Despite having endured premiers at the Santa Fe Opera, including Cold Mountain, Oscar, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, all of which were disappointing on every level, Santa Fe Opera’s 2011 production of Menotti‘s The Last Savage is an opera I never care to see or listen to again.

Joan Sutherland as Norma is something I’ve never been able to get.

I don’t understand the booing of singers, whether it’s booing bad characters, or booing singers who don’t live up to the booer’s expectations.

I so don’t get why any company in the Anglophone world ever bothers to perform Continental operetta in English.

When I first encountered Joyce DiDonato in the early 2000s, I found her to be the case of an extraordinary technique and intelligent artistry supporting a rather ordinary voice.

My contention here is more general than just a critique of an opera, a composer, or a singer. I argue that one cannot be a truly legendary artist unless one sings NEW MUSIC.

Parsifal just gives me the creeps – a muddy maundery concoction that wallows in faux religiosity, a creepy view of sin, and naïve redemption.

I just don’t get why anyone takes Mario Lanza seriously as “the tenor of the century” and so forth.