Peter Davis on Pavarotti

It's worth reading in its entirety, as it gives an excellent summary of the singer's career and a shrewd assessment of his talent.

Opera News > The Met Opera Guild

Dukas in Paris

I'm a huge fan of the music of Paul Dukas, especially his Symphony in C, his enormous piano sonata, and his only opera, Ariane et Barbe-Bleu. Alas, a new production at the Bastille in Paris fails to satisfy the critic of Le Monde. Deborah Polaski is in bad voice as Ariane, Sylvain Cambreling "trivializes" the "colorful, sensual, expressive music, 'descriptive' in the best sense of the term (musique colorée, sensuelle, expressive, 'descriptive' au bon sens du term)" and the production is banal. No accounting for degree of difficulty, I guess; it's a hard opera to stage, being static and symbolic, but its rewards are ample. I am expecting the new recording in the mail, with Botstein, who conducted it at the New York City Opera a few seasons ago (I thought he did a good-enough job), and I will probably report on it when I've heard it.

Le Monde.fr : Un "Ariane et Barbe-Bleue" filandreux

Dutilleux Redux

Le Monde's music critic attends the premiere of new work by the 91-year-old Henri Dutilleux, but what I thought was interesting was the critic's description of Dutilleux as "the greatest living French composer (le plus grand compositeur français vivant)"--bit of a slap to Pierre Boulez.

Le Monde.fr : Henri Dutilleux, grave et léger:

On Hatto

The New Yorker takes notice of the pianistic fraud Joyce Hatto. One of the interesting themes of the article is the degree to which classical-music culture has moved online--and how the same questions of authenticity that bedevil all online productions (from wikis to blogs, including, let's face it, this blog) were at play here.

It also shows how credulous even professionals can be. In classical music, it's all to easy for some to be swayed by an engrossing or sentimental back story into praising the performance. There are some music critics who draw salaries from highly regarded publications who do this kind of thing all the time.

It's also the case in book publishing, of which I have first-hand knowledge, that editors can want so much for a story to be true that they will overlook glaring inconsistencies in, or will fail to do even in this information-accessible age the simplest research of, a proposal or manuscript that they are eager to publish.

Letter from England: Fantasia for Piano: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker