Archives for May 2012

Having grown up in one of the flattest parts of America, I now spend as much time as I can gazing at oceans and mountains. Accordingly, Mrs. T and I passed Sunday and Monday in close proximity to both, staying at Ragged Point Inn, a rustic retreat perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and dining at Nepenthe, a similarly situated Big Sur restaurant. Ragged Point Inn and Nepenthe were designed by architects who, like us, favored the style of Frank Lloyd Wright and so took infinite care to ensure that both places were in perfect harmony with the spectacular sites upon which they were built.

Though Ragged Point Inn is beautiful in and of itself, you stay there in order to look at that which surrounds you. Fog rolls in each morning and rolls out by midday, meaning that you can walk through the clouds to breakfast, then retreat to your terrace and spend as much time as you want reveling in the view.

As for our dinner at Nepenthe, which we ate on the outdoor deck, it was as good as it could possibly have been, not just because of the food (which was superb) but because of the setting. To eat a simple but well-prepared meal under such gorgeous circumstances is a profoundly pleasurable experience, and it was further enhanced–for once–by the background music played by the management. Midway through the meal, I realized that we were listening to a track from Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy.

I gleefully nudged Mrs. T. “Hear that?” I said. “It’s a definite omen.”

“Maybe,” she replied. “Maybe it is.”

We smiled happily at one another and went back to our meal, knowing that we’d remember this day for a long time to come.

The 1962 BBC telecast of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, directed by Michael Elliott and starring Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, and John Gielgud:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“All women are stimulated by the news that any wife has left any husband.”
Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

The Metropolitan Opera just issued this press release:

In view of the outpouring of reaction from opera fans about the recent decision to discontinue Met performance reviews in Opera News, the Met has decided to reverse this new editorial policy. From their postings on the internet, it is abundantly clear that opera fans would miss reading reviews about the Met in Opera News. Ultimately, the Met is here to serve the opera-loving public and has changed its decision because of the passionate response of the fans.
The Met and the Met Opera Guild, the publisher of Opera News, have been in discussions about the role of the Guild and how its programs and activities can best fulfill its mission of supporting the Metropolitan Opera. These discussions have included the role of reviews in Opera News, and whether they served that mission. While the Met believed it did not make sense for a house organ that is published by the Guild and financed by the Met to continue to review Met productions, it has become clear that the reviews generate tremendous excitement and interest and will continue to have a place in Opera News.

Needless to say, it wasn’t just “fans.” It was also, so far as I know, each and every single member of the press who had time to comment on Peter Gelb’s outrageous decision before he took it back.
I’m glad he had enough sense to reverse it immediately. I wish he’d had enough sense not to make it in the first place.

Back in the Eighties, not long after I arrived in New York, I spent a couple of happy years covering second-cast Metropolitan Opera performances for Opera News. It amazed me that the magazine was willing to publish whatever I wrote, even though I occasionally submitted some pretty rough reviews. Moreover, it impressed me that the Met was willing to allow such reviews to be published, seeing as how Opera News was in essence its house organ. This editorial independence ensured that the magazine was taken seriously and read widely.
It’s now widely felt among knowledgeable operagoers that similarly frank pieces are very much called for these days. Alas, they will no longer be found in Opera News. Peter Gelb, who runs the Met, has castrated the magazine, declaring that it will no longer be allowed to publish reviews of the company’s performances and frankly admitting that the purpose of this decision is to prevent the publication of negative reviews and commentary.
In so doing, he has guaranteed that nothing published in Opera News about the Met, be it positive or negative, will henceforth be taken at face value, and that no reputable music journalist will ever again agree to appear in its pages.
Gelb should be ashamed–and he should reverse his pusillanimous decision at once.
UPDATE: A friend writes:

Thanks for this, Terry–saves me the $23 I would have spent on next year’s subscription.

As well it should.

I just ran across this 2010 posting by a blogger named Alec Hanley Bemis:

Terry Teachout’s love of theater, his leisurely pacing, and his old-fashioned-ish musical tastes sometimes leave me with the impression that he’s a bit out-of-step with contemporary culture. But then he contributes a column that’s so on it snaps into focus just how with it he is, how much he understands the pulse of contemporary life. Finally, the tastes reflected in his column are not his notion of the zeitgeist; rather they are personal appeals on behalf of art he loves. (Reminder: There’s no shame in being a critic who gets to write about what they like–popular tastes be damned–as long as they don’t pretend their vision of the world is the world.)

Seeing as how Mrs. T is always after me for not being sufficiently “with it,” I wish to proclaim my profound gratitude to Mr. Bemis for giving me a rhetorical stick with which to beat my wife over the head. Take that, spouse!

From 2004:

I worked as a magazine and newspaper editor for many years before becoming a full-time freelance writer, and on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion I edited a piece so extensively that had it been a screenplay, I would have received an on-screen credit. When the piece won a major magazine award a few months later, I smiled wryly, as did my colleagues, yet it never occurred to any of us to blow the whistle on the writer. He “wrote” the piece, and that, so far as we were concerned, was that.
One reason why I kept my mouth shut is that I’ve been the beneficiary of superior editing on innumerable occasions…

Read the whole thing here.

But easy writing’s vile hard reading.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Clio’s Protest”