If you don't want to click through: Olivia Giovetti of WQXR posted about the Ring; Gelb called WXQR, which took down the posting and now says it was under review already. Dan Wakin is on the case; read Olivia's posting here.
Good move, WQXR, during a pledge drive! And color this the problems of institutional blogging, from Dan's article:
Ms. Walker [of WQXR], without stating what her specific objections to the piece were, said it was not a review and “not exactly opinion either,” and after it quoted from the Times interview, “goes on without any substantiation or reporting.”Ms. Walker, that's what blogging is about.
H/T La Cieca for bringing this to everybody's attention.
*low whistle* Terrific, devastating post.
ReplyDeleteA baffling over-reaction by Gelb. I mean, nothing in the piece that was taken down was anything that hadn't been said by Alex Ross, Anthony Tommasini and a bunch of others: it's not a good production and it's not singer friendly.
ReplyDeleteWhy not just let the cycles play themselves out and quietly dump the sets in the dustbin of history?
What's more distressing to me than a botched Ring cycle is that Robert Lapage is scheduled to do the production for Messiaen's Saint François d’Assise at the Met in 2015-16. Yikes.
Henry, EXACTLY. I mean, who on earth advised him? Does he have PR people? Does he have anyone around him who just has some SENSE??
ReplyDeleteAnd I "yikes" with you about Lepage and St. Francois.
In all honesty, I read Lisa's post and the PDF of the blog article which had been removed, and was going to respond with a simple, "Yikes."
ReplyDeleteI see that you've all beat me to the punch, but I can think of no better reaction.
I'm just glad to know that the Met is doing St. Francois in any guise.