Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Herheim's Critics

After many years I realized that a typical operagoer is conservative, self-absorbed and very superficial. Most of the critics are like that too, with a major difference that they go public with their opinions that are often unfounded or based on personal misunderstanding of what they could see.

Last night I was able to see the new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, directed by Stefan Herheim, and once again I was amazed by his [Stefan's] wittiness, dexterity, and his musicality in presenting any opera he decides to put on stage. If I had more time in the days to come I'll write a few paragraphs about the show.


This morning I just googled to see if the people saw the show and if they saw the masterful quality of the direction of the opera that includes a very awkward and cringeworthy monolog at the end. The first thing popped up on my google list was this review and after having read it I could not force myself to read anything else. It's the stupidity of that review that annoys me the most. In the same text the author --who qualifies this Meistersinger as 'confusing'-- astonished us by confessing that he actually liked Herheim's production of Parsifal - sic! How is that possible?