i don’t know but i been told
One of the other American critics to cover La Scala’s HD Transmission of Carmen, Sarah Bryan Miller of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, shared our own squirrel’s view of the production. But she had some help from her friends at the “Associated Press and elsewhere.”
Not only did Reporter Bryan Miller leave mid-broadcast out of sheer boredom, but she reviewed it anyway – and admits it in her piece!
Cher public, be glad your trustworthy reviewers here at parterre.com would never never let you down like that.
Do you mean you’d never walk out, Squirrel, or you’d never admit it? (Ba da bing!)
I do think that it’s permissible for a critic to leave at intermission — it can be part of the comment, as in “I was so bored, I couldn’t bring myself to stay” — but in that case, (1) you must clearly admit to it, (2) you must report on only the part you saw, and (3) courtesy indicates some such disclaimer as “it’s possible, I guess, that things drastically improved after I left.”
Slightly differently, I can recall Andrew Porter occasionally offering a many-bits-of-things review when he rushed around to catch parts of several events that were all happening simultaneously at Lincoln Center and environs. He always, of course, reported only on the bits he saw.
Perhaps the critics should read “How to talk about Books you haven’t read” ( Pierre Bayard) or better, someone here should write “How to talk about performances you haven’t heard” – actually Balzac beat us all to it in “Lost Illusions”
Yeah, ok point made – but the Andrew Porter example is totally different wherein he was essentially doing a profile of the liveliness of NY’s musical scene, not passing judgement on a performance.
Ms Miller strikes me as particularly cavalier since she does indeed pan the director’s work without giving it a fair viewing. And is Music Criticism such a thriving industry that she can freely admit to not even finishing her little Monday Junket to the cinema they paid her for? Wow.
When Tebaldi made her Met debut, the New York Times reviewer stated that he had not stayed for the last act in order to make the review’s deadline. He was honest about it, but what a way to run a business!
Alas, that was standard practice in order to get reviews into the next day’s paper. In the Met Archives, you can see plenty of last-act-less reviews. (And the critics are honest about it, noting, for instance, that they can’t report on how the Isolde of the evening managed the Liebestod.) My own biggest disappointment (not in life in general, I hasten to say, but in this particular slice of it) is that Melba’s famously disastrous shot at Siegfried came too late in the evening to be reviewed.
This reminds me of a comment by critic Bob Mondello years ago on a local Washington, DC, arts roundtable show. Regarding the Washington Opera’s Agrippina, he said (as my aging brain remembers it), “That was the longest evening half of which I’ve ever sat through.” (I loved the production, btw.)
I used to say, when asked about certain singers, that I knew the first acts of their entire repertory.
Famous Benchley Quote:
“Me Benchley. Benchley bad boy. Benchley go.”
Theatre critic and Algonquin Round Table founding member Robert Benchley was heard muttering the above words as he got up from his chair and walked out in the middle of the opening night performance of Jean Bart’s 1926 Broadway play, The Squall. What prompted his departure was that Suzanne Caubet, playing the role of a gypsy girl who spends the entire evening speaking in a cartoonish broken English, had just uttered the line, “Me Nubi. Nubi good girl. Nubi stay.”
“Nubi, pietà del mio soffrir!”
Me Carmen. Carmen bad girl. Carmen go to hell.
Interesting factoid: Jean Bart’s (the nom de plume of a French lady) “The Squall” was actually a success despite Benchley’s abandonment and ran a good number of performances.
It was filmed in 1929 as an early sound picture with a young Myrna Loy as the vampy, trampy gypsy Nubi who seduces all the men in a good household. An even younger Loretta Young plays the discarded fiancé of the son. So maybe there is footage of Myrna before the “Thin Man” saying that immortal line.
I don’t blame her for walking out…Carmen is a boring opera. It’s only popular because of the spaghetti commercial. I couldn’t even finish her review or Squirrel’s review (which was way too long)…just too boring.
excellent attitude, javier! do you get invited to a lot of birthday parties?
Never. But I hate parties anyway.
Think of Parterre Box as one grand, endless party, javier.
The only part of Carmen I don’t care for is Act I before Carmen enters. From there on, it’s gorgeous. I have Troyanos, Domingo, and Te Kanawa, and it’s one of my favorite recordings.
God, I hate Carmen.
I hate Carmen too, but anyone who feels as I do oughtn’t agree to review it.
Why do you hate Carmen? It might not be the most profound work but since it was the first opera I ever heard (on vinyl!), I still love it.
SL Post-Dispatch: “…the world could see an atrocious production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen at La Scala as it was committed at the famed company’s opening night.”
Sarah Bryan Miller has added new dimension to the verb “to commmit”, as when someone commits a crime or immoral act. La Scala committed CARMEN. HA HA HA! The MET committed grand OTELLO ! Berlin committed Boccanegra.
Frl. Miller in her earlier career as a concert singer.
Not to be confused with Frau Miller.
Actually, it’s the same woman!! (little known fact)