the text in the original language (usually Italian, French or German) with translations into English plus French, German and Italian as necessary. I should point out here that before the CD era, LPs were generally pressed locally for the main markets in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA and Japan and the accompanying packaging was also in the local language. The arrival of the multi-lingual librettos meant that even when the LPs were pressed locally, the librettos could be printed from sets of films imported from the centre or wherever the multi-lingual libretto booklets were originated. They were 12 inches square, the same size as the LPs, and the texts were usually laid out in parallel columns. Works in other languages like Russian and Czech caused special problems as to whether the librettos should be printed in the original Cyrillic as well as transliterations, which of course would vary as regards English, German, French, etc, as well as the actual translations into those languages. This work on multilingual librettos caused a major expansion in the editorial department of EMI's central classical division as well as its design centre in the USA, until the CD era when it was eventually farmed out to outside companies. The outside company in the UK was actually set up by what used to be Decca's editorial department and EMI soon got on board and sacked most of its inhouse editors at the time, which was not a very popular move as they were mostly my pals!
But in the heyday of multilingual librettos for LPs and then CDs, there was some very interesting work done, especially when the booklets became the place for original research and new notes written by various experts, for example John Steane's brilliant series of notes on Maria Callas and her repertoire that Warners are still recycling with the latest Callas reissues!
End of lecture!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 24, 2019 13:03:13 GMT
May I just second tmesis's views on the perfection of Mozart's music in Così fan tutte.
It was one of the first operas I ever saw back in Sydney in 1953 (when I was 16) with Betty Fretwell as Fiordiligi and John Shaw as Don Alfonso, and I was soon exploring enthusiastically the complete 1935 Glyndebourne recording on twenty 12-inch 78s (bought cheaply second-hand).
Interestingly, soon after seeing the professional production, I went to a student performance at the Sydney Conservatorium at which the skill, beauty and brilliance of Mozart's orchestration became a lot clearer to me, sitting as usual in the front row and being dazzled as phrase after phrase bounced back and forth among the woodwind and passages for the inner strings revealed themselves. Perhaps the whole thing was not as well-balanced as it might have been, but it certainly gave me a superb picture of Mozart's genius with the orchestra, even before considering what the singers were doing on the stage!
And to throw in a tonyloco anecdote, the 1962 EMI recording of Così fan tutte conducted by Karl Böhm and featuring Schwarzkopf's Fiordiligi, was one of the company's first releases in the new Angel Series (AN/SAN) where for the first time a complete multi-lingual libretto was included in the box with the LPs, although the price per LP was slightly higher then the previous sets without a libretto, which were a multiple of the CX/SAX or ALP/ASD LP prices. The Böhm Così with Christa Ludwig and a young Alfredo Kraus has also given me much pleasure.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 18, 2019 10:01:59 GMT
PS One of the benefits of queueing at the ROH back in the 1960s was that one got to know the hard-core regulars of both ballet and opera – there's nothing better for getting to know people with similar interests than sleeping with them in Floral Street for a night or two!
I guess there were probably at least 20 or so such regulars for both the opera and the ballet that I knew either by name or at least by sight and some of them had rather un-PC nicknames like 'The Seahorse' or 'The Fat Boy' or 'The Queen of the Night' or 'Mad Heather'. But we were all very friendly and supportive and there was also a practice among the regulars of selling or buying extra tickets from each other. For each new group of performances, including cast changes, the regulars would buy several tickets spread across the schedule. Then for those things that we didn't like much we would sell our extra tickets to other regulars or we could also buy extra tickets, as I did when Sutherland sang I puritani and I just had to get to every performance! This trading tickets among the regulars could take place at any time and of course the regulars would gather during the intervals to discuss the performances. I am talking now mainly about the Amphitheatre regulars, although after the old Gallery got incorporated into the Amphitheatre then it became just one group. We never knew any of the posh people who were regulars 'downstairs' although no doubt they also had a clique!
The other practice that was well established, but which the ROH put a stop to in more recent times although I don't know whether it has survived in any form, was arriving in Floral Street an hour or so before a performance and waving a ticket if one was selling or waving a pound note if one was buying! On arrival, one would firstly look out for any regulars to see if they were buying or selling and then face the general public if necessary. Over several years I don't think I ever failed either to buy or sell for any performance, although if Amphitheatre tickets were not forthcoming then I would sometimes splurge out on a seat in the Balcony Stalls or Stalls Circle or even the main Stalls, which sellers would sometimes offer at a discount!
As readers can imagine, in those days attending the ROH for both opera and ballet did become a major part of one's life and, as I said earlier in this thread, for me the climax of it all was the Macmillan Romeo and Juliet for which I attended nine out of the first twelve performances. The three that I missed were the Lynn Seymour ones because despite the fact that Seymour was Macmillan's muse and he created the role of Juliet for her, she was by far the least satisfactory of the first group of Juliets, which I think were Fonteyn (4 performances), Seymour (4 performances), Merle Park (2 performances) and Antoinette Sibley (2 performances).
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 18, 2019 1:04:35 GMT
I'm interested to know tonyloco how hard it was to get tickets for Fonteyn (with or without Nureyev.) I'm guessing it wasn't that hard. It was always easy enough to get tickets for Dowell/Sibley. These days it seems to be harder - it's sometimes difficult to get tickets when Vadim Muntagirov, Natalia Osipova and Marianela Nunez are performing even with a 'Friends' membership. With opera performances I never found it hard to get tickets for Sutherland, Domingo, Carreras, Te Kanawa, Caballe or even Pavarotti but now, if Pappano is conducting (even a not very distinguished cast) it's hard to get anything reasonably priced. I did manage to get something reasonably priced for La Forza, with Kaufmann/Netrebko, but there was not much left. A few days ago, I wrote up a long post describing the way bookings at the Royal Opera House worked for ballet and opera when I first arrived in London in 1960 but decided it was too boring to post so I deleted it and now I find that you are actually asking about that very subject. Back in 1960, all tickets for every performance at the ROH was sold only to personal callers at the box office. The tickets for opera and ballet went on sale separately covering periods of about two months and those who wanted the best seats for the most popular performances went to the ROH on the first day of the new booking period. Generally a queue would form at the three separate box office windows (Gallery & Upper Slips, Amphitheatre and Lower Slips and 'Downstairs'. At something like 8.30 am 'queue tickets' were handed out to every person queuing at that time with a printed time to return to the box office later in the day after it opened at 10 am and anybody who arrived between 8.30 am and 10 am would likewise be given a queue ticket to return at a designated time. For major events people would start queueing several days in advance and there were strict rules as to how the queues worked. There was a list for each of the three queues and you signed on when you arrived. The lists were held by 'regulars' who were willing to hang around the vicinity of the box offices until relieved by other list holders. Once you had signed on you were supposed to remain somewhere in the Covent Garden area but most serious queuers went to performances at the ROH or elsewhere in the West End. You could even go home briefly if necessary but it was absolutely necessary to spend the night near the Opera House sleeping in the street although a few lucky people actually had cars in which they spent the night. I had a kit consisting of a lilo and a sleeping bag and extra warm clothing and on a couple of occasions I actually bagged one of the doorways in Floral Street. For morning ablutions etc the most popular toilets were those in the Covent Garden Plaza at the back of the Actors' Church. The longest queue I ever did was for the first complete Solti Ring when I slept out three nights (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) for tickets going on sale on Monday morning at 10 am. But despite the whole queuing performance, it was generally good enough to go to the box office on the first day of booking to get reasonable seats for everything. An early bus or tube to arrive before 8.30 am in order to get a queue tickets was best but otherwise one could just go to the box office much later in the day after the queue tickets had all been used and even for the next day or so after booking opened there would still be reasonable seats available for most things. So what happened to upset this system? Well, for the ballet it was the arrival of Nureyev and for the opera it was the Callas Tosca in 1964. People who lived outside London started to make a fuss that they wanted to see Nureyev dance and could not get to the box office weeks before the performance they wanted to attend, and wives of Members of Parliament became incensed that they could not get tickets to see Callas after they read the reviews! The result was that the Opera House had to set up a system of postal booking which meant that in theory everybody had an equal chance of getting the tickets they wanted for each new booking period but of course it was very much a lottery. Then they invented the Friends, and then on-line booking became the norm for all theatrical performances and we all know the joys of that, including electronic queuing, which of course is more comfortable sitting at home with a computer than sleeping in Floral Street but perhaps less of an adventure! But going back to your original question, tmesis, the answer is that it was not all that hard in 1960 to get to see Fonteyn or Christoff or Gobbi or Vickers or Freni or Alva or de los Angeles or Crespin or Nilsson and I had no trouble just a few days before the performance in booking a front row seat in the Stalls Circle to hear Jussi Björling and Rosanna Carteri sing La Bohème on 18 March 1960….just imagine that!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 13, 2019 13:44:04 GMT
Yes, I am sure that Pasha leaving will certainly change the character of the show. It was noticeable that in the group dances he often took the lead, whether for contractual reasons or just because he was the best dancer was not clear, but his talent as both a dancer and as a choreographer will indeed be missed.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 11, 2019 15:27:47 GMT
Following on from conversations elsewhere, especially with tmesis, Dawnstar, ctas, Tibidabo and TallPaul, I thought I would set down some recollections of Dame Margot Fonteyn, a dancer with special qualities that set her apart from all other ballerinas I have ever seen. She was not a great technician, although her 32 fouettées as Odile were fine and her balances en pointe in the Rose Adagio were rock solid. No, she somehow just embodied the beauty of classical ballet dancing and was also superb at characterisation in characters as varied as Odette/Odile, Aurora, the Firebird, Juliet, Ondine and of course Marguerite. The one role in which I felt she failed was Giselle where, for some reason, she seemed like a very old lady, but others disagreed!
I first saw her in Australia in 1957 when she and Michael Somes, together with Rowena Jackson and Bryan Ashbridge, joined the excellent Australian Borovansky Ballet Company for what I think was a two-week season. For one week Fonteyn and Somes danced Act II of Swan Lake and then for a second week they danced the last act of Sleeping Beauty, into which the Rose Adagio was inserted after the first night when the public and the critics complained that the single pas de deux was hardly enough of the famous pair.
Then when I came to London in March 1960, I saw Fonteyn's Sleeping Beauty, which was incredible to see this 40-year-old ballerina being a 16-year-old girl, followed shortly afterwards with her Giselle which was awful. She seemed like an old lady and it just didn't work for me. I have to say here that my favourite Giselle has to be Svetlana Beriosova although probably the best danced was by Natalia Makarova with what was then the Kirov.
Returning to Fonteyn in 1960, she was brilliant in Ondine, a role that Ashton had created to make the best use of her particular physical qualities and was very good in Swan Lake. I also have vivid memories of Daphnis and Chloe and Cinderella. As we know, instead of retiring around that time after she reached 40, she began a completely new career dancing with Nureyev and, apart from Giselle, most of her roles opposite Nureyev were quite spectacular. Marguerite and Armand was sensational but probably the most exciting night I ever spent at the theatre was the first night of Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet in February 1965. It was three hours of thrilling excitement, with the entire company at the top of their form and Rudy and Margot being the star-crossed lovers to perfection. Again, Margot was totally convincing as a young girl falling deeply in love, and Rudy was Rudy!
One of Fonteyn's qualities was the physical expression of whatever emotion she was portraying. Her Aurora was glowing with joy, her Odette was quivering with fear at her first encounter with Siegfried, her Odile was a wicked temptress and her Firebird was also terrified to be captured by the Prince. The ultimate in this was probably Marguerite, which was mainly Fonteyn emoting and it was totally draining. In my experience, most other ballerinas tend to remain rather po-faced in ballets like Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and I often wondered whether Ninette de Valois had forbidden the other ballerinas in the company to imitate Fonteyn and her physical emoting. Another of her qualities was musicality. She filled every phrase of her dancing, and even when she was on stage but not actually dancing she remained inside the music in a way that very few other dancers seem to be, although I do see this quality to a certain extent in Jane Torville!
I feel particularly lucky to have seen so much of Fonteyn, albeit in the later part of her career, and while I fully appreciate that there have been and still are other very fine ballerinas, I believe Margot Fonteyn was something very special because of her matchless artistry.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 10, 2019 16:52:54 GMT
You certainly couldn't smuggle in a box of daffs now (or anything else) with the heightened security, although its only just been tightened up again with routine bag searches. There was a distinct lack when then the newly refurbished bits were opened up in September last year, with not only no bag searches, but on around six occasions, no one at all checked my ticket! Interesting, tmesis, that nobody checked your ticket on a number of occasions recently after the re-opening of the public areas, but of course if you didn't actually have a ticket you would be taking a chance as to where you put yourself inside the auditorium to watch the performance. You could start by standing at the back of the Stalls Circle but unless they had sold other standing places there you might get rumbled. And you could try to spot an empty seat somewhere like the ends of the Stalls Circle or the Balcony Stalls, but if you did get caught you might get barred altogether from the place!
Nobody gave a toss back in the 1960s as to who was standing at the back of the old Gallery or Balcony or whatever it was called. My friend took me up there to see Fonteyn dance The Sleeping Beauty more than once because he maintained that she was the greatest Aurora we would ever see (and he was right) and we should take the opportunity of watching her do it as often as possible in addition to the performances for which we had seats in the Amphitheatre. This was just before the arrival of Nureyev and it was looking as if she would retire at any moment, having turned 40 in 1959. And such was the magic of Fonteyn that even in the furthest reaches of the back of the house, her wonderful performance still reached us in all its magnificence. But I ramble on again...as usual!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 10, 2019 2:15:10 GMT
Thanks tmesis, Dawnstar and ctas for those updates on flower throws being organised by the ROH, or at least permitted and assisted! My anecdotes relate basically to the 1960s when there was effectively no security like bag checks and it was the 'regulars' who organised the flower throws.
In fact, talking about the lack of security, in the days when the old Balcony was separate to the Amphitheatre, there was a large standing room area behind the seating and one could slip half-a-crown to the attendant on the door and go and stand for the performance. This trick was revealed to me by an older employee at EMI who used to do it frequently when he was working as a steward on the Cunard Line.
I can also remember one occasion when my friend and I were at a concert at the Festival Hall which finished before 10 pm and he said: "Leyler Gencer is appearing for the first time tonight in Don Carlo at the opera house. Let's go and hear her sing 'Tu che le vanita', so we hurried across Waterloo Bridge to the Opera House and when we got to the entrance to the Balcony in Floral Street there was nobody at all on the door so we just went up the stairs and stood for the last act of the Don Carlo. We had tickets in the Amphitheatre for a later Gencer performance but it was fun to have a preview of her performance in the last act! The old Balcony can be seen in the opening section of the film The Red Shoes.
Just imagine being able to walk into a performance at Covent Garden these days in that way!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 9, 2019 13:26:05 GMT
My early diary notes tell me that I saw Albert Finney in Billy Liar at the Cambridge in 1960 and then John Osborne's Luther at the Royal Court in 1961 before he became a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company when it started at the Old Vic in 1963.
On stage he was highly charismatic and made a strong impression in every role he played. One of the greats. RIP
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 9, 2019 13:01:44 GMT
Some recollections on 'flower throwing' at The Garden. I first went there in 1977 and have been going regularly ever since. In the 70s and 80s I probably saw Sutherland around eight times in total. I was never a particular fan but, whenever she was singing, it was always the time when there was the greatest sense of occasion, with a quite electric atmosphere - even when she wasn't singing very well. Amongst those eight performances I suppose some would be first nights and some last nights but the majority must have been the middle of a run. As I remember it ALL had massive 'flower showers.' As tonyloco says mainly daffodils and so many that the stage was covered. It seemed a very organised, pre-meditated business with boxes of them piled up, and lobbed from, the lower amphitheatre slips. No one else commanded this amount of floral adulation. Other singers I have seen a few flowers thrown for were Domingo, Carreras, Pavarotti, Alfredo Kraus, Nicolai Gedda, Monserrat Caballe but never for Te Kanawa. At the ballet I've seen it for Dowell/Sibley, Eagling/Park and Carlos Acosta. Yes, tmesis, I can confirm that the flower showers at Covent Garden did indeed take quite a bit of organising because for a couple of years I shared a flat with a balletomane who was obsessed with Sibley and Dowell and he would arrange flower throws for them whenever it seemed appropriate. He would firstly make sure that the end seats in the Amphitheatre Lower Slips were purchased for the selected date (A1 and A113) for his accomplices to occupy, although he himself always sat in A 56 to enjoy the performance and observe the throwing. He would buy the flowers at a market in Leather Lane, preferably daffodils if available which were both cheap and good to throw, and they would be stored in our flat until he took them to meet his pals in Floral Street before the performance. The throwers would wear large trench coats to conceal the bunches of flowers to get them inside the auditorium and then the resulting rain of flowers would take place during the curtain calls.
For the ballet, these were generally at first performances because then, as now, a run of subsequent performances would involve numerous cast changes and then the ballet would be revived later, but, as you say, it was not uncommon for all Sutherland opera performances to see flower throws because La Stupenda was held in such high esteem by the regulars who went to the trouble of organising them. Curiously, although I was present at the first night of the Callas Tosca in 21 January 1964, I don't think there was a major flower throw from the Amphitheatre Slips (I could be wrong) but I think some flowers were thrown onto the stage from people in the Stalls.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 6, 2019 23:01:51 GMT
Flowers are sometimes thrown onto the stage for favourite stars of opera and ballet, usually on opening nights, but I believe there is nothing as spectacular as an Australian 'streamer' farewell.
I think the ROH's flower showers are fairly spectacular. I saw Fille du Regiment the night of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's 70th birthday & they had a flower shower & also Jim Carson wheeling a large birthday cake on stage for her (this was just after she'd made a guest appearance in Downton Abbey). I don't think they necessarily do flower showers on opening nights though. They're usually done for singers/dancers who are retiring or marking long careers so I would have thought the last performance in a run would be a more likely occasion or, like with Dame Kiri, some sort of anniversary date.
Yes, Dawnstar, you are basically right, but back in the 1960s flower throws at the Royal Opera House used sometimes to be organised on first nights as well. I am fairly sure that the opening night of Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev in February 1965 had a spectacular flower throw, as well as some huge bouquets presented to Dame Margot on stage during the curtain calls. I am also fairly sure that there was a massive flower throw (mainly daffodils) on the opening night of one of Joan Sutherland's new productions at the ROH in the 1960s, perhaps it was La sonnambula or I puritani, and I definitely remember Richard Bonynge walking onto the stage and slipping on the daffodils as 2,200 people all said 'Whoops!' together, which Maestro Bonynge did not enjoy!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 6, 2019 13:49:04 GMT
I may have mentioned this subject before but in digging out my historical theatre programmes relating to Afternoon Tea, I came across some photos of the Australian tradition of throwing streamers onto the stage at the last night of a popular production. The pictures show Margot Fonteyn being honoured with streamers at the end of her brief season in Sydney back in the 1950s and Joan Sutherland being treated to a similar farewell at her final performance in opera in Sydney in 1990. It is an emotional and uplifting experience, both for the performers on stage and for the audience, to be present on one of these occasions and I regret that there is no similar tradition in British theatre on 'special' last nights as far as I know. Flowers are sometimes thrown onto the stage for favourite stars of opera and ballet, usually on opening nights, but I believe there is nothing as spectacular as an Australian 'streamer' farewell. Perhaps Theatre Board members might like to consider organising one at some appropriate occasion in the future, but they will have to do it without my participation as I am now too old for that sort of activity! Of course it might run foul of Health and Safety regulations as a fire risk, but there are a number of shows where bits of paper are showered onto the audience – Bat Out of Hell for one – so why not some streamers?
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 5, 2019 0:11:38 GMT
Forgive a loquacious old man but I looked up my diary note on Around the World and I feel the need to share it with the rest of the Board to emphasise just how much pleasure I got out of most of the 'Lost Musicals':
AROUND THE WORLD (Lilian Baylis) --’Around the World’, the unsuccessful and somewhat bizarre musical that Cole Porter wrote with Orson Wells in 1946 based on ‘Around the World in 80 Days’, was sheer heaven this afternoon at the Lilian Baylis Theatre in the Lost Musicals series. But much of the fun came from the fact that although the show was devised for some 50 performers, including Wells himself, and was lavishly staged with loads of elaborate stage effects as well as silent film interludes, it was done today by six men and two women in evening dress on a bare stage and proved to be absolutely hilarious, but that was partly because the six men between them played some 25 different characters, differentiated only by facial expressions, body postures and funny accents.
And the script is outrageously politically incorrect, with stereotype Indians (of the Asian kind), Chinese, Japanese, American Rednecks and American Red Indians all portrayed as caricatures that would today have got Wells put in jail! Two of the cameo female roles were played cleverly by men, and I invite you to imagine a middle-aged actor with a somewhat gruff manner -- and voice to match -- dressed in a black dinner suit, portraying Lola, the proprietress of a waterfront hostelry somewhere on the coast of California, singing a song called ‘If you look at me’ in the husky manner of Marlene Dietrich. Sounds frightful? No, it was brilliant! And as to Liang, a devious Chinese Madame who ran an opium den in Hong Kong...she was so funny that even now words fail me...and the scene was much more realistic than the one done with an elaborate set and full costumes in the recent stage production of The Letter. Such is the magic of theatre…when it is done right!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 4, 2019 14:51:41 GMT
I discovered several great musicals through this series but after a while it became a bit expensive. In the earlier days it was a low-cost low-budget affair where you paid fringe-theatre prices and saw performers sitting on chairs with script in hand while a small group of musicians accompanied them for the musical numbers. By the end it was West End prices for a full orchestra, and it didn't feel like value for money any more. It lost the cosy atmosphere of discovery and became like watching a rehearsal. That does not chime in with my recollection of the Lost Musicals series at all. It was only on rare occasions, such as with a special performance of Jubilee at Her Majesty's and Strike Up the Band at the Barbican Concert Hall both using a full orchestra, that anything other than a piano was used for accompaniment and the venues were usually rather smallish including the Barbican Cinema, the Linbury at the Royal Opera House, the Fortune Theatre and the Lilian Baylis Theatre at Sadler's Wells. I recall that the last show I saw was Around the World at the Lilian Baylis in 2013, done in the traditional manner with the cast wearing evening dress seated on chairs holding their scripts and accompanied by a piano and it was totally brilliant, thanks in no small way to Ian Marshall Fisher's skill at clever casting. My earliest recollection is probably Kurt Weill's Love Life at the Theatre Museum and among some very cherished memories of various shows are Louise Gold's energetic playing of the Ethel Merman roles in the Cole Porter shows like Du Barry Was a Lady, Something for the Boys, and Red Hot and Blue.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 3, 2019 23:17:28 GMT
If the tea was 9d in 1929 and still 9d in 1951 the quality of the biscuits must have fallen considerably. (Only a bounder would suggest that the quality of the tea might have dropped. After all, this is Britain.) No, the tea had gone up to 1/6 (one shilling and six pence) by 1951 and it was coffee and biscuits that was ninepence, which was not available in 1929. I suspect that the coffee service was simpler than the tea, which came in a pot, plus another jug or pot of hot water and a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar, generally in cubes, and all that in addition to whatever bits of cake and biscuits were included on a separate plate. I have no recollection of ever seeing coffee being served at evening performances after I arrived in London in 1960 but the tea service at matinees was extremely noisy, especially the collection of the trays, generally being passed along the rows after the second act had started! But in those days, attending matinees of plays in the West End was still a very genteel experience for ladies of quality in the stalls and dress circle.
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