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Lady Dedlock

The Future Of The Classical Music Concert

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:14 PM Eastern on 27 Feb. See below.]

If those who earnestly champion adopting pop cultural and mass-marketing methods to make the classical music concert more accessible and appealing to an untutored younger audience ultimately prevail, in future things might go something like this (courtesy of, and with apologies to, Monty Python's Flying Circus):

The stage of Carnegie Hall which is empty but for a spotlighted concert grand center stage with lid raised.

OFFSTAGE VOICE

"Here to play Beethoven's Sonata Number 29 in B-flat minor, Opus 106, the 'Hammerklavier', is the world-famous soloist Lang Lang. During the performance he will escape from a sack, three padlocks and a pair of handcuffs."

Lang Lang, enclosed in a sack, rolls into view, and starts wriggling vigorously about while his sack-entrapped hands reach for the keyboard and begin playing the sonata. After a minute a tall, shapely, long-legged female dressed in fishnet tights, high heels, etc. — the classic magician's assistant — enters, and with one hand on hip, with the other — arm extended and with a smile flashed at the audience — she, with the familiar gesture of presentation, directs attention to the still mostly sack-entrapped Lang Lang who continues his vigorous wriggling in an effort to completely escape the sack as he continues to play the sonata with his now mostly freed hands. He finally wriggles completely free from the sack, and, seating himself outfitted in full-dress tuxedo on the piano stool while still playing, continues playing until the next convenient cadence presents itself, then stops.

FLASHING SUPERTITLE

Lang Lang and Rita

The young Carnegie Hall audience, rising from their seats, break into wild applause and shouts of "Bravo!".

---

Update (11:14 PM Eastern on 27 Feb): In an era where the perception-altering sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus have become embedded within the cultural fabric of our everyday lives I thought my brief disclaimer of originality for this piece would be understood by all. Apparently not. So let me be specific: The scenario above is the invention of Monty Python's Flying Circus, not A.C. Douglas who merely updated and Americanized the references, and expanded the verbal description to stand surrogate for the absent visuals which constitute the heart of the almost 40-year-old original sketch. You can stop sending me eMails now.

Belated Thought

Belatedly, it occurs to me that the Boy Wonder noted in this post would do admirable, even superb, service as the Waldvogel in Wagner's Siegfried, a role always sung by an adult female coloratura soprano, but intended originally by Wagner to be sung by a boy soprano.

All opera companies, take note.

Brats

It seems university-level teachers are encountering a curious problem they don't know quite how to handle:

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

"The tone that they would take in e-mail was pretty astounding," said Michael J. Kessler, an assistant dean and a lecturer in theology at Georgetown University. " 'I need to know this and you need to tell me right now,' with a familiarity that can sometimes border on imperative."

He added: "It's a real fine balance to accommodate what they need and at the same time maintain a level of legitimacy as an instructor and someone who is institutionally authorized to make demands on them, and not the other way round."

Fine balance, is it. Fine balance my ass.

The appalling behavior of the students described in the New York Times article from which the above excerpt is drawn is entirely the fault of a grotesque '60s ethos transmitted to those impertinent little brats through their parents and teachers; those very same teachers who are now whining about the behavior described. It comes of adults treating children like buddies instead of the illiterate, clueless, insignificant little creatures they are; creatures who should have been taught by example from earliest childhood, but who never have, that in order to get the attention and respect they think their due they must first earn it by word and deed, not by the mere fact of their existence.

Hilarious

More catching up. This MP3 is positively hilarious — the closing bit most particularly.

Amazing

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 4:24 PM Eastern on 23 Feb. See below.]

Just caught up with this. And jaw-dropping amazing it is, too. Puts to shame 90% of coloraturas who have the balls to even attempt this impossible aria.

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Update (4:24 PM Eastern on 23 Feb): See here for a belated thought.

Political Rant

— Begin rant

Since 9/11, in every — every! — matter of national and international import, everything — everything! — that could have been done wrong was done wrong — disastrously and catastrophically — by this administration, courtesy of Richard B. Cheney and his gang of right-wing ideologues, fronted by their titular head, George W. Bush.

That's old news.

The new news is: they've done it again!, and this one defies belief.

Just last week this administration gave the go-ahead to turn over operational control of six of our major seaports not merely to a foreign company, but to a foreign company owned and controlled — lock, stock, and barrel — by a foreign country. And not any old foreign country, either, but an Arab-Islamist foreign country: the United Arab Emirates, a country that actively supported the Islamist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. That the contract is partial payback for some previous big-money deal or some other sub rosa somethingorother is a given. But Islamist Arabs in control of six of our major seaports(!)?

Is anyone home? Anyone?

Hubristic, ideology-besotted idiots!

— End rant

As you were.

More On Wilson And Wagner

I've seen but a single Robert Wilson production, and that via TV: his staging of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice done for the Paris Théâtre du Chatelet. I was hugely impressed by his work there, as I was by the performance in general. Wilson's poetic-symbolic mise en scène was beautiful, evocative, and riveting, as was his poetic-symbolic static choreographing of the action; to my way of thinking, both pitch-perfect concepts for the staging of this work.

It occurred to me, however, that if for the Théâtre du Chatelet's new production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen Wilson attempted that same sort of static aesthetic in his choreographing of the action it would, at best, be a cardinal miscalculation, and certain to end up badly. (For production photos and comments on the Siegfried, see here and here.) I can in fact imagine only two Wagner operas where such a static choreographic aesthetic would be appropriate and work to advantage: Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, the latter — and in all respects — seemingly made with such a staging aesthetic in mind.

Wilson apparently thought so as well for he did in fact stage Parsifal for the Hamburg Opera in 1991 utilizing that static choreographic aesthetic; a staging that made its debut here in the States in 1992 at the Houston Grand Opera, and seen again last year in the Los Angeles Opera's production of Parsifal with Los Angeles Opera general manager Plácido Domingo in the title role.

And how did that staging work out? Here's what Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed had to say:

Robert Wilson's production of Wagner's "Parsifal," unveiled by Los Angeles Opera on Saturday evening [26 November 2005], is stunningly beautiful....

Wilson's productions are always stunning, always miraculous exercises in elegant design and astonishing light. This one is a classic. It was first produced at the Hamburg Opera in 1991 and mounted at Houston Grand Opera the following year. On a glowing backdrop, Wilson creates the effect of a living Mark Rothko painting in light throughout Wagner's long, slow, musically complex, spiritual and — if you have the patience to let it work its magic on you — transfixing last opera. That light show alone is pretty much worth the steep price of admission to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

[...]

Wilson throws out as much Wagnerian religiosity as he can. He focuses instead on the astonishing prescience of "Parsifal," a work that was at its premiere in 1882 the most harmonically advanced, architecturally fluid music ever written. It foretold, two decades before Einstein, not only the future of music but also science, as Gurnemanz, the Grail's guru, explains to an uncomprehending Parsifal that in this world, time and space are one.

Wilson adds light to the equation (originally devised by Jennifer Tipton but here credited to A.J. Weissbard). His greatest contribution is the creation of illuminated images that don't so much illuminate the narrative as the music. The stage is all but bare. The swan that Parsifal kills is but a large wing in the background. The Grail is a large flattened torus, a thick neon-lighted bagel chip.

RTWT here. (Photos of the production, and commentary by Wilson himself, are available for viewing here.)

Clarification

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:55 PM Eastern on 19 Feb. See below.]

My eMail tells me that this post requires some clarification.

My Yes! was not for Robert Wilson's production of Siegfried, about which I know little, but for his handling of the mise en scène as reflected in the posted images. The success or failure of the stage production (as opposed to the musical performance) would depend on just how Wilson choreographed the stage action; something about which the images give little indication. What they do indicate, or at least suggest, is that there are no lethally intrusive, imbecile and up-to-the-minute-"relevant" ideological "statements" involved in or made by this production, which is always encouraging and heartening news. Further, these images tell us directly that in terms of sets, costumes, lighting, and the disposition of the actor-singers Wilson has hit on a mise en scène that's at once beautiful, symbolically right, and evocatively "minimalist," which in turn suggests that it won't fight or get in the way of music and text (i.e., the drama), but exists solely to serve and support Wagner's underlying vision as reflected in that music and text rather than distract from it or impose on the production the director's vision in place of Wagner's. In this era of ubiquitous Eurotrash productions of Wagner's operas, that's cause for celebration; ergo my resounding Yes!

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Update (1:55 PM Eastern on 19 Feb): Some comments on the production by David Patrick Stearns, music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

• [Director, Robert] Wilson's production is set nowhere identifiable, with dreamlike stage pictures full of saturated colors, horizontal columns of light suggesting end-of-the-earth Nordic twilight, and severe, angularly costumed characters singing in meticulously honed poses that resemble living tarot cards. Even a natural phenomenon has an imagination-provoking spareness: The Rhine River is conveyed by a pair of standard fog machines with strong blowers that suggest rushing water.

• "It's so pure," [Christoph] Eschenbach [music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor for this Théâtre du Châtelet production of the Ring] said of the staging. "It has no ideological interpretation. That's left open for the spectator. It also leaves so much room for the music. The space onstage inspires a sense of space in the music."

• Though Wilson gives each character a distinctive silhouette, more specific characterization is left to voice and orchestra - which, in a sense, roots it in an often-ignored Wagnerian tradition. Those silhouettes, however, are hardly traditional. The heroic Siegfried is usually an all-purpose brute. But Wilson and tenor West have pondered what someone constitutionally incapable of fear would really be like. The conclusion is animal energy mixed with gee-I-can-do-anything lack of focus. Siegfried's nemesis, Mime, usually a bumbling figure, is a smarter, stronger, near-equal foe as played by Volker Vogel.

[NOTE: This post was published originally on 14 February 2006.]

Promise Or Threat?

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:15 PM Eastern on 19 Feb. See below.]

Via Alex Ross, this link to a prospectus for a new production of Wagner's Ring.

Alex, in an as per usual brilliantly apposite choice of words, characterizes the prospectus as "disturbingly plausible," which it most assuredly is, absurdist though it was intended to be. But with seeming ambiguous intent, Alex titles his post, "Paging Lepage", referring to the announced director of the Met's new production of the Ring (to be presented over the 2010-2012 seasons): film and theater director, Robert Lepage. From my limited and "canned" experience of Lepage's work for the justly celebrated Cirque du Soleil, my feeling is that if the director of this new Ring can't be Julie Taymor (whom Alex and I previously agreed it should be), then Met general manager designate Peter Gelb's choice of Lepage as director seems to me to offer at least a prospect filled with promise.

But, then, Alex must surely have wider exposure to and greater knowledge of Lepage's work than I, and so if the seemingly ambiguous title of Alex's post is really a sly but pertinent jab at the choice of Lepage as director for the Met's planned new production of the Ring, then my prospect filled with promise morphs instantly into one filled with disappointment and deep dismay.

What else is new.

---

Update (11:15 PM Eastern on 19 Feb): Alex informs me that his post title was merely for jesting literary effect, and not in any way intended as a jab at the choice of Lepage as director for the Met's new production of the Ring.

I'm relieved to hear it.

Something I've Never Understood

Pianist and blogger Jeremy Denk of Think Denk describes a situation all too common. I've seen it happen dozens of times, and been involved a number of times myself, and so understand it thoroughly.

[To a man ambiguously positioned near a line formed at the cash register of a cafeteria] "Excuse me sir are you in line?" ... [A]t that moment he turned his head away from the croissants [on display in a self-serve case somewhat near the cash register] and gave me a pained expression I shall never forget. It seemed to distill a lifetime of being hassled and to convey a deep consciousness of the inexplicable impatience of the human sphere within which we are all yoked. [...] "That's a real good question [the man replied]. Yes, I'm in line, and in another way I guess no, I'm looking and deciding; a little bit of both; is that OK with you?; does that mean I'm not still in line? If you have to, just go ahead, go ahead, do whatever you want, please just go on ahead, don't worry about me ... whatever you want...."

As I've said, it's an all too common situation, and I understand it thoroughly — except this all too common reaction (usually acted upon in the passive-aggressive's favor), which I've never understood:

A man who cut ahead at this point, as he was inviting me to do, would be ravaged by guilt, pursued by a croissant curse, for the remainder of his days; it was a passive-aggressive masterpiece.

Ravaged by guilt for accepting the passive-aggressive's invitation? Why on earth would anyone feel guilty about doing that? I always accept such an invitation. And as I'm doing precisely that which the passive-aggressive least wants me to do, I make certain to say, in my most courteous tone of voice, and with an ingratiating smile on my face, "Thank you for your consideration. I think I will," knowing that nothing distresses a passive-aggressive more, or causes him more pain, than being passive-aggressively hoisted with his own petard.

Now For Something Completely Different

This spot-on piece by culture journalist and blogger Terry Teachout of About Last Night on the enduring appeal of the Beatles:

In one sense, “the Beatles” can be understood as a shorthand term for the songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, separately and together, between 1962 and 1970. [...] Most of the Beatles’ hit singles were Lennon-McCartney songs, many of which would later be performed and recorded by other artists. It was the best of these songs that initially won them the respect of musicians who had hitherto been indifferent or hostile to rock-and-roll.

[...]

It soon became clear to Lennon and McCartney that the sound of “the Beatles” on record need not be restricted to the simple guitar-bass-drums instrumentation of their live concerts. McCartney, for example, recorded “Yesterday” accompanied by his own acoustic guitar and a string quartet arranged by [producer, George] Martin. In 1965 the band released Rubber Soul, an album of extensively overdubbed studio performances in which Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison (as well as Martin) could also be heard playing piano, harmonium, sitar, bouzouki, and other instruments. Not only was Rubber Soul too complex in texture to be reproduced in concert — at least not under the conditions prevailing in 1965 — but it was meant to be experienced not as a collection of fourteen individual and free-standing songs but as something considerably more ambitious. “For the first time,” Martin explained, “we began to think of albums as art on their own, as complete entities.”

[...]

After the Beatles, rock-and-roll would never be the same. What started out as a stripped-down, popularized blending of country music and rhythm-and-blues intended for consumption by middle-class teenagers evolved into a new musical dialect in which it was possible to make statements complex and thoughtful enough to seize and hold the attention of adult listeners.

Indeed, indeed.

Another Voice Declares For Looking And Sounding Promising

Along with us, Los Angeles Times music critic, Mark Swed, finds promising Peter Gelb's announced plans for a "new era" Met:

Many of Gelb's ideas are long overdue. His plans to bring in directors with theater and film experience can't hurt. But only at the Met would choosing a production of "Madame Butterfly" by the film director Anthony Minghella to open next season seem a bold move.

[...]

On the other hand, inviting Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman to make a new production of Rossini's magical "Armida," with Renée Fleming in the title role, is inspired, as is teaming Esa-Pekka Salonen with the veteran French director Patrice Chereau for Janácek's "House of the Dead," even if Chereau was a more important force in opera 30 years ago. A "Carmen" co-directed by Matthew Bourne and Richard Eyre (responsible for the hit "Mary Poppins" in London) is good show business, especially since it is scheduled to feature Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna.

RTWT here.

Still Looking And Sounding Promising

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:55 PM Eastern on 13 Feb. See below.]

Here it is, and in great detail, right from the horse's mouth, so to speak. And here's a report from Playbill Arts on the in-tandem press conference held today by Peter Gelb. And another report on the press conference written by Daniel J. Wakin for The New York Times, along with some reaction to what Mr. Gelb had to say.

Separately, the following excerpt from an Associated Press story, pre-press conference, is particularly encouraging; not only for the thing in itself, but for what it reveals about Mr. Gelb's thinking:

Gelb, who takes over as general manager from Joseph Volpe on Aug. 1, outlined his vision for the company, which will offer six new productions next season for the first time since 1990-91.

He doesn't think Andrea Bocelli, who has a wide following but has been disparaged by opera fans, has a place at the Met. He also said he doesn't have plans to bring in some of the European directors who have provoked the most controversy, such as Hans Neuenfels, Calixto Bieito and Phyllida Lloyd.

[...]

[Gelb] doesn't ... want to bring in directors who have incited audiences with radical plot distortions.

"What I'm not interested in is having directors here who are anti-story tellers, and that's how I would group a lot of directors who subject audiences in Europe to unpleasant artistic experiences," Gelb said.

The one immediately discouraging item I read in the Met's detailed PR release linked above is this:

The Met will launch a new annual series of winter holiday family entertainment, offered at family-friendly prices, beginning this December. Julie Taymor will create an abridged [90-minute], English-language production of her fantastical Met production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, offered in a new [English] translation by J.D. McClatchy.

I simply don't see how that abridgment can be done without destroying the musical and dramatic integrity of the work. As I've previously written on this blog concerning this abridged production of Zauberflöte, "[I]f Mozart's original intention for Zauberflöte was to write a 90-minute, fast-moving entertainment, he would have written a 90-minute, fast-moving entertainment rather than what he did write: a transcendent, two-act, three-hour, Singspiel that's among the most sublime works of art in all of music."

Well, let's wait and see.

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Update (11:55 PM Eastern on 13 Feb): I thought I would expand a bit on my above objection to an abridged Met Zauberflöte by reprinting below a verbatim excerpt from an eMail correspondence of last July. "_Z_" is, of course, Zauberflöte.

My points are several.

First, it's the *Met* we're here talking about. I could, for instance, understand, and perhaps excuse, a "tab" _Z_ produced by some provincial house or off-mainstream venue for any number of practical reasons, but never by the Met. The Met's an "Opera House Of Record", so to speak, and such a gross disfigurement of any work, much less of a masterpiece such as _Z_, is simply unacceptable and inexcusable. For the Met to justify such a production on the grounds that "a 90-minute, fast-moving entertainment is a lot closer to Mozart's original intention," or that it helps build young audiences, are both, and at best, rationalizations; ones that are, to not put too fine a point on it, simply absurd; the former for reasons that ought to be perfectly clear and inarguable; the latter because it's simply untrue.

The notion that a full version of _Z_ is incapable of holding the attention of a young audience, most especially in this new Taymor production, flies in the face of one of the things that makes _Z_ the transcendent masterpiece it is: its ability to capture the imagination of all manner of audiences, naïve and erudite, childlike and sophisticated equally. The only change that would be required for a young, naïve, and unsophisticated audience in this country is that the *spoken* parts be done in English rather than German. Any young audience that can sit through and be riveted by, say, one of the _Lord of The Rings_ movies, which dramatically, at its most naïve level, is way more complex and difficult than _Z_ at that same level, can handle and be engrossed by a well-done, full _Z_ with no difficulty whatsoever.

And the argument that no one loses by a cut _Z_ in addition to, rather than as a replacement for, the full version, is, I think, way shortsighted if not outright wrongheaded. The primary loser in such an arrangement is the very audience the cut _Z_ was intended to benefit, as what it gets is a fundamentally false idea of Mozart's masterpiece; one that's difficult to displace or rid oneself of later on as are first impressions of just about anything.

So, in short, I can think of no adequate or legitimate justification for a cut Met production of _Z_ in any circumstance, or for any reason whatsoever.

ACD

Yes!

From Robert Wilson's new production of Siegfried
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris

• For further comment on all this, see this post.

The Man Has Balls To Go Along With His Enormous Gift

Writes Geoff Edgers of The Boston Globe:

Over the next two years, James Levine, the BSO's music director, is leading the orchestra in 10 programs that link Schoenberg with his more popular German counterpart, Ludwig van Beethoven. Levine hopes to convert more symphony-goers to the music he loves. And this week brings what is probably the toughest sell in Levine's lineup: an all-Schoenberg program that ranges from the challenging 12-tone composition ''Variations" to an earlier work, ''Pelleas und Melisande," that the BSO describes as an ''orchestral tone poem in the vein of Liszt and Strauss."

[...]

Levine just wants people to give Schoenberg a chance.

''My view is if they hear something they just loathe and they think is terrible and never want to hear again, that's OK and I'm sorry," he says. But with all great music, he says, ''anyone that was familiar with music in general would find [it] somehow fascinating or exciting enough to do the crucial thing, which is to hear the piece again. If anybody has ever read a novel once or twice or seen a film once or twice or seen a painting once or twice, they know the second experience is not just different, it's completely different."

That's the way to do it, all right. Some have criticized Levine for programming the works of such "old hat" moderns as Schoenberg rather than works of more contemporary composers of classical music, but it seems to me that's an unthinking and wrongheaded position to take. After all, one cannot expect audiences today to receive with any semblance of understanding or appreciation the works of, say, an Elliot Carter or a Charles Wuorinen, or of even more contemporary composers, without some sense of the musical evolution at work from the standard-repertoire late Romantics and early moderns to our present time. It seems to me Levine is going about this in just the right way no matter the objections of symphony orchestra marketers «spit!» to the programming of any non-repertoire moderns. By not jumping over the mileposts along the way, Levine is preparing audiences for a new and more informed listening experience despite what some others have to say.

I lived in Boston for almost 9 years in my youth. I wished I lived there now.

RTWT here.

Looks And Sounds Promising

Revolution is afoot at the Metropolitan Opera, the world's largest opera house, which has been plagued in recent years by declining attendance and budget woes.

Peter Gelb, who takes over in August as the Met's first new general manager in 16 years, has laid out broad-ranging plans to remake the venerable house, sharply increasing the number of new productions, commissioning more and different kinds of new works, bringing in a wave of high-profile theater and film directors and striding into the world of digital transmission.

[...]

Mr. Gelb's program calls for a collaboration with Lincoln Center Theater that will engage Hollywood directors like Anthony Minghella and Broadway directors like George C. Wolfe, as well as musical figures like the theater composers Michael John LaChiusa and Adam Guettel and the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. Major conductors who have never appeared at the Met will make debuts, including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Met will install a gallery for works by contemporary painters, extending its reach into the visual arts. The artists include John Currin, Richard Prince and Sophie von Hellerman.

Mr. Gelb said he wanted to embrace new technology. Performances will be broadcast nationwide in high-definition movie theaters and made available through downloading, if agreements can be reached with the house's unions. CD's and DVD's could follow.

RTWT here.

Too Many Damn Oboes In This Ensemble

I am an oboe, too (87%).

At last count, some ten seven of us in the cultural blogosphere.

Handel (almost certainly an oboe himself) would be ecstatic.

Exactly

Led to this blog by a link from Alex Ross, I happened on this post (which you're urged to read in its entirety) concerning Osvaldo Golijov's 2003 "chamber" opera, Ainadamar (about which I know nothing), while scrolling desultorily through the blog's offerings. In that post, M. C- (as he or she calls himself or herself) writes:

I've now heard several and read at least a dozen reports from the opening of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar at Lincoln Center. Curiously, not one of them has reflected even remotely my experience of seeing and hearing this production in Santa Fe.

Can it really be that no one is responding to Golijov / [Peter] Sellars [director] / [David Henry] Hwang's [librettist] potent condemnation of totalitarianism — not just in its historical manifestations in Spain (or Argentina, for that matter), but also in its latent form in contemporary America? I have to say, in all honesty and without exaggeration, that as I watched Ainadamar play itself out that night I was crying tears of anger, frustration and recognition. The moment I got back to my car I felt compelled to send a small number of people who were connected with the production this message from my phone:

Subj: Ainadamar

I'll just say one thing:

WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO OUR WORLD????????

I'm getting a drink.

To which M. G-, who knows the piece as well as the creators themselves, simply responded:

Exactly.

Exactly, indeed. When it's considered centrally important and meaningful to discuss a relatively new opera's "potent condemnation of totalitarianism"* rather than its music, and how well that music articulated the drama, then one may indeed exclaim in utter dismay and horror, "What the hell is happening to our world?"

---

*That M. C- considers discussion of this matter rather than the music to be centrally important and meaningful may additionally be inferred from these excerpts from the same post:

I would go so far as to say that if you came out of the [theater] debating amplification or musical multiculturalism or populism in classical music, then we didn't see the same show.

And,

[W]e can sit around and natter on about whether accessibility is harmful to High Art or whether flamenco rhythms have any place in a concert hall or whether microphones destroy the integrity of the operatic experience, I suppose. But frankly, I'm much more interested in whether the creators of Ainadamar are saying something meaningful about our lives, and if what they have to say makes me think in ways that I've never thought before.

A Great Humor Piece?

You think this a great humor piece; good The Onion-type fun? Well, I think you'd be surprised how many well-intentioned but non-musician orchestra suits would fail to see the humor in the eight numbered suggestions, and actually consider them worth their serious attention.