Tickets are now on sale for the Royal Ballet's production of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, showing at Empire Theatres on Saturday, May 24, at 1:00 p.m. local time. Filmed in October 2007, the ballet stars Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta.

Participating cities: St. John's, Halifax, Sydney, Fredericton, Saint John, Moncton, Charlottetown, St. Catharines, Kitchener, North York, Mississauga, Ottawa, London, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria.

Future broadcasts of The Royal Opera in HD will be Frederick Ashton's Tales of Beatrix Potter on June 7 and The Sleeping Beauty, with Alina Cojocaru and Federico Bonelli, on June 21.

http://www.empiretheatres.com/promotions/opusArte2007.asp

Presumably, all of these performances will be released on Opus Arte DVD in the future.

Many thanks for the heads up. I may even be in Vancouver in time to see the performance.

Cast:
Juliet - Tamara Rojo
Romeo - Carlos Acosta
Mercutio - Jose Martin
Tybalt - Thiago Soares
Benvolio - Yohei Sasaki
Paris - David Pickering
Lord Capulet - Christopher Saunders
Lady Capulet - Elizabeth McGorian
Escalus - Gary Avis
Rosaline - Christina Arestis
Nurse - Sandra Conley
Friar Laurence - Alastair Marriott
Lord Montague - Alastair Marriott
Lady Montague - Francesca Filpi
Harlots - Isabel McMeelan, Laura Morena, Sian Murphy
Mandolin Dance - Steven McRae

The crowd at the showing I attended was made up primarily of older people, probably the same ones who attend opera broadcasts. I wondered where all the ballet students were. Perhaps some were still in class at one o'clock in the afternoon, but it was a pity that none took advantage of the opportunity to see a ballet on the big screen.

The film itself, originally shown on BBC television, focuses heavily on close-ups, to the extent that a person not familiar with the choreography probably wouldn't get a very good idea of what the group dances actually look like. I think that some of the directing decisions were an improvement over the Ferri-Eagling R&J shot at the Royal Opera House some 25 years ago. When the distraught Juliet sits motionless on the edge of her bed before running off to Friar Laurence, the camera zoomed out on Ferri, whereas it zoomed in slowly on Rojo, the newer approach being much more effective.

Rojo's Juliet is marvellous. I can see that her reputation as a dramatic dancer is entirely deserved. Nevertheless, in purely dancing terms I'd still give the edge to Ferri, for her greater sense of physical abandon.

I must admit that I am not completely sold on Carlos Acosta. When I visited London recently I made a point of going to see him live to see if he came off better that way, but his dancing wasn't terribly clean live and it wasn't particularly clean in this broadcast either. His facial expressions were also less differentiated than everyone else's. I've always had reservations about Eagling's Romeo, but at least he came off as less self-absorbed, and he seemed to better able to make sense of the extremely awkward choreography MacMillan assigns to Romeo in Act 2.

On balance I'd still give preference to the older version for David Drew's meaner Tybalt and Stephen Jefferies' more affecting death scene. However, Elizabeth McGorian's Lady Capulet really got to me, and David Pickering's Paris was perfect: tall, handsome and clueless. It's not a perfect Romeo and Juliet, but I definitely intend to acquire the DVD when it comes out.

As an aside, does anyone know whether there's a reason why the part of Rosaline is usually assigned to an enormously tall dancer who towers over all the men on stage?

Good question about Rosalind, and strangely true.

Have you seen the other available MacMillan versions on dvd: Nureyev/Fonteyn (of course) and Ferri/Corella at La Scala? How do they compare to Roja/Acosta? I first saw Eagling and Merle Park do it live at the ROH, and then Ferri live some years later, and both stuck in my mind. It's been interesting to see these newer versions and compare--especially Ferri.

Does anyone know if Cranko's is available on dvd?

The Fonteyn/Nureyev Romeo and Juliet was the first ballet I ever saw. I wasn't even in school when I first saw it on television. For whatever reason, my four-year-old mind was convinced that the two of them had actually committed suicide at the end of the ballet, à la ancient Roman spectacles, and I thought to myself, now that's something: spend all those years training and working just to sacrifice yourself for art. Needless to say, when I was enrolled in ballet lessons the following year, I really, really didn't want to go!

There are those who will always insist that since MacMillan designed the roles for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Fonteyn and Nureyev couldn't really do the ballet justice, but I think that assertion discounts Fonteyn's acting ability and Nureyev's magnetism. I still give the prize for best kiss at the end of the balcony scene to Nureyev.

The relative weakness of the La Scala production stems, I think, from the supporting characters, which is why I give preference to Ferri's earlier recording. But I haven't watched either video lately, so I'd have to revisit them before I could make any sort of sensible comparison.

Alas, the Cranko isn't available on video at present, which is a pity since I prefer it over the MacMillan version. Cranko is frustratingly absent from commercial video.