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.
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.