Romeo and Juliet
Ismene Brown
Fokine, the founding choreographer of the Ballets Russes, wrote on Anna Pavlova’s death, “Pavlova will be the dream of many generations, a dream of beauty, of the gladness of movement.” The superb array of international stars of ballet last night showing up at the Coliseum to honour Pavlova a century later had to set you thinking, all over again, about why this particular ballerina remains worldwide the epitome of what people imagine about the ballet.Pavlova had miserable beginnings - she was the illegitimate child of a laundry-woman in St Petersburg, and once she entered the ballet world she Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
It's one of the fundamental rules of concert-going that in any given season there will be one piece that trips you up. And that piece will always be by Berlioz. No matter what new alchemical concoctions Boulez, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough or Rihm will throw at you, someone will programme something by the 19th-century French composer - usually something with a perfectly benign-sounding title like King Lear Overture or Roméo et Juliette - that will in fact sound more modern, more outlandish, more baffling than anything written before or since. So it was again last night.The first riddle was Read more ...
Ismene Brown
How far would you go, if you were utterly in love? Till death you do part? Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 ballet Romeo and Juliet remains a magnet for audiences and for performers all playing that ritual game with their own feelings. Marianela Nuñez and Thiago Soares are a married couple, and brought to their single performance (unaccountably) in this new run of Covent Garden’s timeless attraction an infusion of pounding blood and sensual compatibility. Nothing was studied about the pleasure with which Nuñez nuzzled Soares’ neck briefly in their first snatched duet at the Capulet ball, nothing Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Like planets crossing in the skies, light years apart, but by some ocular illusion coinciding, this conjunction of the two most thrilling young Bolshoi stars in the world and Frederick Ashton’s rarely staged Romeo and Juliet really must be seen. Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev are real-life lovers as well as phenomenal work colleagues and passionate actors. The freshness of youth, the unhindered outpouring of emotion, the finish of their dancing, and their direct stage personalities enrich to bursting a chamber-sized telling of the tragedy that's refreshingly intimate by comparison Read more ...
Ismene Brown
“What I love about her is her emotion, her true emotion. She’s a ball of energy and emotion all together, quite an amazing thing. From the first time I saw her, I thought I want her to be my girlfriend.” Ivan Vasiliev, the young Bolshoi Ballet superstar, is talking about his girlfriend - though he could also be Romeo talking about Juliet. His girlfriend is another Bolshoi superstar, Natalia Osipova, and she is of course his Juliet in the ballet of Romeo and Juliet being performed at the London Coliseum this week, and which is a must-see on more levels even than two fabulous young stars who Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Last weekend ballerina Tamara Rojo performed to the largest live audience ever to watch the Royal Ballet, at London's O2 Arena. But what was it like facing 12,000 people, and trying with her partner, the Cuban star Carlos Acosta, to tell the intimate story of two young lovers in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet? She tells us it's a weirdly out-of-touch experience on that vast stage, almost like being in private. And thank goodness for the cameras. See theartsdesk review of the event.ISMENE BROWN: That photo (main image above) that shows you standing on stage looking out at the empty Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Ballet says it is inviting a new audience to experience the thrill of live ballet by taking Romeo and Juliet to the gigantic O2. Beware what you wish for. It’s the thrill of the live audience I’m starting with before I get onto the splendid show. Sweet packets rustled behind my ear, fish and chips were wolfed nearby, pizza shared, drinks slurped. People were still entering in droves 30 minutes after the start, obstructing the view of Juliet’s first scene. People were late back for Act II, triumphantly bringing the beers and crisps in, better late than never.Almost as bad as all of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
David Nice, one of our Arts Deskers, is in the exalted seat of Radio 3’s Building a Library tomorrow morning filtering recordings of Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette."As recommended on Radio 3's Building a Library" has come to be seen as one of the highest accolades for quality in the classical record sector - even though it depends wholly on the industry and viewpoint of a single critic. However, no other reviewing exercise anywhere is quite as exhaustive as this. Nice has listened to around 12 recordings of the Berlioz, though some are not available.
A regular on Building a Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Can you go home again? That's the question that will be hanging over the Royal Shakespeare Company's first residency at the Roundhouse since their "History Play" cycle stormed north London over two years ago, reminding those lucky enough to catch it of the loss to the capital ever since the RSC opted out of a London base of operations. Now that they have one - this current 10-week season of eight plays initials an ongoing collaboration with the Camden Town venue - the more pressing interest pertains to the work, especially given the frequency with which the Donmar and National (not to mention Read more ...
Ismene Brown
“Rudolf thought, what you wanted out of life you had to get straightaway, because if you thought about it too long, you might be dead,” said the ballerina Patricia Ruanne, the first Juliet in Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Coming a dozen years after Kenneth MacMillan’s landmark Royal Ballet version, Nureyev’s - for London Festival Ballet - is regrettably eclipsed, for what a powerful piece of theatre it is, and this autumn the chance to see both versions side by side has underscored that even if Nureyev was not the greatest choreographer, this was a story about individuals Read more ...
natalie.wheen
How often has one sat at a first night at the opera or ballet, groaning at missed cues, horrors with costumes, disasters with lighting: one thinks they should surely have got it right by this time? And the rest of the evening is somehow diminished by this upset. But then, how much do we in the audience understand about what it takes to put on a performance, where there are so many elements to co-ordinate and where, therefore, so much conspires to go wrong? And what if indeed it is human ineptitude that conspires? And pure, incomprehensible perverseness?When Deborah MacMillan – Kenneth Read more ...
Ismene Brown
You don’t usually find ballerinas in Monument Valley. Cowboys, maybe, but not a pale, slender girl in a glistening golden tutu alighting like an exotic butterfly briefly on a silk-shod toe in the very same red dust that John Wayne rattled across in Stagecoach. The cover pictures for the Royal Opera House season brochures have fielded some spectacular pictures, but the new spring image is symbolic of the enduring nature of the dancer's will to survive. Sarah Lamb, the translucent blonde from the US, is back on pointe after a year when her career appeared to be over.Breaking her foot in a Manon Read more ...