She resents the NYCO for trying more specifically to serve the city it was first invented to serve, with less of the pretense of being a second-rate international house that has been creeping over its identity in recent years.

It is perhaps charitable to pass lightly over her revelation of herself as having a Fox-like paranoia that only the right wing gets the hostile critical examination that persecutes poor Mr. Teachout here as she punctuates her genial observations by addressing one of the cher public of La Cieca (LA CIECA!) as “dickwad” for not falling in line with her opinions (and to be fair, those of her many friends — all munificent benefactors of the NYCO who, at her command, no doubt, will now divert the streams of their bounty in protest against the régime of someone called Mortier who has not the benefit of their profound insight and experience.

Oh, fuck it. Why go on?

Ah well, if we all had the same opinions there’d be no point talking, eh?

They may not have been opera productions, but they were on stage.

Do you object to that as well? Or is the right wing you object to?

As for Sanford … that’s the kind of thinking that will close the company. Get your head out of the sand, dickwad.

If I know 30 or 40 people who won’t come …. how many more are there? As they say, for every 1 letter to the editor they assume there are 10-20 more who feel the same way.

And pissing off the people like me who have been most loyal to the company, donating, buying multiple subscriptions, and coming a great distance to hear opera there is not far-sighted.

Yep, that’s the way to run an organization … piss off your most loyal supporters.

My abuse towards Mr. Teachout stems from his often-times extremely political right-wing comments in his writings(not being a regular WSJ reader, I can’t vouch if they appear in his columns there, as often as they do in his other published works)

Unlike his fellow conservative critic for the NEW YORK SUN (a rabidly right-wing paper)-whereas that reviewer at least seperates his political opinions from the artistic matter at hand, Teachout more times than not, doesn’t.

Teachout has also been a Bush appointee to the NEA, and has mouthed the Party line concerning government funding (or the lack therof) for the Arts.

In discussing or critiquing the Arts, It isn’t essential to me to be as left-leaning as I am, as long as your political opinions don’t enter into the discussion, which unfortunately for Teachout happens more times than not.

But is his writing any good? Just because somebody has a high-profile platform doesn’t mean his writing’s any good. And I for one have yet to read anything by Teachout that would persuade me that his writing is worth its platform. Really, why must we have so much reverence for critical authority?

As for Lincoln Center’s architecture, I might point out that the World Trade Center towers were pretty reviled when they were built, but are still sorely missed in the skyline. I know that when I travel over the Manhattan or Brooklyn Bridges, or down the West Side Highway, I still scan the skyline expecting to see them. I didn’t like them, but they were part of NYC. When I go down to the Upper West Side, I expect to see Lincoln Center. I do think, however, that the revitalization of the Center is not going far enough. I think tearing down the walkway over the street is a great improvement, but I wish the plan for the glass canopy over the plaza had been approved. DOes that mean I couldn’t appreciate a facility like Gehry’s in LA? Of course not. And Lincoln Center isn’t really any worse than The Kennedy Center; both were built at roughly the same time and in roughly the same style, which unfortunately hasn’t aged well. And I think I think we live in a disposable society where when something becomes outdated, we tear it down. There are occasions when it’s appropriate. The Time Warner Center is no great beauty, but it’s a vast improvement over the Coliseum. NYC has bigger fish to fry at the moment than tearing down and rebuilding Lincoln Center… like maybe finally building something in the pit at the World Trade Center site. If only the folks behind Yankee Stadium were in charge…

Case in point. Alan Gilbert’s appt at the New York Phil. I have yet to see a single word in the Times that doesn’t make you think this is the second coming of Leonard Bernstein when if you ask arts people around the country what they think and they say “safe choice, second rate hack, uninspiring.”

You won’t read that in the Times because Pravda is just towing the line from the Politburo.

The Festival idea is a good one but I’ve never heard of a successful festival anywhere where they only do one work during the festival. It just won’t work

My point is that NYCO has done no research on any of thses subjects. They are just jumping in the deep end which seems shortsighted to me.

I don’t live in New York City. I come to New York 4 times or so per year. Under the old system I could see 80% of NYCO’s season on those four visits. Under the new system, I will probably only be able to see 25% if that.

I buy two subscriptions of 15 performances or so there each season. Now I will just buy a couple of single tickets because I won’t be able to come to NYC 12 times per year to see their entire season.

I know at least 30 or 40 people around the country who do the same. Not a single one said they would renew if that had to keep coming back to see single productions, one at a time.

So I guess NYCO will truly become NYCO — for New Yorkers only. That’s a shame.

I also know people who buy tickets to multiple performances of the same work because they want to see it more than once. They have told me … I’d see something 3 times in a month or six weeks but I’m not going to see the sometime 3 times in the space of 2 weeks.

That’s what Baker (big surprise) and Mortier are missing. There have been a series of meetinss (I was invited to one) in which these questions were put to both of them and you get blank stares or PR blather.

They clearly have not thought any of this through which is why I have only cause for pessimism as much as I want to see innovative works and interesting productions.

As for the more familiar works like Pelleas and Mahagonny, Teachout is right that their recent stage history cannot be called box office success. I do think that there is an audience for provocative new productions of these works, particularly in the debut season of a new intendant when the public will be curious.

It seems to me that there is no particular virtue in repertory opera programming, especially when there is another opera house right across the plaza doing repertory. A stagione system works something like a festival which (ideally) means higher artistic standards and more attention by the company to each work in turn. I have my doubts whether out-of-towners were flocking to NYCO’s Boheme and Carmen in such great numbers anyway.

My complaint with Teachout’s piece is not that he said anything untrue, but rather that he didn’t seem to be thinking very much about the issues in question. To characterize Mortier’s entire career with that single festival production Fledermaus is misleadingly reductive. What’s more, I can’t imagine that Teachout is so ignorant that he doesn’t realize it’s misleading, which suggests to me that he’s simply pandering to the bourgeois anti-art prejudices of the WSJ‘s audience.

Oh my dear, NO ONE has EVER asked you to write about ANYTHING for free, let alone for a fee. It’s entirely obvious why. WSJ is read internationally by a different public than the Times. Mr. Teachout matters far more than you have ever or will ever matter. Rave on here under a pseudonym and on Opera Hell under your real name — no one even has to flush the toilet to be rid of you in cyber space, as they must in life.

And that’s how I keep all three Terry’s “straight”.

Please. When it sells out year after year like a Boheme or Aida or Carmen then it will be a box office draw.

Methinks some people here don’t even know the correct usage of certain terms. Is this who Mortier is programming for?

Lights out, indeed.

No one seems to even recognize the biggest problem with this stagione system. It leaves out anyone who doesn’t live in New York City.

How many of NYCO subscribers and patrons come from all over the world? Will people come to NYC 10-12 separate times during the year to see ONE production?

This is so short-sighted it isn’t even funny and yet I have yet to see it addressed anywhere in the media.

Lights out indeed.

Of course, some “can’t handle the truth” as Mr. Nicholson would say.

Boo hoo.

I believe it was the film critic Penelope
Gilliat who said that Lincoln Center looked like it
had been ordered on the phone by Mussolini.