Is it just me, or does this seem like using From the House of the Dead as a club to beat a dead horse?

Chéreau’s production shares a lot of ingredients with Luc Bondy’s embarrassing Tosca: the director’s French inflection, the same set designer, slovenly costumes, a lugubrious air, dingy lighting, and simulated onstage sex. But if Tosca’s vapid avant-garde clichés raised the alarm that the Met’s Peter Gelb might be miring the company in trendiness, From the House of the Dead reassuringly suggests that the same sensibility can also yield a terrific show.

La Cieca’s fan of Justin Davidson‘s writing (though not all the time), but I don’t get the point of using a rave review as an excuse for axe-grinding.

Or what do you think, cher public?