Posted 3:34 PM by Gene

And now we have another manufactured phenomenon in the "OPERA" biz -- a musical about the invention of the atomic bomb. John Adams is a name that gets the hacks' hearts beating rapidly because he writes "operas" about topical themes -- Nixon, Klinghoffer. That he can't write music worth a tinker's damn says something, too: here is another work that hardly exists at all outside media outlets, and here is another soon-to-be-forgotten Victor Herbert for our generation, without melody and with an ATTITUDE.

We are reminded again of something THE MASTER said to Boswell:

BOSWELL. "Does not Gray's poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?" JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-String Jack towered above the common mark."

We live amidst HUGE POPULATIONS of Sixteen-String Jacks.