nadir and nadirer
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: March 9, 3:30 PM: After only 30 hours and on only the third try (or perhaps fourth, depending on how often you refresh the page), the New York Times has managed to report accurately the personnel and repertoire of a single selection at a concert that took place three days ago:Â
There’s still no trace of what you might call criticism here, but, hey, Bernard Holland filed four pieces this week (an average of over 200 words a day!), including this obviously labor-intensive listing:
“TRISTAN UND ISOLDE” (Monday) A much awaited “Tristan,†with Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner in the title roles, and with James Levine conducting, has evidently been so awaited that all seats are gone.
UPDATE: March 9, 11:30 AM: After more than 24 hours and surely dozens of emails from annoyed readers, the New York Times has finally “corrected” their blunder (see below) about the Opera Orchestra of New York’s “recent” gala concert:
La Cieca will congratulate the Times editorial staff for uncovering the well-kept secret that the duet “Mira d’acerbe lagrime” is in fact from Il trovatore and not from Bellini’s Norma. Further kudos are due for their investigative journalism in revealing that Dolora Zajick and Aprile Millo are the same person.
March 8, 11:48 AM: All right, it’s time either to euthanize Bernard Holland or else to find a nice farm out in the country where he can live out his few waning days. In this morning’s Times, the notoriously slovenly scribe types:
Shall we all say it together? The program was changed; Millo sang not Norma but Trovatore, opposite not Zajick but Stephen Gaertner.
Mere musical illiteracy might explain a reviewer’s confusion of Bellini’s best-known opera with a Verdi warhorse, but mistaking a bearded baritone for a mezzo-soprano who was on the same stage on a half hour previously requires either legal brain death or physical absence from the auditorium during a program he was assigned and paid to cover.
True, Holland’s gaffe is not so grave as to bamboozle a nation into a bloody and futile war, but, on the other hand, Judith Miller never mistook Sadaam Hussein for Valerie Plame.
2:00 PM: No correction yet in the online edition.
4:45 PM: Still no correction.
10:45 PM: Even now, no correction.
Seriously – if he’s not fired for this, I don’t know what could get him fired. It’s pretty obvious he wasn’t there, at least not for the Millo-Gaertner duet. I guess to get fired from the Times you have to commit plagiary – AND get caught.
Or he was asleep….
I will vote for physical absense…
Where does the NY Times get ‘em??? Disgraceful!!!
amazing. happens more than we know I guess
What other conclusion can be drawn but that the Sulzbergers
hold classical music in contempt? Holland is a laughable waste of column inches and that he continues to write
for the Times makes one question the reliability of much else
the paper palms off as truthful reporting. Holland has been malpracticing for years–why don’t New York’s leading musical institutions make a statement by denying him press seats?
and the strapping reviews and beefy nonsense PR for handsome hunks and Renee and Debbie can do no wrong Tomassini is better? The whole staff has been suspect for years. this is embarrassing stuff.
How about that nice James Jorden to replace Holland and Tomassini? I hear he’s very perceptive.
Oh be generous, darlings. The man was dead drunk. He never did think singing counted as music. (How anyone could go to one of these things and expect the printed program to reflect what was actually sung, and by whom, mystifies me — we all know it never does.)
But serially: weren’t Krassimira and Marcello fab? The supporting cast were okay, except Reneigh, whose Lucrezia ate little green bugs, as usual.
There was another time years ago when BH made a comment in a review that made me think he couldn’t have been in the house — not a difference of opinion, but a favorable review of a singer who had cancelled and hadn’t appeared. I persuaded myself at the time that he had reviewed an earlier performance and the review had been delayed for some reason. But now I wonder again.
Just some more notes: Marcello Giordani had some patchy transitions in the Huguenots duet but he has sung this music many times both onstage and with Stoyanova with OONY. He was not unprepared. Plus he had a major memory lapse in “Cielo e Mar” which fits his current beefier voice better but was not more together or more prepared. So that is totally cracked as well. The description of the all over the place Eglise Gutierrez isn’t accurate either.
This man needs to be fired. Look what happened to Edward Rothstein where he started off a review of Luciano Pavarotti’s opening night role debut in a staged production as Canio in “I Pagliacci” with the long unseen Teresa Stratas with the line “Business as usual at the Met. How many times have we seen Pavarotti put on the motley as the tragic clown and Stratas bang the drum as his unfaithful wife?” There was not only a correction citing “editing mistakes” but a complete rewrite of the review published the next day!
hans: disappointed to learn la Flemming is not a suitable lucrezia. was actually tempted to cross the mason-dixon line this fall to see her perform the role in DC …
From the Times’ own website, a link to an AP piece that got it right. How nice.
there was a concert at the BAM (brooklyn academy of music, for those of you not in NY) a few years back in which they paired a javanese gamelan ensemble with the bklyn philharmonic, to explore the supposed influence of gamelan and eastern music on debussy and other western musicians. BH actually wrote something to the effect of: “the javanese gamelan ensemble played first, its musicians attired in traditional balinese costumes…”
Yes, Gualtier–
Rothstein marked probably the all-time low point.
Eventually they kicked him upstairs or sideways to writing supposed “thought pieces” usually praising some right-wing cause or icon or detecting anti-Semitism in some development in France. This is a writer who openly mocked the idea of identity-based art as it relaed to gay and artists of color but devoted every second article to Holocaust Art, Wagner in Israel, Anne Frank, etc– these were of course UNIVERSAL to the human experience. I know I was not the only Jew in New York to find this grotesquely embarrassing.
Hmmmmmm. There is another possibility. Maybe Millo was so bad that he couldn’t tell if she was singing Leonora or Norma. Maybe he got up and left in disgust after the first 2 minutes of whatever she sang, and tried (and succeeded) in blocking out the performance, and wrote the review in order to meet contractual obligations (i.e. Be Nice, Don’t say anything too negative, that turns people off and sales go down, it might also get us sued, remember the greats are always great, no matter how far down their voices fall).
Mr. Holland finished by saying:
“Only Ms. Zajick needed the music. But then Violetta is not her voice category, nor does it match her personality, and she may never have a crack at the part again.”
On the one hand:
Buwaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
On the other hand:
DDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I was once chastised either here or on some other forum by other readers for suggesting the same thing about a Simon Boccanegra review he wrote. It was obvious he didn’t know shit about the opera itself, and his actual presence at the performance came into question. At the time I was stating a suspicion that I couldn’t back up. Good to see La Cieca catch him now in flagrante delicto. It’ll be interesting to see how this is explained.
Who do you think wrote this gem about Franco Farina for the NY Times?
“His ”Vittoria! Vittoria!” in Act II was spine-tingling in the best sense, with a powerful, glorious high C.”
(It was Anne Midgette.)
The man should be fired. No question. Managements should write to his editor to decline his presence at their performancs.
Critics: [from the late Kenneth Williams] They are like eunuchs
in a harem; they are there every night. They see it done every night, they know how it should be done, but they can’t do itt themselves.
Outrageous!
Yes, James Jorden deserves Holland’s job at the Times and would be much more interesting to read.
8:30 p.m. — still no correction.
Contact
E-mail: public@nytimes.com
Phone: (212) 556-7652
Related
NYT Ethical Journalism Guidebook (pdf) (Buwha-ha-ha–haaaaa…..)
As a non-subscriber to the “Times” and a spotty reader of same, I don’t know this Holland chap from Adam. But judging from the Cieca-citations and subsequent commentary, he sounds like an operatic version of Harry Caray, the (thankfully deceased) former baseball announcer whose penchant for misstating the obvious was legendary. On Cubs TV broadcasts during the ’90s and early “aughts,” his inability to properly describe a situation clear to even the most passive viewer was almost beyond belief. Once when a batter lifted a deep fly ball to the outfield, Caray described the action thusly:
Caray: “There’s a deep fly ball to left field. It might be…it could be…”
Steve Stone: “He caught the ball.”
Caray [obliviously]: “…it is! A home run!”
Stone: “Uh, Harry – he caught the ball.”
whatever — it will depend on your opinion of Reneigh. The opera is a wonderful piece and it should be done more often (80 years have passed since Met’s no. 1), and the rest of the cast may be up to it — but she has this way of crooning the trills to herself as if the rest of the audience didn’t deserve to hear them that I find affected and unbeautiful.
I hope Gutierrez doesn’t catch her mannerisms — she did some downright weird things on Thursday too, as if she were thinking to herself, I don’t care what Bellini and Queler are up to — I’m going to make NOISE — that’s what these folks want, isn’t it?
fleming also warbled most of the last 4 minutes of the aria in a way that was so maddening. The final e-flat was painfully flat but at least she tried i suppose. Gutierrez is an amateur and needs to get a good vocal coach asap if she hopes to be invited back to CG after her upcoming gildas.
Not to gloat, well, actually yes to gloat, but I told you so:
http://parterre.com/?p=589#comment-7287
But Sam Sifton, the Times arts editor, has recently gone on record as finding Bernie super-valuable to the paper.
The TIMES has posted the following correction, making yet another giant howler:
“The mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, as is her custom, blew down the house, singing alone in Donizetti and joining Stephen Gaertner in music from “Trovatore.”"
Fie upon Sifton and his baneful mediocrity!
[...] difficult, in fact, that it’s been reported* that a reviewer missed a change. Someone responded with a letter to the Times. I went to read the [...]
Zoinks. That’s really outrageous.
Apparently now the nytimes site has simply removed the error-ridden sentence, as if it had never been there from the start. Earlier, the sentence had been changed in situ, with no acknowledgment of the necessity for an updated correction. Such despicable fraudulence–and how typical of the Times’ sense of journalistic “ethics.”
Sorry, folks. From where I was sitting, it was NOT Millo but rather Stephanie Blythe, who sang the Trovatore duet unannounced. So the Times still hasn’t gotten it right. Shame on you!
What a fucking mess!
Wait. I thought it was the Mira, D’acerbe lagrime duet. I sent off an rather, um, spirited email to public@nytimes.com complaining about Bernard, complaining that he got it wrong, and that it was Millo, not Zajick.
I hear that BH is often thirsty.
Blythe-WTF?
Joe Conda at No. 36, I’ve heard that here too. But I have known him for more than 30 years and have seen no evidence of it.
We’ve all seen LOTS of evidence of it — we just haven’t smelled it on his breath, only in his prose.
Must be that alternate “Mira, o Norma, d’acerbe lagrime”.
Che casino!
Wasn’t it George Bernard Shaw who made the quip about critics and eunuchs in the harem? As a music critic himself, it makes the joke funnier. We have similar blunders over here: a recent review of Cynthia Lawrence and Joseph Wolverton in Tosca at the Royal Albert Hall praised their Verdian phrasing! And the same critic was lampooned in the satirical magazine Private Eye for complaining that the audience had applauded during Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, when, in fact, the short pieces had been played twice!
Meanwhile, TT describes Van Cliburn as sharing his Ft. Worth home “with a longtime friend” in TT’s 3/9/08 piece about the pianist. So every Sunday we are going to have a TT article that flits around the gay issue, as happened in last week’s Kwiecien piece? Then during the week TT continues nuts all over the newsprint in his reviews of hunky male singers? NY Times music critics = pathetic losers!
This sort of errors have been appearing on the NYT for quite a few years now. Henahan, Bernard Holland, and Midgette have all written blatant mistakes through the years. Actually, I still think that Henahan holds the record. He was awful. In my lifetime I can only think of two NYT reporters that I could trust: Bill Crutchfield and Harold Schonberg.
Along a similar line: Just a week ago Midgette’s obituary of Giussepe diStefano on The Washington Post started by saying that DiStefano was primarily known for his recitals with Maria Callas. This tells me that she knows just about nothing about recent operatic history or about DiStefano himself. DiStefano was a world-leading tenor years before Callas hit the international scene and for some years his was one of the truly glorious voices of the Century. If the tenor’s and soprano’s names are linked in the public image, it’s because of the many recordings that they made together.
I never trusted Harold Schonberg at the NY Times, and often found him very thick on the subject of opera. His low point was a 1971 review of a new TRISTAN at the MET – fabulously designed by Schneider-Siemsenn and appropriately staged by August Everding. Nilsson in particular was terrific, and Jess Thomas more than held up his end. Schonberg was enormously impressed by the staging – but attributed the entire production to the designer, as if a stage director didn’t exist. And he did so more than once during the review.
Rothstein got kicked upstairs when his 1992 review of a new ELEKTRA praised Behrens to the sky. The poor woman had been in distress the entire performance, and withdrew from the run, leaving the remaining performances to her standby. All other reviews either mentioned her poor vocalism or drew a veil of polite silence in respect of a valued artist having a bad time of it. Rothstein didn’t know the difference.
Paul (#24): On the other hand, we forgave Harry because he really did love baseball.
New York Times: Governor Spitzer caught in Norma duet with Aprile Millo.
Maybe it was the Norma duet with Gail Gilmore as Agdalgisa and Anita Bryant stepping in for Aprile Millo? Wait am I getting prior posts and old reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show crossed?
Parigi Times: Prior to her encounter with a Mr. Germont, Ms. Violetta V has acknowledged entertaining a certain Client 9. When asked by FBI agents to identify her most recent trysts, she burst into song: “Albany, Alfredo”.
Re: Atomic Wings post, let’s have an Opera with a Scarlet “A”? thread. (I’m talking about characters, not real-life singers…)
Cieca,
I am pleased that you are ruffling the New York Times. The Times looks just ridiculous. How can they expect to maintain any level of influence within the arts given this shabby reportage? They act like nobodies. Soon enough, it will not be confined to the internet; these things do have a way of taking on a life of their own. And rightfully so.
Since TT is always fluffing male singers in print, it IS great that La C is ruffling the NY Times!!
And TT strikes again in his article about Van Cliburn in yesterday’s Arts section. I was shocked (SHOCKED, I TELL YOU) to discover that Mr. Cliburn shares a house with a “long time friend”. Whatever could that mean, I ask sarcastically.
I just received word that “the bearded baritone” Stephen Gaertner (occasionally mistaked as Dolora Zajick depending on the reviewer) will be interviewed on Sirius radio during one of the the intermissions of Lucia di Lamermoor on Thursday evening March 20th.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/arts/music/08quel.html?ref=music
Correction! Apparently “The errors resulted from the reviewer’s confusion over his notes.”
…..yes.
And they now admit he’s a reviewer, not a critic.
Mea culpa! Even after the Times correction, I felt that I needed to confirm that it was Millo and not Blythe. Called OONY. It was, in fact, Millo (though “unwell”–perhaps on meds that make her assume Blythe-like proportions). Time to get my eyes checked!
“The errors resulted from the reviewer’s confusion over his notes.â€
… as well as some serious gender confusion issues.
How exited you must be — how proud of your investigative journalism! Oh, how superior, how knowledgeable… indeed, why does the NYT not fire Holland and hire you?
Perhaps because an anonymous hack and his or her blog are not quite up to the challenge either? And critiquing a few howlers in an otherwise astounding output of quality writing of someone else does not qualify?
At least we can sleep safely that “La Cieca” keeps taps on the powers that be.