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.