Posted 7:12 PM by Gene

Tony is the musical equivalent of all those scribblers who call graffiti AHT. Using James Levine's poor health as an excuse he wants him out of the Met so someone can do more Nixon in Chinas; he gives the show away by endorsing an "AH-pe-RA" about Anna Nicole Smith he praises as "outrageous" (Paper of Re-CORD-speak meaning tuneless and sticking it to people with taste). Levine is simply too much of an old fuddy-duddy for Tony's advanced thinking. Look, everyone wants new operas, but as every last one is doomed to be Willie Stark or T&M's stuff for the archives or the latest transgressive nuisance all they'll do is waste money (tax money wherever possible) and bloom flowerless. That Tony couldn't care less for the masses shows itself when he gushes that 175,000!!!!!!!!!! viewed Levine's Die Walküre in movee houses -- which is still only about .056 percent of the total U. S. population; the other 99.944 percent may not be lured by JERRY SPRINGER!!!!!!!!!! Alas, that seems the point of such blather: to turn a whole art form into an hermetically-sealed plaything for scribbling eggheads and their mentally-constricted friends.

P. S. from Nathan Heller's evisceration of SNL:

The way this industry cog constantly rehearses generations-old mythologies about its fearless innovation, wild times, and spunky creativity is too comfortably of a piece with many of today's aesthetic affectations. [Emphasis added]

Shouldn't opera be about something more permanent than what happened three years ago?

And to put it politely, Tony is affected.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)