magic in the moonlight

Impressions from this run of Swan Lake at PNB, after seeing all nine performances, are listed in no particular order.

After seeing Swan Lake in Paris, San Francisco, and Milan, PNB’s/Kent Stowell’s Swan Lake is still my favorite version, because of the fourth act, and the corps staging in the second act. The swans, the ruins-like set, the lighting are magic, dreamlike.

All five of the Odettes in this run were exquisite, with Noelani Pantastico’s performances as standouts for me.  Tonight she was also especially dazzling as Odile, seeming to take risks in timing. (WOW, the fish dive/drop with stellar partner Seth Orza… did they plan that?… and that centrifugal force spin near the end?)  And this afternoon, Lesley Rausch was dazzling in a more controlled way… a flawless performance, with triumphant joy after thrillingly rocking the fouettés. Laura Tisserand’s beautiful lines and emotional performances, Elizabeth Murphy’s clarity and vulnerability, and Sarah Orza’s achingly beautiful arm ripples and timing choices (what a debut!) all wowed me. All five of them broke my heart at the end, especially Noelani.

All five of the Siegfrieds were very fine.  The standouts for me were Karel Cruz (as always … if not for the music, would he spin forever, and hover in the air forever?) and Dylan Wald, who made an impressive debut while still in the corps de ballet.

Regardless of the leads, the 24-swan ensemble is the real star of this ballet.

And the orchestra. And that epic score.

Beyond the swans, the czardas is my favorite group dance.  I especially enjoy watching Steven Loch dance this dance (as well as the Spanish dance) with such gusto.

In the role of Wolfgang, it’s hard for me to choose a favorite between Ezra Thomson and Kyle Davis; both steal the first act show.  Both played the character with increasing richness as the run progressed, and both made me laugh out loud today.

My favorite seats in the house for this ballet are front role left of center, because I get to see the comic relief unfold up close, have the longest possible view of Odette’s final exit, experience the flock rustling when they are running circles and serpentines, and have no one else between me and the orchestra. It’s also a convenient location to quickly exit at intermission and dash to the secret bathrooms near the lecture hall that almost no one else uses.

It was a dream to be immersed in this run.  Now it’s time to catch up on sleep and return to regular life, but hopefully carrying a bit of the magic inside me until the next time.

the swans are here

It’s swan season again in the Pacific Northwest. Once again I’m seeing all of them.  It’s what I do.

Last night’s Odette/Odile, Noelani Pantastico, was transcendent. I feel unable to articulate how beautiful and moving her performance was.

The entire production was especially magical last night.  Whatever the next six performances bring, and all the future swans, last night was a dream that I hope lingers for a very long time.

 

At long last, the swans

Friday, July 7: So after another high-speed train ride — through the southern Alps! — I made it to Milan.

Milan, more specifically seeing Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake at La Scala, was the impetus for this whole trip.

Milan was the city in which I was only looking forward to La Scala, having read that it wasn’t very scenic or some such. But turns out I really liked Milan. It helped that I had splurged on a lovely terrace room in a lovely little hotel in the historic district (to be able to easily walk to and from La Scala) for the two nights spent there. And it helped that I met up with my brother and sister-in-law there, and would be going to Venice with them, so would not have to struggle with language (they have learned to speak Italian) (not that it was an issue in the touristy area). But I liked the city itself enough to want to return some day.

The highlights this visit include:

• La Scala and Il lago dei cigni, of course.
• The bella locanda, to which I sincerely hope I did not bring any unwanted guests along with me. It was too hot to really enjoy the terrace after about 10 a.m., but I have no regrets on the splurge.
• The roof of the Duomo, despite the heat, the crowd, and the scary last-flight-of-stairs-to-the-top climb.
• The Sforza Castle, where I only had time to see a handful of its many art and history museums.
• The cozy, friendly Caffe Vecchia Brera, where I enjoyed two meals on Saturday.
• Gelato. Twice!
• The public transit system.  I only rode a couple of subway lines – very easy to use – but enjoyed ogling the streetcars and trams and buses (remember, I’m a transit geek). Next time, I’ll ride them and explore some other neighborhoods.

At the Museum of Musical Instruments in the Castle Sforza

Lots of shared-use streets in Milano

beer from the minibar

The ceiling above Michelango’s Pieta in the Castle Sforza

From my seat at La Scala

A view from the Duomo

La Scala

Caffe Vecchia Brera post-ballet

The dome of the old fancypants shopping mall

La Scala

light and shadow in the locanda breakfast room

Milanese street art

Lunch at the Caffe Vecchia Brera

At long last!

flowers on the terrace

In the Castle Sforza

Locanda breakfast

A view from the Duomo

the terrace

A view from the Duomo

Exiting the locanda

Streetcar action

A view of the Duomo

Somewhere in Milano

A view from the Duomo

what brought me here

A view of the Duomo

Caffe Vecchia Brera

 

Ciao until next time, Milano!

And finally on to Venezia…

Of swans and sylphs, nymphees and nymphs, trains, planes, and vaporetti

Yesterday (or was it last night? isn’t it now morning?) I returned from a 10ish-day journey in France and Italy: Paris, Giverny, stopover in Lyon, Milan, Venice.

For a transportation planner, it was an exercise in logistics that worked out well on paper and worked in a geekily thrilling variety of public transit experiences.

For a human with an aging body in need of more than fleeting moments of restorative stillness, it was an ordeal.

For a dreamer in love with beautiful old buildings, cobblestones, flowering gardens, winding passageways, lyrical languages, and 19th century ballets featuring enchanted ladies in white, the journey was overflowing with delight.

The Paris part of the trip

Sunday, July 2: Boarded a plane in Seattle. Sleep did not happen during the 10.5 hour flight.

Monday, July 3: Disembarked at Charles de Gaulle airport. Waited two hours in the border police immigration control queue, served by a single station (surrounded by closed stations) that was itself closed for 20 minutes. What was this, border patrol strike day?  (Note to self: accept that parting bottle of water offered on the plane because there will be no fountain nor cafe nor vending machine to procure a beverage until after passport stampation.)

RoissyBus to the Opera Garnier. Slow hot walk to the Hotel 3 Poussins (near the Saint Georges Metro). Lunch at a small Himalayan restaurant nearby (momos!) until check-in time. I had booked this particular room for the view from the terrace and was not disappointed.

Can you spot the opera house?

First outing: a quick visit to the Musée de l’Orangerie to revisit Monet’s nymphées.

First ice cream: a gelato from a cart near the Pont des Arts, staffed by a friendly young woman who took great pride in sculpting the gelato she served. I should have photographed the lovely flower of ice cream she created. This sustained me for the walk to dinner.

Determined this time not to subsist entirely on food in boxes from the Monoprix, I had reserved a table at a fancy Italian vegetarian restaurant called Sense Eat, near the Mabillon Metro station. The food was exquisitely prepared and served, though not aligned with my flavor preferences, except for dessert.

second gelato of the trip

So I put down two gelati on the very first day, and successfully stayed awake until sunset. This felt like an achievement.

bonne nuit, Paris

Tuesday, July 4: I explored the Gare Saint-Lazarre to get my bearings for upcoming train travel, the kindness of a Parisian lady on the street directing me to the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Musée du Luxembourg (Pissarro exhibit), Monoprix (mais oui, as there would be no time for a real dinner tonight), and the ballet La Sylphide at the Palais Garnier. Seeing this ballet in this theater was a dream. I sat very close to the stage, in a box on the extreme side, so didn’t get to see all the specially flying effects, but still.

 

View of the house

From this view I saw the trap doors used in La Sylphide

 

Hugo Marchand and the sylphs bask in the applause

Back at the Trois Poussins, I enjoyed some wine with the Eiffel Tower before a good night’s sleep.

That’s the moon in the upper left corner.

To be continued…

About last Paris

So seeing the Paris Opera Ballet and orchestra perform Swan Lake (three times!) was a dream come true.  (The mini-subscription I sprung for early last year was well worth the ability to get tickets to additional performances before they went on sale to the public.)  The swans were magical, and the entire production was magnificent.  I won’t nerd out about the dancing here, other than to mention that the male leads were particularly extraordinary on the first and third nights.

And the rest of the trip, other than the not sleeping and sad eating parts, was highly enjoyable, with early December having certain advantages.   It was lovely to visit L’Orangerie, the Musee Cluny, the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle, and the Musee des Arts et Metiers with few tourists, virtually no lines for the museums, and room to breathe (except the air quality was very poor the first four days I was there, but as a result the transit was free).  I liked riding the bus more than the Metro.  I got to practice my rudimentary French.  (It is getting better.)  The Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens was my favorite place of beauty, other than the stage of the Opera Bastille and Monet’s water lilies in L’Orangerie.  The apartment was in a lovely neighborhood and had a nice view.

There are photos here that I will probably never get around to organizing.

The one disappointment was that I did manage not sit in a cafe and sketch.  Surprisingly, I also drank no wine (wanted to keep my wits about me being a solo traveler, until that very last night and then cider was what beckoned).

And of course I want to go back.

If the stars align, I’m going to do so for just a few days, before heading to …

Because, after all, I still have that last ticket in my mini-subscription to see La Sylphide at the Palais Garnier in July, the one I was planning to resell or just consider a sunk cost, since I really didn’t expect to return to Paris in 2017.  But Swan Lake at La Scala also happens in July, and the real water lilies in Monet’s garden begin blooming in July.  And it’s not going to get easier to travel and I’m not going to get any younger.

P.s., about those San Francisco swans

beacons

In my state of grumpiness over noisy audience members a few months ago, I failed to say that the San Francisco swans were wonderful (though I still prefer PNB’s version).  In particular, Sofiane Sylve as Odile was the most electrifying ballet performance I have ever experienced. She was astounding.

 

An open letter to anyone considering bringing a child to Swan Lake

Dear parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles,

If you think bringing a child younger than, say, eight years old to see Swan Lake is a good idea, please note the following:

The story is a tragedy.  It involves a creepy evil sorcerer, a cruel temptress, devastating heartbreak, and, in most productions, at least one suicide.

It is about 2 hours and 45 minutes long.  That typically includes two 20-minute intermissions during which chattering, eating, seat-kicking, and whining are welcome, but when the lights go down and the orchestra is playing, it is time to sit still and be in listen-only mode.

In many opera houses and theaters, probably including the venue where your Swan Lake is presented, eating and drinking are not allowed.  This means no slurping from sippy-cups or straws from the bottom of cups with ice, and no crunching on something from a crinkly bag.  It is not only prohibited by the venue (didn’t you see those signs by the concessions stand and at the auditorium entrance, and the message printed right there on your ticket?), it is disrespectful to the artists (hint: the violin soloist is one of the performers!) and your fellow audience members.  Those intermissions?  That is the appropriate time for your child to eat.  If they cannot possibly abstain from eating during the show, please at least have the courtesy to provide them with something they can consume quietly (how about a soft cookie or piece of bread from a package that does not crinkle?).

Your fellow audience members paid quite a bit of money to hear the live orchestra, not your child’s ongoing narrative, singing along, and definitely not their consumption of a bag of chips/popcorn/cheese curls/whatever was being consumed in row D seat 121 or thereabouts in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House during last Sunday’s matinee of Swan Lake.

Thank you for you consideration.

Swanning around

So weekend after next I’m flying south to be with the swans.  That is, to see the San Francisco Ballet perform Swan Lake.  Four times, in three days.  (You know that about me, right?)

But the moment I may have truly crossed over into Crazy Swan Lady territory was when I booked the smallest possible season subscription with, um, the Paris Opera Ballet so that I could get an optimal ticket to see their Swan Lake in December.  In Paris.

Paris, day 2 (to the Opera Garnier and back again)

After a tiny, tiny bit of sleep, it was thrilling to wake up in Paris to beautiful morning light over the rooftops.

I was smitten with the terra cotta chimney pots, and the light.

We enjoyed breakfast, including scrumptious Twinkie-esque madeleines and delicious from-a-pod espresso that were stocked in the kitchenette, with other things we had picked up from a nearby grocery the previous evening.

And then lunch from Mi-Va-Mi:

And then we ventured out, walking to the Palais Garnier, because I would be seeing the ballet there that night and wanted to know how long it would take to walk there.

So we walked there twice that day (and walked back the first time, Metroed back the second), with a visit to the gift shop the first time, and picking up some more comestibles on the walk back.  Dinner was baguette and the stinkiest of camembert wolfed down in the apartment.

The only photos I took that evening were of the interior of the magnificent Garnier.  I had a side seat in the third level of loges.

The program included Harald Lander’s Etudes (which is a delightful display of the amazing classical technical proficiency of the Paris Opera Ballet dancers) and two works by William Forsythe, whose choreography is very interesting, but whose choices of music don’t appeal to me, so I didn’t enjoy those as much as Etudes.  Of course no photography was permitted during the performance, but I did manage to get a screen capture from Etudes from a web broadcast of the same program the very next night:

Alas there wasn’t time to linger and draw the theater that evening.  (Too bad I felt it necessary to make that walk twice.)  Next trip.

Good night, moon.  Good night Eiffel Tower way off in the distance. Good night, Paris.

swan song season of my favorite swan

Carla Körbes in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Swan Lake / photo by Angela Sterling

Yesterday I learned that my favorite ballerina is going to retire in June.  Many people in the American ballet-going community let out a collective gasp of dismay upon hearing this news.  I certainly did.

If you’ve been following along for the past year and a half or so, you may have noticed that I turned into a rabid balletomane in April 2013.  Seeing Carla Körbes dance in Swan Lake is what made that happen.  She quite literally brought tears to my eyes with the exquisitely nuanced beauty of her dancing.

How lucky I have been to have been able to see her dance several times since then (and how I wish I had seen her earlier).  She was out recovering from injury most of last season, and this season I was already planning to see her dance as much as I could, since you never know… and then this news broke, and so did my heart a bit.  I know it will break a lot on June 7, her final performance, and before that, on her last performance of PNB’s full-length Swan Lake.  But first it will break a little next weekend when I see her in this season’s opening performances.  And every time in between that I am fortunate enough to be in the audience when she graces the stage of McCaw Hall.