Classical Month in Washington (July)

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Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening!

July 1, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
Rossini, Barber of Seville
Castleton Festival

July 1, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Wolf Trap Opera
Barns at Wolf Trap

July 1, 2012 (Sun)
6:30 pm
New York Opera Society [FREE]
National Gallery of Art

July 4, 2012 (Wed)
8 pm
A Capitol Fourth [FREE]
National Symphony Orchestra
U.S. Capitol, West Lawn

July 5, 2012 (Thu)
7:30 pm
Adam, Giselle
Paris Opera Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

July 5, 2012 (Thu)
8 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Wolf Trap Opera
Barns at Wolf Trap

July 6, 2012 (Fri)
1:30 and 7:30 pm
Adam, Giselle
Paris Opera Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

July 6, 2012 (Fri)
7:30 pm
Bizet, Carmen
Castleton Festival

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
1:30 and 7:30 pm
Adam, Giselle
Paris Opera Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
2 pm
Beethoven, Ninth Symphony
Castleton Festival

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
7 pm
Mozart, Don Giovanni
Wolf Trap Opera
Barns at Wolf Trap

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Santiago Rodriguez, piano
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Puccini, La Bohème (concert performance)
Castleton Festival
Hylton Performing Arts Center (Manassas, Va.)

July 7, 2012 (Sat)
8:15 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
Music of John Wiiliams
Wolf Trap, Filene Center

July 8, 2012 (Sun)
1:30 pm
Adam, Giselle
Paris Opera Ballet
Kennedy Center Opera House

July 8, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
Bizet, Carmen
Castleton Festival

July 10, 2012 (Tue)
9 am
William Kapell Competition, Preliminary Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 11, 2012 (Wed)
9 am
William Kapell Competition, Preliminary Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 12, 2012 (Thu)
9 am
William Kapell Competition, Preliminary Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 12, 2012 (Thu)
8 pm
Evening with Leon Fleisher
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 13, 2012 (Fri)
3 pm
William Kapell Competition, Semifinal Solo Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 13, 2012 (Fri)
5:45 pm
Simpson, The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fringe Festival

July 13, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Bach, Brandenburg Concerti
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)

July 13, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Gloria Cheng, piano
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 14, 2012 (Sat)
11 am
Seminar with Gloria Cheng [FREE]
Contemporary piano playing techniques
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 14, 2012 (Sat)
3 pm
William Kapell Competition, Semifinal Solo Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 14, 2012 (Sat)
7:45 pm
Simpson, The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fringe Festival

July 15, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
William Kapell Competition, Semifinal Solo Rounds
Clarice Smith Center

July 15, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
Piano Society of Greater Washington [FREE]
Calvary Lutheran Church (Silver Spring, Md.)

July 15, 2012 (Sun)
3 pm
From Bel Canto to Can Belto
Wolf Trap Opera, recit with Steven Blier
Barns at Wolf Trap

July 15, 2012 (Sun)
6 pm
NSO Summer Music Institute Orchestra [FREE]
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

July 17, 2012 (Tue)
2 pm
Semifinal Chamber Music Rounds
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 17, 2012 (Tue)
8 pm
Vijay Iyer, piano
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 18, 2012 (Wed)
2 pm
Semifinal Chamber Music Rounds
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 18, 2012 (Wed)
8 pm
Jeremy Denk, piano
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 19, 2012 (Thu)
8 pm
Richard Egarr, fortepiano
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 20, 2012 (Fri)
7:30 pm
C.A.T.S. Vocal Recital
Castleton Festival

July 20, 2012 (Fri)
8 pm
Anton Kuerti, piano
Music by Beethoven
William Kapell Competition
Clarice Smith Center

July 21, 2012 (Sat)
3 pm
C.A.T.S. Vocal Recital
Castleton Festival

July 21, 2012 (Sat)
7 pm
Jennifer Koh, violin
Castleton Festival

July 21, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Simpson, The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fringe Festival

July 21, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
William Kapell Competition, Final Round
With Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Clarice Smith Center

July 22, 2012 (Sun)
2 pm
C.A.T.S. Spectacular (Opera scenes)
Castleton Festival

July 22, 2012 (Sun)
3:30 pm
Simpson, The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fringe Festival

July 27, 2012 (Fri)
8:30 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
Holst, Planets (with HD film)
Wolf Trap, Filene Center

July 28, 2012 (Sat)
6 pm
Simpson, The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fringe Festival

July 28, 2012 (Sat)
8 pm
Haydn, Harmoniemesse [FREE]
UMd Summer Chorus
Clarice Smith Center

July 28, 2012 (Sat)
8:15 pm
National Symphony Orchestra
Beethoven, ninth symphony; Bruch, Scottish Fantasy
With Nicola Benedetti, violin
Wolf Trap, Filene Center

July 29, 2012 (Sun)
6 pm
NSO Summer Music Institute Orchestra [FREE]
Kennedy Center Concert Hall

July 29, 2012 (Sun)
6 pm
Aaron Diehl, piano
Washington International Piano Festival
School of Music, Catholic University

July 31, 2012 (Tue)
8:30 pm
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Wolf Trap, Filene Center

Requiescant in pace

We wish a peaceful Memorial Day to our American readers. Continuing with our remembrance of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, here is an excerpt from the Libera Me movement of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, with Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Pears singing and the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. The text is Wilfred Owen's poem Strange Meeting: "I mean the truth untold, / The pity of war, the pity war distilled."

Notes from the 2012 Dresden Music Festival ( 6 )

I am in beautiful Dresden – birthplace of the (mass produced) tea bag– for the annual three-week Music Festival that has taken place since 1978. After Mozart-joys, Malkovichean divertissement, Bach despairs and delights, and Thielemann’s Bruckner, it was time for a day of variety with, depending how you count, up six concerts.

All You Can Hear

It started with the “All You Can Hear” event at Dresden’s convention center. A promising and interesting concept with Kristian Järvi, the MDR Symphony Orchestra and the (strangely German) Baltic Youth Philharmonic (BYP)… an series of performances that vaguely suggested an open floor plan, a variety of different concerts (orchestral and chamber) to chose from, and active exploration on the part of the visitor who paid a one-time fee of 20,- got a stamp, and was then free to roam.

Except that when you got there, assuming you found the place on your first attempt, there was hearty little roaming, no open floor plan, and no concurrent concerts to hear. Reality proved pernickety on this first attempt at an ambitious and vastly intriguing concept and in the end it turned out a succession of regular concerts in semi-suitable spaces that no one was allowed to enter late, and during which people sat still to reverently listen to the music (including full observance of the ironclad “don’t-clap-between-movements-even-when-it’s-obvious-that-the-first-movement-is-eliciting-applause” rule)… only that they sat in rafters in a convention center hall, rather than on the cushioned seats of a concert hall.

Give the project thick carpets, creak-free seating, curtains instead of doors, parallel musical events, more open minds, and willing, enthusiastic, inexpensive participants (the BYP seems a good place to start) and something wonderful might come of that yet in years to come. The mixed audience was already there, from different social and economic strata, including a legion of tots that were ill advisedly fitted with little DIY-garden-hose French horns. Instruments that proved wonderfully effective in the reverberant halls. “Toooot, tooooooot!” they went, though far enough from the hermetically sealed concert spaces, to do any damage beyond the nerves of innocent bystanders and regretful mothers.

Palace of Culture?

If falling short of its own ambitions, the “All You Can Hear” thing was at least an opportunity to hear a fine Korngold Violin Concerto with Vadim Gluzman (and BYP), a really quite stupendous Beethoven Eighth with the MDR SO, all under Kristian Järvi, and the realization that for all its aesthetic limitations and acoustic difficulties, the convention’s center halls make a better venue for an orchestral concert than the city’s official performing space, the concert hall of the 1969 architectural and ideological sin of the Kulturpalast, Dresden’s “Palace of Culture”. Since the place, home of the spirit of Walter Ulbrich, is unfathomably protected as a listed landmark site, only a merciful fire might one day help the Dresden Philharmonic to a concert hall that underscores, not undermines its value.

There might be better orchestras in smaller cities, and better ‘second’ orchestras in bigger cities. But by that mix of quality and reputation that make the amorphous status of an orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic is easily the best ‘junior orchestra’ of a city the size of Dresden. That knowledge didn’t help during Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with an engaged Vadim Repin and Markus Poschner conducting, because you couldn’t hear very much from the seats I had, and what I heard sounded as seductive as Tango-dancing by numbers. Whether the thing ever came together on stage is questionable, if so, it didn’t reach me. A pity, too, because the preceding Coriolan Overture somehow did, and that was a most enjoyable performance. Not the fresh and exciting quality of the MDR’s convention center Beethoven, but well played and with enough promise to make the prospect of staying for Beethoven’s Seventh attractive.

Bartók Beneath the Conveyor Belt

Still, with the third movement of Prokofiev not getting better even as it was encored, it seemed prudent to move on to Volkswagen’s Transparent Factory, the spotless, Canadian maple hardwood floor production facility for VW’s Phaeton luxury sedan. It’s a fascinating place and even if the sales numbers for the Phaeton were better than they are, it’s understandable that VW – a main sponsor of the Festival – is very eager to show the place off in imaginative ways.

It’s certainly memorable to hear a program of Moldavian - Hungarian - Romanian folk-influenced works amidst five-and-a-half ton luxury vehicles in various states of un-finish, hanging on telescoping trapezoids from the ceiling’s conveyor belt. The mind raced to future productions of Die Walküre or the possibilities to stage B. A. Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten. Instead the Kopatchinsky family turned up, famous violinist daughter Patricia (with a terrific Beethoven Concerto as part of her ever-increasing discography) up front, violinist mother Emilia and the cimbalom playing father Viktor in tow. A dapper buddy on double bass provided for the groove in Eastern European, Moldovan folk music larks that opened and closed the recital. I find the charade of really letting lose in such a concert, as properly suggested by such music, always an awkward affair. Especially in front of a (German) classical music audience… But there was no denying that it brought fresh air into a recital that came close to suffering from anoxia at several points.

Not during the Bartók Romanian Folk Dances though; those were played as well as I’ve ever heard. Partly thanks to Mihaela Ursuleasa’s pianism, but mostly because it was endowed by Kopatchinkskaja with the requisite seediness, that bit of musical lace that alluringly, suggestively hangs half of one shoulder… the complete confidence of knowing what she was doing, the ability to do it, and a thankfully shameless joy in sharing it. Which is really just the roundabout way of suggesting that it was authenticity that made the Bartók.¹

György Kurtág’s Eight Duos for Violin and Cimbalom (op.4) tested my love for Kurtág, its pp glissandi softer sounding than the factory’s incessant AC. Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane – even in such a coy and wicket-wily performance – is a work I’ve always suspected of appealing more to violinists than their audiences, and while George Enescu’s Third Violin Sonata (on Popular Romanian themes) is one of the great works of its kind, I wish that the composer had made two sonatas from it. The first movement opens with a magnificent lilting lament but in connection with the Andante sostenuto it punishes any lack of concentration on the listener – before the third movement, just as long but subjectively brief, injects much-needed oxygen back into the affair.





¹ As opposed to the airs other performers might put on when emulating such music’s spirit, which causes little more than vicarious embarrassment. There are various musical examples (Dieskau as Pappageno comes to my mind), but really the best analogy are male Russian figure skaters after the collapse of the Soviet Union who bought leather trousers and rocked out on ice, to cringe-worthy effect and music ranging from Bill Haley to Tom Jones. Or the most brilliant counter-cultural film maker of East Germany, Gregor Voss, and his first trip to the West.

In Brief: Still Missing DFD Edition

Here is your regular (overflowing) Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Listen to a Schubert recital by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Sviatoslav Richter, recorded in Salzburg on August 29, 1977, followed up with some excerpts from Fischer-Dieskau's recordings (Wolf, Britten). [France Musique]


• Another tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Radio France with some rare recital performances (Festival Pablo Casals in Prades, July 1955; Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with the Orchestre National de l'ORTF and Georg Solti, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 1964) and recordings. [France Musique]


• Round out your Fischer-Dieskau fix with the tribute from Austrian radio: Fischer-Dieskau in the title role of Verdi's Macbeth, with Grace Bumbry and Wolfgang Sawallisch at the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic, recorded in Salzburg in 1964. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Paul Agnew conducts (and sings with) members of Les Arts Florissants in a complete performance of Claudio Monteverdi's third book of madrigals, at the Cité de la Musique -- also available as audio only. [Medici.tv]


• From the Wiener Festwochen 2012 at the Theater an der Wien, Omer Meir Wellber conducts the Arnold Schoenberg Chor and the ÖRF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien in a performance of Verdi's La Traviata. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Watch the Orchestre de Paris, under the baton of Paavo Järvi, play music by Nielsen (the overture to Maskarade), Shostakovich (the second piano concerto, with Alexander Toradze), and Grieg (the incidental music for Peer Gynt) -- embedded here. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Live from that interesting season of the Opéra Comique, a performance of Marco Stroppa's opera Re Orso, with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and conductor Susanna Mälkki -- the world premiere on May 19. [France Musique]


• Most of the films critics thought would be big at Cannes this year were, with the one surprise setting everyone atwitter being Jeff Nichols's new film Mud, leading the American films in competition. [Le Figaro]


• Pianist Bertrand Chamayou joins conductor Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse on tour in Buenos Aires, at the Teatro Colón, with an all-French program of music by Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Berlioz. [Medici.tv]


• A second concert by the same forces, also in Buenos Aires, features music by Musorgsky, Liszt, and Chopin. [Medici.tv]


• From the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Jérémie Rhorer conducts the early music ensemble Le Cercle de l'Harmonie in a performance of Mozart's Così fan tutte, with a cast led by Camilla Tilling and Michèle Losier. [France Musique]


• Selections of music by Joseph Woelfl, a composer celebrating a bicentenary this month. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Rare performances of the Te Deum and Mass in D of Jean Gilles, a Baroque maître de chapelle at Toulouse Cathedral, with the chamber choir Les éléments and Les Passions, Orchestre Baroque de Montauban, under the baton of Jean-Marc Andrieu. [France Musique]


• Vladimir Jurowski conducts Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila from Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, recorded last November. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• At the Concours Reine Elisabeth, 26-year-old Russian violinist Andrey Baranov took the top prize in the violin competition. The local audience was rooting for Marc Bouchkov, the only Belgian to make it to the finals, but he did not place. Runners-up, in order, were Tatsuki Narita (Japan), Hyun Su Shin (South Korea), Esther Yoo (U.S.A.), Yu-Chien Tseng (Taiwan), and Artiom Shishkov (Belarus). [La Libre Belgique]


• You can watch videos of the performances by the finalists in Brussels, and listen to a lot more from the competition. [Concours Reine Elisabeth]


• Christoph Prégardien conducts the Nederlands Kamerkoor and Le Concert Lorrain in a performance of Bach's St. John Passion, with Andreas Scholl, Dietrich Henschel, and others. [France Musique]


• More Bach from this past Holy Week, the St. Matthew Passion, with the Chœur d’enfants de la Maîtrise de Paris, the Chœur Arsys Bourgogne, and Les Talens Lyriques, under the direction of Pierre Cao, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique]


• Even more Bach, Cantus Cölln performs all six of Bach's motets in Gerona. [France Musique]


• An all-Beethoven concert by the Belcea Quartet, from the Wiener Konzerthaus. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Cartoonist Georges Wolinski has donated a vast number of his papers and drawings to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in advance of a major retrospective on his work there next month. In preparation for the celebration, Wolinski has published a memoir, in graphic novel format, called Le pire a de l'avenir. [Le Point]


• Kurt Masur leads the Orchestre National de France in a concert to benefit Amnesty International at the Théâtre du Châtelet, playing Shostakovich's first symphony and Tchaikovsky's violin concerto with Sarah Nemtanu. [France Musique]


• From the Wiener Musikverein, as part of the Wiener Festwochen 2012, Angelika Kirchschlager performs a recital with cellist Gautier Capuçon and pianist Helmut Deutsch. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Fabien Gabel leads the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in a rare concert in the main hall of the Musée d'Orsay, including Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La Mer and two pieces by Sibelius. [France Musique]


• The Opéra de Nice just staged Alessandro Scarlatti's Tigrane (Naples, 1715). Raphaël de Gubernatis took it in, along with a tour of the Baroque architecture of the city. It was not the music director there, Washington National Opera's own Philippe Auguin, who conducted, but Gilbert Bezzina, director of the Ensemble Baroque de Nice, which did the honors in the pit, with a staging directed by Gilbert Blin. [Le Nouvel Observateur]


• Ensemble Masques performs rare Baroque music by Biber and Schmelzer in the Liechtenstein Museum. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]


• Stefan Parkman directs the Chœur de Radio France and friends in a concert of music by Debussy, Hindemith, Satie, and Poulenc, in the Basilique Sainte-Clotilde. [France Musique]


• The Steude Quartett performs music by Cherubini, Korngold, and Beethoven, also as part of the Wiener Festwochen 2012. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]

I've Seen Things -- and Got Soaked

So much to see, so little time: add a few monsoon-like downpours and you have perfect gallery hopping. Why is there always wind to eat my umbrella? I think there could be a painting in this.

Many good painting shows to see this month, some closing this week. Kathryn Lynch's simplified paintings of dogs and those that follow behind them at Sears Peyton -- funny stuff. More simple joy with Katherine Bradford's super cruise ships and super heroes at Edward Thorp, Superman Responds!

With new paintings and a new dealer, Friedrich Petzel, I'm a fan of Dana Schutz's crazy wildness. A series of small paintings of people yawning are great -- even more simplified forms.

There never seems to be an end to the late great Alice Neel's body of work: I'm forever coming across new images. David Zwirner is showing a selection of late portraits and still lifes through June.

Ok, I'm vulnerable: I get painter crushes. While attending a few Thursday night openings I spotted Alex Katz and his muse, Ida, checking out Nicole Wittenberg's work at Freight + Volume (I gushed and shook hands -- I know). Another crush I have is for Chantal Joffe's juicy, dripping goodness at Cheim Reed. The big beautiful baby in a white dress is fabulous.

A few more shows to see this month: Nicole Eisenman's prints have eclipsed her painting, for me -- lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, and monotypes, all at Leo Koening. I got to meet paintress and FB friend Janice Nowinski at her opening at Bowery Gallery, and it was nice to finally meet her and her wonderful small, washy figure paintings -- totally worth waiting for the slowest elevator in Chelsea.

Lastly, just when you think you know everything, The Steins Collect at the Met is loaded with the great art and artists the family collected and befriended and, best of all, the stories. Where would Matisse and Picasso have been without them? Many works in the exhibit are from private collections and rarely seen by the public. If the weather permits, which it did not for me, the Met's rooftop space has a space-age Skylab-esqe sculpture by artist/engineer Tomás Saraceno. From what I gather, it's pretty interesting and fun to crawl through. That will be my next visit.

Hint: the tourist crowds in the city are insane, so plan ahead to avoid the masses at both the Met and MoMA -- and bring your umbrella.

The Unnecessary Orphan and the Canadians!

One of the most important openings happened this past week in Philadelphia, the reinvention of the Barnes Foundation. I was unable to attend the press preview so I can't provide an opinion. Of the reviews I have read so far many find the building impressive and full of light, even going so far as to claim the art is now free! I will get there at some point and will then share my own take.

As you may know I have not been supportive of the move of Dr. Barnes's collection. With all its issues the move was a drastic over-reaction and frankly morally and legally questionable. The collection is now branded and the gift shop is open - see for yourselves.

Opening this week at Mass MoCA is Oh, Canada. The exhibit is billed as the first comprehensive survey of contemporary Canadian art in decades, a major undertaking for curator Denise Markonish. She scoured nearly every province and made over 400 studio visits to organize this exhibit. I was there this past Thursday, and a lot of work still needed to be installed or completed to pull it off by Saturday. Some very interesting work from a distance. I wish them luck with the install and look forward to returning.

I did get to see Michael Oatman's all utopias fell, which is not open during the winter months. Oatman has perched an old airstream trailer high above the old boiler room building, surrounded by spent and tattered parachutes -- re-entry from another time and place. A Lost in Space remake, Buck Rogers, or Gilligan's Island -- unfortunately, no one is home but all the gadgets are buzzing and the music is on. Maybe they'll be there when I return for the Oh, Canada exhibit.

To get to all utopias fell visitors must make their way through the old boiler room building, and it's one of the most stunningly beautiful spots at the museum. This hulking rusted corpse, once the life blood of the former factory, has the feel of an ancient organ that comes to life when the wind blows through the open walls.

Notes from the 2012 Dresden Music Festival ( 5 )

Dresden's Bruckner and their Thielemann

I am in beautiful Dresden – birthplace of the coffee filter – for the annual three-week Music Festival that has taken place since 1978. After Mozart-joys, Malkovichean divertissement, Bach despairs and delights, it was time for a concert of the Dresden Staatskapelle – the musical crown jewel of this musically well endowed city – under their new music director Christian Thielemann.

The intelligent program that night took place at the Summer Palace in Dresden’s Großer Garten where Pierre-Laurent Aimard performed a clever medley of Schubert, Kurtág, Liszt and Ligeti. But sometimes brains are not as important as looks – or rather sound – and Thielemann in Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony with his orchestra is too promising, too beautiful, to centrally “Dresden”, and ultimately too prestigious to miss. Especially when the point of the stay in Dresden is to get a big whiff of Saxonia.

Read more »

Pathetic, Peter Gelb?

Peter Gelb, and with him the Metropolitan Opera, enjoyed “an 8-hour New Coke/Coca-Cola Classic day” last week… an inadvertent (yet perfectly predictable) PR debacle about alleged censorship. The background is best provided by Dan Wakin in the New York Times, here. Shortly after that came the turn-around (well covered here and here and here) – although Gelb’s “I think [!] I made a mistake” (emphasis mine) confession will hardly undo much of the damage.

When it comes to art, I love boldness – which includes, as its main ingredient, bold failure. Performances that do not try something new or don’t take risks fail by default. This is a much more maddening failure than even the worst performance (or production) that had ambitions either unmet or fatally flawed, but tried.

It is in that sense that I rather admire, from afar, Peter Gelb’s efforts (whether successful or not) to drag the Met into the 20th [sic] century. At least he does something about the staid and stale reputation of the house, at least he shakes a few things up, dares change. I even like that he’s got a pronounced commercial side about him. Art is a product, a special one perhaps, but one that needs selling. (Quality control is another matter.)

I can understand how infuriating ignorant, stupid, or most commonly: lazy negative reviews can be. Even I, perfectly uninvolved with the criticized productions, can get physically ill reading the narrow-minded shlock that parades around as a review yet merely boils down to (and sometimes even admits as much): “This is not how it was done when I grew up, therefore Yuckatypoo!” (Watch for the words “Regietheater” and “Eurotrash” as signifiers of diminished intellectual activity.)

I can also understand the temptation of wanting to do something about such (or in fact any) criticism… were I only in a position to do so.

That’s as far as I can go with Peter Gelb, re: the recent hubbub of trying to strong-arm the Met-affiliated magazine Opera News into being less critical of the mothership. But the criticism of the Met’s productions, specifically but not exclusively its Ring, goes well beyond the narrow minded kind of criticism. And much more importantly, anyone who cannot resist the temptation of squelching criticism (of any kind) only because they can, has no business being in the job Peter Gelb is in. It touches uncomfortably on basic artistic and social principles. The “Free Speech” thing might be overblown, since the Met certainly has the right to bully other economic actors around – and the immediate backlash showed, if anything, how resilient the freedom of opinioneering still is, when properly irritated). And Gelb’s actions are outrageous not primarily for being wrong principally, but for being so counterproductive to the goals he ought to be wanting to achieve.

Even if this latest of several attempts to use the Met’s weight for the purpose of soft self-censorship hadn’t blown up in the institution’s face, it would still have served it all. Honest and sincerely critical reviews are an essential part of a thriving artistic environment. Reviews that hedge, and ache to be friendly, and are all ‘uncritical sunshine’ meanwhile, are worse than no review. They are tedious to read, easy to see through, and dismissed – eventually – even by the densest reader. No artist (since Kubelik) has really ever been severely torpedoed by (undeserved) bad reviews. But arts criticism has already been damaged by shills and PR texts masquerading as honest journalism. To think that expressing (occasional or recurring) negative opinions is harmful to an institution like the Met is spectacularly misguided. They are, in their own small way, part of the essence of vital arts. Vitality, after all, is to-and-fro. Not relying on a sad bunch of yes-men and women.

Then again, Gelb also reminded Opera News readers that they are not an independent magazine and that their reviews of the Met really shouldn’t be expected to be fair and unbiased in the first place (even if they were). Their continued coverage of the Met (perhaps ‘a little more careful now’, or, less likely, with increased vigor) is a small, gratifying victory for the magazine’s readers and perhaps other institutions that Gelb will think twice about trying to convince to alter the tone of their coverage, but it won’t make Opera News an inherently independent objective source.

None of this alters the fact that the duty to distinguish between a shill and sufficiently independent reviews (never mind the actual quality of the writing or expressed opinion) still lies with the reader. In that sense Gelb’s Opera News moment, including the backlash, was about choice, not quality control or editorial independence.