And Here I Thought My Review Was Negative.

Over at Chicago Classical Review, Lawrence Johnson tells us exactly what he thinks of The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene:

As Jesus and Mary stopped their bickering and got married, and the interminable first act of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene limped toward its close in Wednesday’s world premiere at San Francisco Opera, crucifixion didn’t seem so bad a fate after all, at least for those seated in the audience. Anything to escape this hellish, three-hour show. 

The opera world has seen some genuine turkeys over the years, but not since Anthony Davis’s Amistad, have I experienced such a hopeless operatic stink bomb as Adamo’s new work. Didactic, tedious, endlessly talky and mired in a numbing political correctness, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a disaster of biblical proportions.

Just goes to show, I should have left my initial description of the libretto ("hopelessly muddled and overly talky") intact.