This promises to be the most fun critics round-up yet. Rarely have reviews been so unanimously foul. Being that there was so little to save, the critics left their stars in the drawer, and polished their metaphors with seeming glee. No amount of special pleading, of aesthetic jiggery-pokery, can excuse Schaufuss’s weird libretto as it […]
Financial Times
Tonight Roberto Bolle and Friends alight at the 15,000-seater Roman Arena in Verona
Tonight Verona’s famous Arena is sold out. All 15,000 seats will be full to watch Roberto Bolle and his ‘friends’ dance in the open air. It is a magical place. Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore (the equivalent of the Financial Times, and the same colour) spoke to him. Unfortunately half of these interviews are always […]
Critics round-up: Royal Ballet’s “Birthday Offering”, “A Month in the Country” and “Noces”
Monica Mason’s last pickings from the Royal Ballet repertoire before leaving her post as the company’s director included two works by the Royal Ballet’s founder choreographer, Frederick Ashton – Birthday Offering and A Month in the Country – and Bronislava Nijinska’s “extraordinary” Noces. It was Ashton who invited Nijinska to restage her masterpiece for the company in 1966 […]
Critics Round-Up: An ‘imaginatively crafted delight’ or a ‘thin ballet’? Royal Ballet’s Alice
We know that the Royal Ballet’s dancers are exceptional, we’ve seen that the designs and lighting are magical, but the jury is still out on whether Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland satisfies as a theatrical piece. Clement Crisp’s final paragraph from his Financial Times review of the current run was, But for all the unflagging energies, physical and […]
Barry Humphries on Dame Edna Everage’s first panto
Dame Edna Everage is starring in her first pantomime: Dick Whittington at the New Wimbledon Theatre. The Financial Times talked to her manager, 77 year-old Barry Humphries. On Melbourne in the 50s “Scorn and disgust were my favourite occupations. If you could have been in Melbourne in the 1950s, you would have understood. It was a […]
The FT’s Clement Crisp: Manon’s involuntary sexual charm, like Marilyn Monroe
The Financial Times has some, understandable, reserves in an otherwise excellent review: My cheers for the ensemble are as loud as anyone’s, as also my admiration for the principals: for José Martin’s vivid Lescaut, for Gary Avis’s tumescent Monsieur GM, for Itziar Mendizabel as Lescaut’s mistress, sailing through terrible difficulties with sublime insouciance, for Bennet […]
Critics Round-up: Royal Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty
In 2006 Monica Mason decided to go back to the beginning with the Royal Ballet’s signature ballet, The Sleeping Beauty: consign the 2003 Makarova disaster (“dramatically shapeless and emotionally flat” said The Times) to the dustbins, and restore Oliver Messel’s 1946 production. That was the year that the Vic-Wells Ballet moved to the Royal Opera House. There has […]
La Scala’s Raymonda “is a true banquet: pomp, circumstance, and an entire world on stage”, says the Financial Times
The Financial Times visited Milan’s historic theatre to witness Sergei Vikharev’s reconstruction of Raymonda – a production which is sending ripples of interest and excitement around the ballet community. This blog alone, and its associated YouTube channel, has received thousands of extra visits to read about Raymonda, pushing the associated posts to the top of the most viewed […]
Critics Round-up: Anna Netrebko in Anna Bolena
This was very much Anna Netrebko’s Anna Bolena. True, it is the title role, but the other characters have to work quite hard too. Her face was emoting from every review, and so here’s a round-up of what the critic’s had to say about Anna as Anna at the Met. Anne Midgette’s review for The […]
Critics Round-up: New York City Ballet’s Ocean’s Kingdom
The review headlines ran “That Sinking Feeling”, “Soggy Ocean Kingdom”, “All Wet” – you get the idea. But this was Sir Paul McCartney’s début in the world of ballet, the company was the great Yew York City Ballet, Sir Paul’s famous daughter, designer Stella, was doing costumes, and Peter Martins the choreography. So a lot of red carpet, […]