Reading this morning’s New York Times review of Philip Glass’s new opera, I was struck, as I often am when reading opera reviews, by how little was said about the actual production. In opera reviews, the focus is almost always on the music – the playing and the singing.
Coming from the theatre, I have always found this disconcerting, but this morning something new struck me: that for a new work, this is approach is very healthy. The idea that in reviewing a new piece of musical and dramatic literature, the critic spends almost all of their space attending to that new material, seems entirely appropriate.
In theatre, we often hear that the playwright (and for musicals, the lyricist and composer) is the central figure. Yet in theatre reviews of new work, the text (and score) is but one element to be considered – we hear about staging, acting, design and so on, even when no one has heard this particular story told before.
I am not suggesting that reviews of new works of theatre should ignore the many production elements, but opera criticism seems to place greater consideration on their text (music first, then words) in an effort to assess whether the new piece might enter the operatic canon. Wouldn’t it be beneficial if that singular focus were applied in theatre, even if we didn’t like what each critic had to say? In revivals, we can debate a new concept, or a new approach to a character, or simply the presence of a star. But first time out, shouldn’t we know first and foremost about the play?
Posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
by
Howard Sherman
Filed under:
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