Sounds & Fury

Soul-Satisfying

Few things in music are as soul-satisfying as Renaissance choral polyphony sung supremely well, especially at Eastertime.

(Our thanks to The Rest Is Noise for the link.)

The New York Post Does Bayreuth

According to New York Post opera critic James Jorden (aka "La Cieca" of Parterre Box), he's been credentialed to cover this summer's Bayreuther Festspiele for the Post. No surprise there. Whatever else the management of the Festspiele may be (all dreadful), they aren't stupid. Who better to credential from the MSM to cover the 2013 Festspiele than an inveterate champion of and cheerleader for Eurotrash, even of the most egregious sort. After all, this summer will see the Festspiele premiere of the new Ring directed by that notorious Eurotrash vandal Frank Castorf. Consequently, the Festspiele will need all the MSM critical support it can muster.

Congratulations, James! You've earned it.

An Introduction To Opera

On a heavily populated online opera forum, a member asked:

I am curious about people's first recordings of opera (I mean the first two or three, not the first thirty). What were they? At what age did you first listen to them? Were they a gift, bought, borrowed, or stolen (OK, you don't have to answer the last one)? What impact did they have on you? How have they held up over the years, as you have heard and learned more?

That provoked a (predictable) deluge of responses. Here' ours:

My proper introduction to opera, per se, occurred quite late (viz., when I was in my early 30s) and quite by accident (a double entendre as will presently be made clear).

I grew up within a musical milieu peopled by serious-minded musicians, instrumentalists all, who regarded, as did I, the whole domain of opera to be nothing other than fodder fit only for the delectation of musical groundlings and the proper butt of uncharitable jokes. In my younger years I'd occasionally tune into the Texaco Saturday Met opera radio broadcasts (which almost invariably turned out to be something from the Italian or French rep) and despite Milton Cross's enticing intros never managed to last beyond the first half-hour or so of the first act so trashy if superficially pretty and appealing did it all sound to me.

Fast-forward to 1970. I've been laid up for the better part of a year courtesy of a near-death-dealing motorcycle accident. Bad business that, but it's not all terrible. I've plenty of time on my hands, and I'm taking full advantage of it by reading like mad and listening to dozens of LPs I'd bought one fevered afternoon of record buying at a Sam Goody 50%-off sale some few years previous but still haven't gotten around to auditioning. (Not as ridiculous as it sounds. I bought over 250 LPs that out-of-control afternoon.)

One of the albums I'd plucked from Goody's shelves was the then-new Solti-Decca release of the first _Ring_ opera, _Das Rheingold_, an opera of which I never before heard so much as a measure and a recording I bought not because I had any intention of listening to the opera itself (what an idea!) but because that then-new recording had quickly gained a reputation among audio freaks, of which I was one, as being a kick-ass test of one's speaker system.

So one afternoon of my enforced confinement I pull the still un-played _Rheingold_ album from its place of storage, think to myself, "Forgot about this. Time I gave it a whirl to see just how great these speakers of mine really are," remove its still-intact shrink-wrap, and start the first LP going on the turntable.

With hobbling gait I almost make it back to my comfy armchair when the soles of my feet more than my ears become aware of that solitary, 16', four-measure opening E-flat pedal, and my first thought is that something's gone badly awry with my stereo system. I mean, no opera can possibly begin like that. After assuring myself that my stereo system is operating just fine, I start the LP going again, this time no longer intending to test my speakers but intending instead to find out just what sort of opera it is that can begin in such an un-opera-like manner.

One-hundred-and-thirty-six measures later (i.e., the full length of the _Rheingold_ prelude) such is my astonishment that I'm struck virtually dumb. I simply can't believe what I've just heard. No composer — not the divine Wolfgang, not even great Bach himself — should be able to do that much with such a paucity of harmonic and melodic material stretched over 136 measures; essentially not much more than a single arpeggiated major triad repeated over and over.

Hobbling back to the turntable as quickly as I'm able, I start the LP going again at the beginning, and again listen, more carefully this time. I end up replaying those opening 136 measures some dozen times before I let the first of the three Rheintöchter finish the opening phrase of her song. And when she does, further astonishment. She and her two sisters are bantering among themselves in dramatic real time, their banter sounding as natural as the dialogue of a spoken stage play, but they're all...singing! And the singing is lovely. Not bel canto lovely, but a different kind of sung lovely I've no name for because I've never heard anything like it before. Then a nasty-sounding baritone comes on the scene and interrupts their playful banter with some rather less playful banter of his own, also sung, and his singing, like the singing of the Rheintöchter, is in dramatic real time and as natural as spoken dialogue in a stage play and, in its own jarring way, electrifying. Inseparably intertwined with all this rather than merely accompanying it as it would in any respectable opera is a huge orchestra making rich continuous comment on all the goings-on in the manner of the chorus in a classical Greek drama, enriching and deepening immeasurably both drama and meaning, the gestalt effect positively riveting.

At this point it becomes abundantly clear to me that, in terms of opera, I'm not on solid ground anymore but hopelessly adrift in waters wonderful strange and considerably over my head. This is a new and gripping musico-dramatic experience; one which bears but the most superficial resemblance to opera as I understand it. No recitative, no arias, no duets, trios, quartets, or choruses. Nothing from and among the singers but a single continuous stream of back-and-forth natural-as-speech sung dialogue, the whole interwovenly fleshed out and deepened by the huge orchestra acting as the work's principal "voice". As I've said, astonishing. And as I continue listening almost each succeeding new measure brings with it something new to astonish and by opera's end I'm utterly floored by the evocative and eloquent magic of it all.

That initial encounter with Wagner and his _Ring_ tetralogy set the stage, so to speak, for my subsequent Wagner attachment, and the deeper I immersed myself in the _Rheingold_, and over the ensuing weeks, months, and years in the entire _Ring_ tetralogy and then deeper still in _Tristan_ and _Parsifal_, that which initially captivated the Wagner-naïve musical snob continued, as it continues still, to captivate the seasoned and informed devotee I became. While in strictly musical terms Bach and Mozart are still my ne plus ultra composers, transcendent geniuses both, in musico-dramatic terms I now know there has never been, nor is there ever again likely to be, a genius as all-encompassing prodigious and transcendent as Richard Wagner who today still bestrides the domain of opera like a colossus, and whose music-dramas have since shaped or influenced the course not only of opera, but of all Western music.

Grin And Bear It

As it had no choice but to do, the Met is reviving its production of the Robert Lepage staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen beginning 6 April 2013 with Das Rheingold and continuing in three complete cycles ending 11 May 2013 with Götterdämmerung. Grin and bear it. After this mandatory revival perhaps we'll be rid of the thing forever.

A member of a venerable online opera forum asked:

The new [Met] Ring, I loved it, in the Met and in HD. The sets were fantastic, and elastic. The singing was very good as well. So why exactly are so many against it?

To which we replied:

Because it ended up being a Robert Lepage spectacular (actually, a spectacular that failed as a spectacular; but that's quite beside the point) with Wagner's music serving as sound track and Wagner's drama given only lip service. Mr. Lepage's focus seemed to be on what he could get Le Machine to do that would result in some visually arresting effect for its own sake at any particular moment rather than on how the capabilities of the contraption could best be exploited to support, express, or frame the drama moment by moment from work's beginning to end. It's a tail-wagging-the-dog approach that's all but guaranteed to result in shallow (at least attempted) coups de théâtre pretty much every time, precisely as it did in this production.

After a repeat viewing of the Met's HD film of the tetralogy (via our HD DVR recordings of the HD PBS telecasts), we saw nothing to alter that opinion. For our comments on each of the music-dramas as telecast, you might want to consult the following S&F entries:

Das Rheingold
Die Walküre
Siegfried
The Lepage Staging Of The Ring: A Brief Summing-Up (Götterdämmerung)

On another online opera forum, a member remarked to us that we ought to be grateful and accept the Lepage staging of the Ring as the lesser of two evils. After all, at least the Lepage staging was not a Eurotrash (i.e., Konzept) Regietheater staging, to which we replied:

While I take your point (and it's a reasonable one), saying we ought to accept the lesser of two evils with some measure of gratitude is hardly an answer to the problem. The Lepage staging of the Ring is in every way unacceptable, especially for a company with the prestige and stature of the Met. And what makes it unacceptable is NOT fixable except by doing away with it altogether as it's flawed conceptually. The Lepage staging centrally features Le Machine as the looming, hulking, impotently conspicuous star of the show as it could not otherwise be, and that's utterly and fundamentally perverse.

And when I say the staging must be done away with altogether, I mean doing away with both Lepage and his humongous, dead-weight, ill-conceived, Frankenstein contraption to which contraption he's devoted entirely. The ONLY way such a contraption could justify itself is if it were capable of becoming THE ENTIRE STAGE ITSELF, perfectly plastic and malleable, and by so doing become invisible or transparent as a contraption. That's nowhere in the cards with Le Machine, either technically or practically; ergo, it has to go, along with its creator who cares infinitely more for it than for Wagner's great work which work both he and it were supposed to serve.

And so it goes.

The Met's François Girard Staging Of Parsifal

We watched the entire Met HD film of its production of the François Girard staging of Wagner's Parsifal the other night courtesy of a YouTube bandit — Blessed be he or her! — who posted a digital copy of the Met's HD film to YouTube spread across three HD videos, one for each act (all of which have now been taken down on a just and justified copyright infringement complaint by the Met) and were both surprised and hugely disappointed by the staging. From the very brief snippets we'd seen of that staging previously, all of which gave promise of its being truly splendid, and from all the enthusiastic talk about it on online opera forums, opera blogs, and in much if not all the mainstream media, we suppose we expected far too much. The very best we can say about the staging is that it's not Eurotrash as monsieur Girard at least recognized his responsibility and obligation to Wagner and Parsifal by trying, to the extent of his gift, to realize the full spirit and sense of Wagner's vision and concept rather than impose a vision and concept of his own devising. The resulting staging, however, is, in our not so humble opinion, seriously flawed and in places just out-and-out off the rails, and while not Eurotrash, is badly misguided and largely ineffective. What rescues the production are the sterling music-making and gripping onstage dramatic performances by all involved which music-making and dramatic performances are so strong as to almost convince one the staging is on an equal par — or so we imagine is the reason of this staging's widespread acclaim.

Too bad (for us). We were really looking forward to and had high hopes for this.

Nothing For It (Administrative Note)

The arts conversation seems to have migrated from blogs to Twitter the reason for which eludes us. Nothing for it, however, so, as an adjunct to our activities here on S&F, there we now are as well. You can follow us on Twitter by linking to @soundsandfury.

Netflix's New Drama Series, House Of Cards: Some Brief Remarks

We take a momentary break from our hiatus from blogging to note briefly Netflix's small revolution in the delivery of original TV-type series drama to audiences worldwide.

We've just finished viewing Friday's premiere of all 13 hour-long episodes of Season 1 of the new Netflix original drama series House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and Kate Mara, an American remake of the brilliant 1990 BBC series of the same name starring Ian Richardson, Diane Fletcher, and Susannah Harker, and it's a splendid effort both substantively and in its revolutionary method of delivery (all 13 episodes of Season 1 available at the same time on the Internet for instant streaming directly to your properly equipped viewing device of choice). The drama's production is visually gorgeous and the performances largely first-rate throughout. The writing, however, is only occasionally so, we're sorry to have to report, and is fairly uneven both within and across episodes (all told, there were some six writers involved) and around Episode 8 the drama begins going badly off the rails and thereafter quickly degenerates into a series drama of the typical American TV network sort for the most part. But even at the series's best, Kevin Spacey's bluntly brutal Francis (Frank) Underwood is no match in Machiavellian machination for Ian Richardson's deliciously wicked Francis Urquhart, and Robin Wright's barbed, athletically coarse Claire Underwood is no match in seductive Lady Macbeth-ness for Diane Fletcher's coolly smooth patrician Elizabeth Urquhart, nor is Kate Mara's Zoe Barnes a match for Susannah Harker's Mattie Storin in quietly inviting beauty. You may think we're being biased in our assessment by our often evident Anglophilia. You might very well think that. We couldn't possibly comment.

That is all. We now resume our interrupted hiatus.

Gone Fishin' (Administrative Note)

Featured Past Post #115 (Administrative Note)

Some pertinent remarks on the special requirements of acting in opera are contained in a 2011 S&F entry cleverly titled "Acting In Opera" the link to which is now up on our sidebar as our new Featured Past Post.

New Entry On Off-Message Rants & Screeds (Administrative Note)

The link to a just-posted new entry ("Hillary") on S&F's Off-Message Rants & Screeds blog is now up on our sidebar under the Most Recent On Rants & Screeds section.

Pull-quote:

The woman met every challenge with aplomb, non-flinching straightforwardness, and, except for a single well-justified instance (viz., when responding with annoyance to Republican Senator Ron Johnson), with perfect equanimity.

Let Obama Be Obama

Has no one noted the eerie similarity of what must have gone on in the White House in the weeks before and following President Obama's victory in the November election that culminated in his uncompromisingly Liberal Second Inaugural Address which unmistakably put the obstructionist Republicans on notice (and it's about bloody time, too) with the 19th episode of Season 1 of The West Wing titled, "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet"? Here is Wikipedia's description of the plot of that episode:

Sam knows no progress is possible on getting a policy in place so that gays and lesbians can openly serve in the military; Josh confronts a group of Republican Congressional staffers who threaten him with poison-pill legislation if he even thinks about pushing for campaign finance reformers on two newly opened Federal Election Commission seats; and Toby screams to Leo that they've had only one victory in office and that was putting Judge Mendoza on the Supreme Court. The staffers and the President feel listless and ineffectual in their jobs, and worry that they will be unable to achieve anything meaningful due to the constraints of the political system.

The memo and news coverage of how Bartlet too often compromised his positions to placate his opponents and avoid controversy resulted in Bartlet's popularity going down in the polls. On seeing his job approval rating dropping five points in a week to 42 percent, the staff comes to realize that the Bartlet administration has been ineffective because it has been too timid to make bold decisions, focusing instead on the exigencies of politics. Finally, Leo confronts President Bartlet with his own timidity, challenging him to be himself and to take the staff "off the leash." – in other words, he seeks to "Let Bartlet be Bartlet". The President and his staff resolve to act boldly and "raise the level of public debate" in America by moving forward with a more liberal agenda.

As we said, an eerie similarity.

Taking The Ol' Uzi Out Of Storage

BEGIN RANT

The next time I hear a pop singer sing some pop crap rendition of our national anthem at a national event, I'm taking the ol' Uzi out of storage, much-needed new gun control law enforcement notwithstanding, and loading it with just enough ammo to "correct" her (or him).

Oh to hear some measure of nobility and dignity restored to the performance of that time-honored song of praise no matter how achieved.

(This entry provoked by certain of today's Inauguration ceremonies.)

END RANT

Quotable: Floating Utterly Free

Gillian Moore, head of classical music at London's Southbank Centre, commenting on Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2 in a Guardian article promoting the Centre's January opening of its year-long The Rest Is Noise festival the festival based on material drawn from New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross's prize-winning book of the same name:

[Schoenberg's] String Quartet No. 2, written in 1908 in the middle of an extreme marital and psychological crisis, starts with a richly harmonised minor key melody which would not have frightened Brahms. But by the end of the piece, a soprano has — highly unconventionally — joined the quartet and she sings "I feel the air of other planets", to music which is fractured, atomised, ethereal and floating utterly free from the gravitational pull of 600 years of harmonic tradition.

On The Appropriate Camera Shot Syntax For Filmed Staged Opera

Now that (digitally) filmed staged opera performances have become a regular and popular inhabitant of our cultural landscape, it's time the one responsible for determining what appears or doesn't appear in a shot — viz., the film's director — recognizes the special requirements of the camera shot syntax peculiar to the successful presentation of filmed staged opera and cease assuming, as filmed staged opera film directors almost always do today, that the camera shot syntax appropriate for works created originally and specifically for film is equally appropriate for the presentation of filmed staged opera. It most decidedly is not. Filmed staged opera requires its own camera shot syntax, and it's one that couldn't be more simple or straightforward.

One of film's most powerful expressive tools, a tool unique to cinema, is the close-up in its various forms — from the extreme close-up that focuses on some minute detail, to the "head(or face)-shot", to the "head-and-shoulders-shot", to the "one-shot" (i.e., half-to-full-length one-person close-up most often referred to as a "medium close-up"), to the "two-shot" (i.e., half-to-full-length two-person close-up, also most often referred to as a "medium close-up"), etc. — and so, quite naturally, the close-up is used with great frequency in works created originally and specifically for film. It might even be called film's workhorse shot.

In the filming of staged opera, however, the close-up should never be used with anywhere near that sort of frequency and in fact ought to be used only with the utmost discretion. Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann notwithstanding, opera singers, generally speaking, are not meant to be seen up close when working but are most favorably and advantageously viewed when seen at a discreet distance. Ditto certain parts of a production's set or costumes (certain sets and costumes in Julie Taymor's Zauberflöte for the Met spring instantly to mind). Therefore, in filmed staged opera, and barring any special circumstances, the workhorse shot should always be the so-called "medium-shot", unexciting in itself as it may be: a shot that includes all those onstage who are part of the central action at any point in time, or are a dramatically meaningful part of the reaction to that action, close-ups being interjected only when dramatically clarifying or revealing, or interjected only occasionally and fleetingly as visual spice. Further, and contrary to the standard shot-hierarchy of film where the "long-shot" (i.e., the so-called "establishing-shot" that shows the entire overall setting of the action) is used only rarely, typically only at scene's opening, in a filmed staged opera the long-shot should be used fairly often so that the film audience is regularly provided a satisfying overall orientating view; a view available at will at all times for an audience in the opera house.

And excepting special effects, that's pretty much it. That would seem to give short shrift to those benefits film is able to provide an audience; benefits not available to them live in the opera house. But that's not the way filmed staged opera is experienced in practice when done properly where the shot "palette", so to speak, and shot tempo are used with intelligence and real dramatic understanding. Rather, filmed staged opera done in that way is almost invariably experienced as a satisfying simulacrum of the Real Deal. While there no doubt will be those who care little for or are indifferent to opera as genuine dramma per musica and who will object bitterly to being deprived of constant, up-close-and-personal views of their favorite songbirds, there's nothing for it. About such fans one can say only: let 'em eat cake.

Backstage At The Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House streamed live today a ten-hour video of the backstage goings-on at the theater that was truly fascinating. The day closed with a prerecorded simultaneous look onstage and backstage at an actual performance of the full Act III of Die Walküre (the current Keith Warner production for the ROH that, if this act is representative of the whole, is a mildly Eurotrashy one more wrongheaded or just plain stupid than outrageous for the most part) and it was a real eye-opener to see the almost impossible coordination, mechanical and human, required among the 100-plus stage personnel to make it all come off onstage seamlessly and, as far as the audience was concerned, seemingly effortlessly (pay special attention to the Deputy Stage Manager (DSM): the amazing Sarah who calls out all the cues).

For those of you who missed today's webcast this part of it can be seen in full here. We think you'll find the viewing well worth the time spent.

A Happy 2013 To All Our Readers

The New York Times Magazine's Shameful Behavior

New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross complains:

For the past five years, the New York Times Magazine has offered an end-of-year feature called "The Music They Made" — an audio collage of musicians who died that year. [...] [W]ith the exception of David Mason, the trumpeter who played on "Penny Lane," no Western classical musician has appeared in these compilations. The omission is particularly maddening this year, since we lost two gigantic figures: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elliott Carter. Almost every other genre has been represented at one time or another....

We might point out to Mr. Ross that Western classical musicians have no place in such a compilation and would, in fact, be made to appear ridiculous by their inclusion. They require a completely separate compilation of their own and it's shameful, especially considering the publication, that no such compilation exists there. However, Mr. Ross's complaint that an annual compilation by the same publication called "The Lives They Lived" is also absent any Western classical musicians is a thoroughly justified one and the New York Times Magazine should feel doubly shamed by the omission.

The Glyndebourne Tristan: An Object Lesson In Doing Things Right

[NOTE: This entry has been edited as of 3:47 PM Eastern on 27 Dec to restore a one-word but important qualifying parenthetical and to clean up some overblown language.]

The Guardian has posted until 6 January 2013 videos of the 2007 revival of Glyndebourne's 2003 Nikolaus Lehnhoff über-minimalist staging of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (Act I, Act II, Act III), a staging that's an object lesson in just how powerful a Wagner music-drama can be when the opera director stays out of Wagner's way by doing — and doing only — what he ought to be doing: viz., discovering, to the utmost capacity of his gift, the most vivid and compelling way to realize onstage the full sense and spirit of the opera creator's concept and vision as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions), as we've put it previously. This holds true even when the resulting staging turns out first-rate but is imperfectly realized and dotted here and there with (mostly) small but outright conceptual blunders as it is in this case. Of course, it doesn't hurt matters in this case that the cast is also first-rate, both as singers and as actors, and that the performance of one of that cast, Nina Stemme as Isolde, is the equal of every iconic performance known to us of that impossible role. On the other hand, it doesn't help much (and most especially in this music-drama) that the conductor, Jiří Bĕlohlávek, turns in a less than profound reading of the score; competent, conscientious, and lively as it may be. Negatives notwithstanding, all in all a thoroughly worthwhile and rewarding expenditure of some five hours of our time. We suspect it might prove to be for you as well.

The "Creative Soul" Of The Opera Director

As it typically does whenever the subject of Regietheater is discussed in an online opera forum, the arguments on both sides of the aisle tend to get, shall we say, a bit uncompromising. No surprise there. For better or worse, it's the nature of the beast. We reprint below a short exchange from the most recent such argument in which we were involved simply in order to make it part of the S&F record.

A forum member wrote, in part, the following in response to a 2010 S&F entry ("It's The Music, Stupid!") that apparently had been cited on the forum within the context of an ongoing argument concerning Eurotrash (i.e., Konzept) Regietheater:

[S]ome directors are deliberately trying to stage an opera in a way that is at odds with the music. They don't want you absorbed in the story, they want you to actively question the work. [...] I simply cannot agree that directors should abandon attempts to apply their ideas and concepts to a work. That is the creative soul of the occupation.

To which we responded (here reprinted with language somewhat polished):

No, that is the "creative soul of the occupation" of a Eurotrash/Brechtian Regie, not that of an honest opera director. The "creative soul of the occupation" of an honest opera director resides in his attempt to discover, to the utmost capacity of his gift, the most vivid and compelling way to realize onstage the full sense and spirit of the opera creator's concept and vision as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions). Attempting anything beyond that involves the opera director operating within territory he has no business even so much as stepping foot into much less messing about with.

And so ought it to be in saecula saeculorum.

Beczala's "Black List"

Today, on a venerable online opera forum, a member linked this interview (in German) wherein the well-known Polish tenor Piotr Beczala declared his refusal in advance to be part of any opera production by certain Regietheater Regies (which, for obvious professional reasons, he declined to name) with a reputation for staging Eurotrash (i.e., Konzept) Regietheater productions of the established operatic repertoire — his "Black List", as he called it.

This brave declaration was hailed roundly by an overwhelmingly large percentage of the responding membership of the forum but was just as roundly pooh-poohed by the usual suspects, one of whom is a member of the certified classical music "smart set", a set identified in this recent S&F entry. Wrote this usual suspect:

But Leontyne Price says never sing on principal, only on interest. So difficult to keep up with all these pearls of wisdom from great thinkers whose qualification to theorize on the nature of art consists mostly of the ability to make a pretty noise in the throat.

To which we responded:

You mean as opposed to all those pearls of wisdom from great thinkers whose qualification to theorize on the nature of art consists mostly of their desperate, urgent need to justify and make acceptable their parasitic hijacking of the original works of others, or the theorizing of those great thinkers whose qualification to theorize on the nature of an artform consists of a view of that artform that's long been jaded by their having been obsessive-compulsively addicted to that artform for reasons other than art? I of course dismiss the theorizing of academic types as their theorizing on an artform is provoked and corrupted by things external to art and is therefore ipso facto worthless.

Usual Suspect's immediately following sally attempted the less snarky, more sober approach, managing only to dig himself into an even deeper hole:

I see nothing particularly brave in what Beczala said. Essentially he states he will refuse to work with "crazy" directors who try to "reinvent" the opera without bothering to define what constitutes either craziness or reinvention.... I would call it brave, for example, if Beczala had named names, said, "I worked with Fritz Krank in Graz on a terrible 'Traviata' in which I had to sing my cabaletta nude in a children's swimming pool filled with Jello." But he offers neither names nor concrete examples of what he considers "crazy." (What he says about a crocodile in "Lohengrin" is hypothetical and therefore pointless....)

To which we responded:

Since when does being hypothetical equate with being pointless? And in the case of Lohengrin, Beczala's hypothetical crocodile is perfectly on point given the recent infamous Bayreuth Eurotrash Lohengrin — the so-called "Rat" Lohengrin — with its army of rat-costumed Brabantians complete with tails.

In any case, the man is setting forth a principle and his stated rejection of any staging of Lohengrin — actual or hypothetical — in which a crocodile takes the place of the swan illustrates that principle in a way perfectly comprehensible to all — to all, that is, other than cheerleaders for and staunch fans and defenders of that malignancy known as Eurotrash (i.e., Konzept) Regietheater.

We await (but do not expect) any further argument.

Stay tuned.