Repertory Dance Theatre Ernestine Stodelle

Unfortunately, what suited the silent films and the mighty Wurlitzer, does not adapt to the opera and ballet, and the occasional stage performances now given at the Music Hall are a barren makeshift. Not only the acoustics—and they are bad indeed—but the Roxy residues are wrong. The Leningrad Kirov Ballet, for all its revolutionary name, is of course the old Imperial Ballet and is superb in its tradition. Yet, for me at least, the old enchantment could not take hold in that made-over picture palace.

In the autumn of 1962 the Leningrad Ballet had seemed much more enchanting when I saw the complete Sleeping Beauty at the Neues Theater in East Berlin, although that was in part because of the incidental circumstances. When I met Karin in the lobby of the Neues Theater, she was dressed her ersatz best, as were the other young people there, and looked charming in spite of her shoddy clothes. As for the ballet, the directors must have brought all their complicated scenery from Russia. I had the feeling when the curtain went up that it must have looked just like that when Marius Petipa staged the first performance for Alexander III at the Maryinsky Theater in 1890.

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Ernestine Stodelle

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Unfortunately, what suited the silent films and the mighty Wurlitzer, does not adapt to the opera and ballet, and the occasional stage performances now given at the Music Hall are a barren makeshift. Not only the acoustics—and they are bad indeed—but the Roxy residues are wrong. The Leningrad Kirov Ballet, for all its revolutionary name, is of course the old Imperial Ballet and is superb in its tradition. Yet, for me at least, the old enchantment could not take hold in that made-over picture palace.

In the autumn of 1962 the Leningrad Ballet had seemed much more enchanting when I saw the complete Sleeping Beauty at the Neues Theater in East Berlin, although that was in part because of the incidental circumstances. When I met Karin in the lobby of the Neues Theater, she was dressed her ersatz best, as were the other young people there, and looked charming in spite of her shoddy clothes. As for the ballet, the directors must have brought all their complicated scenery from Russia. I had the feeling when the curtain went up that it must have looked just like that when Marius Petipa staged the first performance for Alexander III at the Maryinsky Theater in 1890.