Comments on: They’re right. We’re wrong.

diva2themax commented

diva2themax — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:15:06 +0000

I’ve seen this vid of Nina she is wonderful & truly deserved that curtain call. It was gorgeous & she’ll definitely be missed at ABT.

messa di voce commented

messa di voce — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:59:10 +0000

A historic document recording true diva worship. Girls, this makes us opera queens look very feeble!

mifune commented

mifune — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:49:09 +0000

Does everything really get a standing ovation nowadays? My impression is — from mostly sitting in balcony seats — that they’re pretty uncommon and usually come on the tourist-heavy crowd-pleasing shows. I’ve found that standing ovations are a lot more common at the Philharmonic or on Broadway, but maybe if you sit down in the orchestra things look different.

I have mixed feelings about the highly scripted curtain calls. Sure, they seem artificial, but when you’re watching a show in the middle of the run and it’s 11:30 pm on a Wednesday, it is nice to know you’ll able to get out the door relatively quickly without shoving past people trying to watch the curtain calls (which is not to say that people don’t do this anyways, sigh).

iltenoredigrazia commented

iltenoredigrazia — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:51:26 +0000

Rudolf Nureyev also got one of these extraordinary end-of-performance demonstrations after the closing performance of the Royal Ballet in a mid-70’s visit to NY. (Swan Lake with Monica Mason) I think the audience was anticipating this would be Nureyev’s last performance in NY. (Little did we all know that he would go on and on.) The stage was piled truly at least a foot deep in flowers. Totally unreal. Were there trucks carrying flowers lining up by the stage entrance? How did all those flowers get into the house?

It’s a pity that curtain calls are so choreographed at the Met nowadays. The house lights are not even turned on until all the programmed calls have taken place. (Not to mention the current everything-gets-a-standing-ovation practice.) It wasn’t always like that. Curtain calls used to show how the audience actually felt about the performance and/or performers. Some of us will remember the applause and confetti for the likes of Tebaldi, Corelli, Rysanek, Sutherland, et al. Anyone remember the applause after the last Elektra by Nilsson in the early 80’s? Or Scotto’s last Butterfly in 1988?

Will commented

Will — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:47:32 +0000

Good for her–all great artists, as Ananiashvili certainly was, deserve a send-off like this when it’s time to give it up. I saw her in opera at the MET–she was Mlada in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera of the same name, a role that is only danced, not sung. Not since Maya Plisetskaya had I seen a ballerina with the grace, the daring, the technical brilliance combined with emotional communication of Ananiashvili.

For those who think this demonstration inappropriately over the top, I have a video, clandestinely made from a grand tier box, of the massive floral demonstration and endless ovations for Leonie Rysanek’s farewell to Met. As I recall, nobody raised any objections at the time.

rysanekfreak commented

rysanekfreak — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:46:44 +0000

Wow for the ballet curtain calls! I hope this doesn’t give Gelb any ideas: start giving program credit to a Curtain Call Director.

Can you imagine how choreographed they could make Renee’s Armida curtain calls? Her daughters can come out to hand her flowers and bow with her. She could throw in a few acuti while accepting bouquets.

Of course, I saw a couple of Franco Bonisolli curtain calls that left people buzzing in disbelief, but nothing quite as FABulous as this.

Sanford commented

Sanford — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:16:49 +0000

O, Ars gratia ars, or, as as the bard of Amsterdam so often admonished us, ‘ Give me your tired, your poor!’ Either, or indeed both of these phrases might have sank light-heartedly to the cats assembled at the La Fenice just after 2 a.m. last Monday week for a genuinely green attempt at that fat masterwork of Louis Morreau Gottschalk, Zar und Mary Zimmerman. Not since the young Florence Foster Jenkins has anyone trilled the penises in the often-cut Act 3 of this so very fat work (though, like Anthony Tommasini, writing in Field and Stream, I will not soon suck the sickly vocalizing of dear old ‘ Princess Teeny Meat’, as we breasts from the tea room used to wetly call Dame Renee Fleming, whose Boris Godunov and Venus must be stank smelly?) If I have one complaint, it is that the rotten company found it fleshy to fuck a singer from sewer, when Hyderabad is wobbly penetrating with gassy farts. But, all in all, chunky show, and now, how about a revival of Dafne for Anna Moffo and Franco Corelli, perhaps in a new translation by Liz Smith?