{"id":823,"date":"2015-06-12T14:53:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T21:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/?p=823"},"modified":"2015-06-12T14:53:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T21:53:09","slug":"bad-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/2015\/06\/bad-breakfast.html","title":{"rendered":"BAD BREAKFAST"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dalila\"<\/a>I have been reviewing opera at least since 1947 when I first realized that every singer was not perfect. On that occasion the Violetta tried for the high E-flat at the end of Act I of La Traviata<\/em> and spectacularly missed it. Ten years and some two hundred performances later the Dallas Morning News<\/em> published my first critique–of the Metropolitan Opera’s Samson et Dalila,<\/em> with Rise Stevens. I loved it, and that started me on my way. Between then and 1982, I wrote regularly, first for the Dallas Times Herald<\/em>, then for Opera News<\/em> and from 1973 until 1981 for the New York Post<\/em>. When I became General Director of Seattle Opera, I have had the opportunity over the last three decades plus to view criticism from the other side.<\/p>\n

As a General Director the best way to describe my reaction to criticism was coined by an English General Director some time ago. “Critics,” he either wrote or said, “have given me many bad breakfasts, but never a bad lunch.” Of course one hates a bad notice, but it can’t affect your own feelings about a performance or a production. You presented the work because, I hope, you believed in it, and although the critic may have pointed out some true flaws–some that you may not have noted–I at least never let what was said change my opinion.<\/p>\n

What bothers me about opera criticism today is the overwhelming emphasis on the production–the direction, the sets, the costumes. What is often dismissed to the last paragraph–this is more the case in Europe than in America but it happens here too–are the singers and the conductor.<\/p>\n

Most audiences, I have found, have no idea how important the conductor is to the success of any opera performance. It is no exaggeration to say that a conductor can make or break any individual performer. If anyone thinks this doesn’t happen, you are flat out wrong. Sudden elongations in tempos or the reverse can destroy a singer, and if you don’t think this ever takes place, I want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn. Further, consistent high speed or, more frequently, slow tempos without tension can make boring any opera with even the greatest singers.<\/p>\n

The audience in general comes to an opera because they like singing. Right? It is a singing art form, and it is famous singers who sell out a theater, not any production (I have to make an exception: there are a few modern directors who distort the meaning of a work so severely, probably to live out their own sexual or masochistic fantasies, that the audience comes to see the scandal.). Since singers are really what sell tickets, it seems absurd to me that they are increasingly dismissed by one or two word descriptions.<\/p>\n

Is it hard to characterize singers’ performances in a way that the general public will understand what you are writing? Yes. Should all English-speaking critics writing for an American audience shy away from Italian or German terms that will mystify readers? Yes. Vocal range, for instance, is a fair substitute for tessitura, coloratura for fioritura; every foreign word can be rendered in intelligible English. More important, in review after review I find that critics do not even try to analyze singers’ performances. I do not mean that a critic should harp on one note badly sung or other technical points; what needs to be said is whether the artist animated the words with real feeling or just sang technically. There is far, far too much singing these days in this country that is precisely accurate but absolutely lacking in either emotion or abandon, and this should be pointed out.<\/p>\n

It’s great to have new productions and new points of view of familiar operas, but at least to me the failure to attempt to let a reader know what really happened at the performance reviewed is fatal. A critic’s job, I think, is to work from a trunkful of experience and to make a reader feel in reading the review that he or she really knows the work well and what it was like to have been present at the performance. I am personally reading too little of that, and I think it hurts the public’s interest and excitement in the art form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been reviewing opera at least since 1947 when I first realized that every singer was not perfect. On that occasion the Violetta tried for the high E-flat at the end of Act I of La Traviata and spectacularly missed it. Ten years and some two hundred performances later the Dallas Morning News published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}