Archives for 2012

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”

Mrs. T and I are in the process of driving down California’s Highway 1 from San Francisco to San Diego, seeing shows along the way. Yesterday we stopped at Ragged Point Inn, which is south of Big Sur and not far from the Hearst Castle, to give me time to write and file a piece for The Wall Street Journal. I doubt there’s a more beautiful drive in America, or a more beautiful spot than Ragged Point.

Would that I could spend all my time here gazing at the sea, but as James Bond says to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, “If it wasn’t for the job, we wouldn’t be here,” and I’ve never been one to shirk my journalistic duty, so I’ll be spending a chunk of today writing about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for Friday’s “Sightings” column.

Tomorrow we resume our travels, about which more in due course. Until then, we’re more or less incommunicado–our cell phones don’t work up here and the wi-fi at the inn is agonizingly slow–so if you want anything, get back to us on Tuesday night.

In the meantime, I hope that wherever you are is at least a quarter as pretty as where we are.

I rejoice to report that Paul Moravec, my old friend and operatic collaborator, received an Arts and Letters Award in Music last week from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award “honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice.” I can’t think of an American composer who deserves it more. Paul is a great artist, and it is my privilege both to know and to work with him.
For more information on the award, go here.

Miles Davis plays with Gil Evans’ orchestra on a 1959 CBS telecast:

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

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 106 (March 23, 1751)