Episode 10: Opera & Criticism – Part I

Long-time music critic Anne Midgette has reviewed and interviewed everyone from opera powerhouse Luciano Pavarotti and famed dancer Twyla Tharp to director Spike Lee and performance artist Marina Abramovic. After 11 years with The Washington Post, Anne chats with Key Change co-hosts Robyn Grant Moran and Julie McIsaac about cherished memories, perspectives on the craft, and the rapidly evolving role of the modern arts critic.

Episode Transcript

Julie McIsaac (00:00):
Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Key Change (00:00):
A COC Podcast, where we explore
everything about opera from afresh perspective.

Robyn Grant-Moran (00:18):
We're your hosts, Robyn Grant-Moran

Julie McIsaac (00:21):
and Julie McIsaac.

Robyn Grant-Moran (00:22):
Welcome to Episode 10. Today we're talking
about opera and criticism.

Julie McIsaac (00:28):
Okay, so, Robyn, this is something that is very
much in your wheelhouse, I knowit's near and dear to your
heart, something that you careabout deeply, it's something
that you do. So, what's top ofmind for you here, as we tackle
this subject?

Robyn Grant-Moran (00:40):
I'm really excited to hear about how the
pros do it. I'm fairly new tothe game and the reality of

Julie McIsaac (00:48):
And I'm really curious about how someone comes
criticism in art is that it'sshrinking: there aren't as many
writers and the writers that areare all of a sudden responsible
for so much more you haveo do editorial pieces and you
ave to do feature pieces. You dn't really necessarily get to ma
ter any one thing and somethng like opera is very specific.

(01:11):
So, how do we have meaninful conversations about opera w
to have that deep contextualknowledge that you're talking
en we don't have people with tat contextual knowle
ge necessarily or sucheep contextual knowle

about (01:28):
how do they develop their capacity to write about opera in
a meaningful way? And justgenerally like, as a
dramaturg, sometimes people askme, "How do you become a
dramaturg? Where do you go toschool for that?" and it's not
like there's any one set path.

And, so, I'm curious (01:39):
how does someone become a media critic,
what qualifies you/what preparesyou to critique and artistic
work? And then, as you know,actually, for this conversation,
we spoke to two experts in thefield, theatre critic Karen
Fricker, and classical musiccritic Anne Midgette. And, of
course, we just had so much to

Robyn Grant-Moran (01:58):
So, today, we're going to start with our
talk about fascinatingconversations that we decided
to break it into two episodesfor you, our listeners. So,
you'll get half of that today.
And we're just really hoping togive you a sense of the breadth
of our conversations, and justso you can get a real feel for
the past, present, and future ofarts criticism.

(02:24):
chat with Anne Midgette. Anne isthe former classical music
critic for The Washington Post.
She spent much of her earlycareer based in Munich, Germany
reviewing opera, music, and artthroughout Europe for the Wall
Street Journal, Opera News, andother publications. She later
returned to the U.S. and, in2001, she became the first woman
to review classical music forthe New York Times on a regular

(02:47):
basis.

Julie McIsaac (02:51):
Let's hear from Anne,
Thank you so much for joiningus, Anne. We're thrilled to have
you here with us.

Anne Midgette (03:01):
Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having
me.

Julie McIsaac (03:03):
And we'd love to know
your start in classical musiccriticism? What drew you to that
job and what was your journeythere?

Anne Midgette (03:12):
I have a good story about starting out as a
critic. I was a novelist, Imoved to Germany to write my
novel and immediately met a lotof American opera singers
because, of course, Germany is ahotbed for American opera
singers. Particularly the 1980s,when I was there, there were
many fewer apprentice programsin America, so, if you wanted a
career as a singer, you went toGermany. I didn't really know

(03:34):
that but I very quickly met atenor of all things, and the
tenor and I moved in together,we lived together for three
years and, without that tenor, Iwould never have ended up doing
what I did. I loved operapassionately but he was the one
who sort of guided me into it.
He had amazing ears and realknowledge of the voice and we
spent hours listening torecordings and talking opera, he

(03:57):
gave me all the right books, andit was really a wonderful, sort
of, education rolled into arelationship.
When we broke up, and I wassuddenly like, "What will my
life be without opera?" and Ithought, "Hmm, if you want opera

(04:19):
in your life, maybe you can finda better way than dating opera
singers." I thought, "Great, Iknow: I'll become a singer,
obviously!" That was not theright conclusion to draw but I
did start studying voice at 24may I add, I was a little old to
be starting! I had sung inchoruses all my life. I studied
voice passionately for about 10years. Anyway, I did, as I was

(04:43):
studying, began writing articlesfor this general interest
magazine I was editing,including articles about opera.
Opera News bought an article ofmine out of that magazine, and
then Opera News assigned to meanother article. Now these were
articles about opera. Of course,there's a big distinction
between being a critic and beinga reporter in the journalism

(05:04):
world. I think readers don'talways appreciate what a strong
line there used to be,especially between a critic who
is allowed to have opinions andmake pronouncements about the
art, and a reporter who'swriting articles about the art.
I always, as a critic, tried tomake both of those things part
of the job. In any case, OperaNews, having assigned me these
two big feature articles, on atime when I was in New York, I

(05:26):
was still living in Germany, Icame to New York went to their
offices, and they said, "Wewould like to make you our
critic for Germany andSwitzerland," and I looked at
them with this huge gulp Imean, most of my friends were
singers and, I said, "I can'tbe a critic," I said, "I don't
have the background to be acritic. I don't have the
knowledge, and I don't have thedesire to be a critic." And

(05:48):
Patrick Smith, the editor, said,"You'll learn." And I was in my
20s and I didn't really know howto say, "no" any more forcefully
than that, and I was, sort of,jumping at every opportunity I
got. And, so, I, sort of,thought, "Well, I guess I can
try it." So, they assigned me myfirst review and it was of two

operas in Leipzig (06:06):
one was [Jean-Philippe] Rameau's
"Hippolyte et Aricie," FrenchBaroque, and the other was the
world premiere of KarlheinzStockhausen "Dienstag [aus
Licht]," from the Licht cycle,his seven-part operatic cycle.
To say that I had limitedexperience with both those
genres would be putting itpolitely. I always say I jumped

(06:28):
in the very deep end and Iremember having a mild panic
attack during the pressconference, I thought, "What am
I doing here?" But you can lookit up: it's in the Opera News
archive, my very first operareview that was published was
about Stockhausen's Dienstagfrom the Licht cycle, which
finishes, in the final scene,with a character called the
Synthi-Fou, which isStockhausen's son driving around

(06:51):
the stage in what amounted to a,kind of, bumper car made up of
synthesizers, wearing a, sortof, rainbow Afro-style wig. It

(07:16):
was outside my experience ofclassical opera singing to put
it mildly, and look whathappened.

Julie McIsaac (07:22):
Yeah!

Anne Midgette (07:22):
I told that story outside Carnegie Hall one night
to somebody who asked how I gotinto criticism, and Patrick
Smith walked up the editor inquestion in that story and he
heard me tell this and he said,"You know," he said, "Many of
these stories get, kind o, bowdlerized as time goes o
," he said, "But that is actualy how that one hap

Julie McIsaac (07:41):
An accurate depiction of that.

Anne Midgette (07:43):
Exactly.

Robyn Grant-Moran (07:44):
I'm curious, like he talked about the divide
between music journalist andmusic critic. Can you elaborate
a little more on that, and whatyou feel the role of the critic
specifically is in operacriticism?

Anne Midgette (07:59):
Well, with the background I had, I always felt
very strongly that the criticshould also be writing feature
stories and be informed. It'sstill a point At the New York
Times, the theater critic, foryears, believed he shouldn't
know anything about the businessat all; he should solely, you
know, give his aestheticresponse to the work and he

(08:21):
didn't want it clouded byknowledge of the business. I
personally feel that, in manycases, knowledge of the business
helps inform your aestheticsense and, also, if you've been
doing this job for 20 years, youknow a lot anyway like, it's
very hard to be, sort of, pureand unbiased and I'm not sure
that view is all that helpful.
Opera is, kind of, aspecialized, niche audience; I
think you want somebody with asmuch know-how as possible to be

(08:44):
explaining this to readers. As

for bias (08:49):
all critics have bias.
If we weren't stronglyopinionated and loved the field,
we would have no businesswriting about it. I think you
have to be responsible about notallowing your personal feelings
about somebody or some situationbleed into it too much, but it's
also part of your job to let thereader know where your biases
lie. I think the great goal of acritic is to write a review Say

(09:12):
I write a review saying that Iloved something this happened
to me once and that was reallyproud and somebody came up to
me and said, "Oh, that was agreat review, I would have hated
that performance," and that's

wonderful. And vice versa (09:26):
if I write that I hate something but
put enough information in thatsomebody else could read it and
say, "Oh, I probably would haveliked that," where your opinion
is in there but you're conveyingenough about the performance
that somebody else can gatherwhat it was like beyond merely
what you thought it has to goway beyond thumbs up and thumbs
down. As to the larger role of acritic: when I started at The

(09:48):
Washington Post after sevenyears as a freelancer at the New
York Times, I was talking aboutthis a lot to Doug McLennan
who's the founder ofArtsJournal, and he said
something about critics needingto be a gathering place kind
of like the watering hole andI thought a lot about that and I
really embraced that. I thinkthat critics our goal is to

(10:13):
promote discussion; our goal isnot to tell you what to think.
People aren't stupid. You can'torder people what to think. If
you're writing about food in arestaurant, you can't say, "of
course, you must like broccoliand you're stupid if you don't."
Obviously, that's dumb but Ithink in music criticism, people
really take that. I mean, I oncewrote a piece about how I didn't
love Brahms and people are stillupset about that piece. And the

(10:36):
idea that we all have to move inlockstep, and these pieces are
all masterpieces, and we mustall like them equally is very
detrimental to our field and thepeople loving our field. It
really is about giving otherpeople tools to have opinions,
and giving them something toargue with, and something to
debate about. And I always sayif you come up to me and say, "I

(10:57):
really disagreed with you, andhere is why," my job is done
because my job is to give youthe tools to help talk more
about it, and to think moreabout it, and to care more about
it. And if what you come up withis completely opposite to what I
come up with, that's great, thatkeeps the field alive! If we all
think we have to be in a corset,and move in lockstep, it really

(11:19):
kills all creativity in thefield and it's what leads to the
audience feeling that they don'treally have the authority to
make a decision, which we see alot, I fear, among opera and
classical music audiences.
People would come up to me afterlectures and say, "Oh, I've been
subscribing for 40 years but Idon't really know anything about
classical music." And I wouldsay, "If you told me you went to

(11:40):
the movies every Thursday nightfor 40 years, and then told me
you didn't know about cinema, Iwould laugh at you." And yet in
music, people really feelthey're not empowered to have
opinions.

Robyn Grant-Moran (11:53):
As an emerging critic and
late-blooming opera singermyself, I find that I have a
boundary of "I will not critiqueopera," I write theater
criticism but I will engagecritically with opera, i.e.
having this podcast and talkingmore about a cultural context.

(12:13):
Do you find that there is anadversarial role or that you

have to choose/pick a team (12:17):
be a critic or be an artist? Is that
something you encounter in yourpractice?

Anne Midgette (12:25):
It has evolved a whole lot of thinking about
that. Back in the heyday ofjournalism in the 1950s and 60s,

say, you had to choose (12:32):
you could not be an artist. Of
course, Virgil Thompson, thecritic of the 1940s and 50s in
the New York Herald Tribune isthe huge exception that proves

the rule (12:42):
he was an active composer and a very influential
critic, and not very principledabout mixing the two he really
threw his weight around a lot.
However, at the time I camealong, my husband is also a
former opera singer, formercritic, and composer, and he
faced this very directly in hiscareer because he too was

(13:02):
approached by the New YorkTimes, a generation before I
was, about writing for them. Butthat would have meant ceasing
compositional activity youcouldn't do both and he chose
not to. Today, there are so fewfull-time critics, it's not
really a professional optionanymore. I'm seeing a lot of
people put together, sort of,composite careers and the

(13:24):
boundaries are a lot more fluid,which is interesting and a
little tricky because you reallywant to be able to write freely
and to express your opinionsfreely about what you think.
When I was starting out at theNew York Times, I felt very

green (13:40):
I knew a lot more about opera than about other kinds of
classical music. And, of course,you don't get to pick when
you're at the New York Times,

you (13:48):
new music concerts, organs, bassoon recitals you name it!
And I guarantee you that everysingle classical music critic in
North America has to review, attimes, things that they are not
expert in. Many of my colleaguesfelt they weren't that expert in
opera, and I was sort of theopera person. When I started at
the New York Times, one of mysinger friends went to me and

(14:10):
she said, "Anne, keep tellingthe truth. We need you to be
honest, we need you to tell thetruth. Don't varnish, don't
whitewash your opinions." And Ifelt that that was a real
missive from the music world.
So, I was very careful to tellthe truth and I quickly became
an incredibly hated critic, Ibecame really loathed for my

(14:32):
truth-telling. I didn't pull anypunches, and I was highly
opinionated, and I was trashingpeople in the New York Times.
This is a common mistake, too,when you're a young critic: you
come out of the gate just fullof piss and vinegar, and you've
got all your ideals, and thingsaren't living up to them, and
you're much more vehement. But Iwas so hated in the opera world
for so long, and I was reallykind of bewildered by it, "but

(14:53):
my friend told me to be reallyhonest!" I think over time, you
know, as you're in longer,people get your measure more and
I think, you know, some peoplewill always hate me there are
people who just revile me. ButI've also gotten notes from
singers who got different levelsof review from, sort of saying,

(15:14):
"I appreciate that I see yourecalling it like you hear it,
and if you really likesomething, you're praising that
too," you know. And there wasone case it was actually
really funny I think I couldeven name it because it's funny,
if you Google back, it was JamieBarton. And I was very cool
about Jamie Barton at thebeginning, and I just felt she
was kind of doing a littleshtick with the humour, and it

(15:37):
was kind of a gimmick, and shewrote me after a recital that I
had loved, and I went back andlooked and it was actually true
that every review, I warmed toher a little bit more. And, so,
I went from sort of, "Eh, she'snot that great," to "she is
really fabulous. I had awonderful time, she was funny,
she won me over." And I hadn'tdone that deliberately; I try

(15:59):
not to be influenced by my pastreviews, I think that it's
really important to be able tochange your mind, to come to it
as openly as you can. Obviously,some people you have in mind
what you think of them, but I amnot about having a platform and
an agenda and advancing it. Ithink you really have to
emphasize that you're a person.
And, also, the performers arepeople, and sometimes somebody

(16:21):
has a lousy night, and a greatnight, and you have to be able
to accept that. So, over time, Ifound that being honest you
know, well being honest is theonly way to go anyway, because
you really can't live withyourself if you put something in
print that you don't believe,right? That's pretty terrible.
But I also remember a friend inthe music business who was

(16:43):
writing reviews and he said,"Well, I've just decided I'll
never write a negative review.
If I don't like something, Iwon't review it." And, okay,
that sounds great, right? Whywould I ever need to read those
reviews, if I know that he'sonly going to write positive
reviews? Okay, fine. So, I seehis name on something, I'm like,
"Okay, it's gonna be positive."You know, you have to really be

(17:06):
engaging with the art and youcan't just whitewash the art.
This is a long, long answer toyour question, and I'm sorry,
but there's one more importantpoint, which is that a too nice
review of a mediocre performancewill ultimately alienate the
audience for music more than anhonest review which is to say

(17:28):
that if somebody who's new toopera goes to a performance, and
it's kind of "meh", and theyread a review that says, "Oh,
this was really great, theyworked so hard," the person will
be like, "Oh, opera is not forme." But if they go to a
performance that's really "meh",and they read a review that
says, "This was really pretty'meh'" and I've gotten letters
from people like this "Thankyou so much," it validates their

(17:49):
taste, and it makes them want togo back and hear what I think is
good, and see if they like it.
The empowerment that comes fromrealizing that your judgement of
it wasn't about the genre butabout a bad performance is
considerable. And, so, I dobelieve that tough love in the
end builds audiences. I get alot of reader mail saying, you
know, "Nobody's ever going tocome to our performances because

(18:11):
you're so mean about them." Andit's like, "No, they'll come
when I say that it's good." Imean, my job is not to sell
tickets either; my job is togive an honest, critical
assessment and further thediscussion. That said, if you
give a rave review of somethingthat you really love, and people
know that you're honest, theticket bump is notable. You

(18:31):
know, then you're happy you soldtickets, because it's to
something you really care about.

Julie McIsaac (18:38):
You just mentioned genre, Anne, and I'm
curious, having mentionedtheatre a little bit and cinema

a little bit (18:42):
what is it about opera? What are those special
skills or insights that you feelare required compared to
reviewing other genres?

Anne Midgette (18:51):
Well, the biggest thing you need to review is a
way with language, and a pair ofears and a willingness to take
it on. I mean, we're all, asconsumers of art in the bigger
sense, everybody is constantly,you know you're learning new
things all the time, you'rerefining your insights. Every
time I look at a painting, itcould be a very familiar

(19:12):
painting, but sometimes you werereally engaging with that in new
ways. I think the critic gives avoice to that. I hope the critic
is, as I said, an entry pointfor people to be developing
their own perceptions. I feltvery keenly, as I intimated in
that origin story, that I didn'thave the proper background: I
majored in classicalcivilizations, which means I

(19:33):
learned ancient Greek and Latin.
I actually never took a musicclass in college, although I had
a lot of music in elementary andhigh school. I never got a
graduate degree of any kind andI felt woefully underprepared.
And my husband has a couple ofgraduate degrees and is a
composer, and has all thebackground I felt that I should
have, and he was very emphaticand very helpful to me because I
was starting at the [New York]Times and I was suffering

(19:55):
terribly from imposter syndrome,about how what you really need
is experience and ears and, youknow, ability to listen. I
certainly made some howlers atthe beginning of my career that
I could have forestalled had Ihad, you know, a degree in
composition. But, um, it hasinterested me over time that my
husband and I will hearcompletely different things in a

(20:18):
performance but we usuallyarrive at similar places in our
assessment, which is not to saythat we like everything the
same, but often a performancethat we both really agree is
wonderful, we will have likedfor very different reasons and
heard very different things. But

each view is valid (20:34):
again, there's not one cookie cutter
way to hear it. And often, whenyou get a real expert writing
about something and I've seenthis over and over again with
freelance critics, too you gettoo much into the weeds about

it (20:47):
a pianist writing about a pianist can get distracted, and
technical things, or peddlingthings that really aren't so
relevant to the overallperformance, they're relevant
for piano experts. I havecertainly fallen into that trap
with opera where I used to getcriticized by my bosses for
being too specific and too hungup on things they didn't think

(21:10):
were necessary, because thepoint of a review is to reach
educated laypeople. You know,you want a smart person but you
don't need a college, you know,specialized degree in that field
to enjoy the review, and you canoften keep sight of that better
when it's something that you toohave worked harder to gain. And,

(21:34):
that said, I feel opera criticsway too often fall back on the
plot and, you know, describingthe plot, and then what did the
sets look like, and that there'snot a real sophisticated
appreciation among audiences orcritics in this country,
especially of the whole historyof set design and production
design, and what's behind theproduction, like a more

(21:54):
thoughtful interaction withthat, and then a more thoughtful
interaction with the voices. Ifyou read reviews from 30-40
years ago, they focused on thenature of the singing and the
production. And now you knowthat the kind of review you read
where everybody's kissed offwith one or two adjectives
I've been guilty of it too, weget into that formula of, you

(22:14):
know, "the smoky voice mezzo didCarmen," "butter pecan," you
get all these food metaphors of"baritone sound of" whatever.
And it's really just one or twowords, and it's too bad that
we've lost the vocabulary to gomore in depth with that.

Robyn Grant-Moran (22:34):
Now, you were the first woman to review
classical music regularly at theNew York Times. Criticism is a
bit of an old boys club and I'mwondering: did you face that and
how did you face that?

Anne Midgette (22:49):
Well, it was it was amusing and, sort of, bitter
to be the first woman in theyear 2001 the thought that
there hadn't been a regularfemale music critic at The Times
was kind of shocking, and it wasshocking to The Times, too, so
they determined to find a woman.
So, I always say I was sort ofthe affirmative action baby;
they were looking only at womenfor that stringer job and I was
the woman they picked. I did anarticle about it the next year,

(23:13):
which just went up onlineagain, it was out of print for a
long time about being a womancritic because it was not
something I'd ever thoughtabout; I really literally never
found barriers to doing what Idid. I had wonderful mentors all
the way along who were verysupportive. I think, at that
point, everybody was aware ofthe need for a woman, people
were happy to support a womancoming up in the field. But I

(23:36):
wrote in this article about,sort of, the stereotypes about
women that come into play withthe, sort of, "first woman"
thing, and the idea thatclassical music is seen, as I
mentioned before, a lot ofaudience members see it as this,
sort of, privileged kind ofinformation that needs to be

(23:58):
interpreted by priests basicallyit's this, sort of, you know,
secular religious experience andyou need the priest to tell you
what you've seen and elucidateit for you and, of course,

priests are men (24:08):
we look to male authority figures. Conductors
have been men, all these, sortof, archetypal images of
patriarchal power are embodiedin this tradition and classical
music clings to its tradition.
And we have certainly seen allthe ways that women have faced
obstacles all the way down theline in every aspect of this

(24:31):
field, and a lot of thosebarriers are just beginning to
dissolve in the 21st century,so: more female critics, we're
seeing a lot more femaleconductors, a lot more female
composers. That's changed in thelast, you know, 10 years.
Somebody else pointed out thatwe're seeing more female critics
at the time when music criticismis no longer a very important

(24:51):
field. I mean, there are onlymaybe 10 or 12 full time critics
in America and that might begenerous at this point
classical music critics that is.
And a lot of the jobs have beenfolded into other jobs, you

know (25:04):
the arts reporter, you do theatre, you do restaurants, you
do architecture, and you do theclassical music concert. And
that the rise of women canpossibly be charted on a graph
along with that decline inimportance.

Julie McIsaac (25:21):
There's an interesting correlation to note
between those two things.

Anne Midgette (25:25):
Well, as has been pointed out, the sports section
is never in danger; art sectionsof newspapers have dwindled, and
arts sections in newspapers aregenerators of revenue and
generators of advertisingdollars. The quote that I quoted
in this article I mentionedwhich again, was written in

(25:45):
2002, it's not a new piece butanother writer suggested that
the decision to cut back on artswriting and not on sports was
not a question of dollars; itwas a "guy thing," that the
decision makers that newspaperstend to be male and they want
their sports section. And artscoverage is very much like

(26:05):
sports coverage, arts coverageshould be like sports coverage:
you have your feature storiesabout the players and the
artists; you have your newsstories about what's going on in
the field; and then you have thegame coverage, or the concert
reviews. And, you know, youwould never cut the game
coverage out of the sportssection because you want to know
what's happening but thetendency in the art sections

(26:27):
and this has been true all theway through my career is to
cut out the concert reviews andjust give you the stuff about
the background of the person, asif you were covering a baseball
team by only writing humaninterest stories about the
players, which really wouldn'tgive you the feeling of the
baseball season. Yes, it isextremely hard to think that
you're going to get a full-timemusic critic job today, whoever
you are, absolutely difficult.
That said, I've gotten calls inthe last I mean, I left my job

(26:50):
in November of 2019, so, butbefore I left, I was getting
calls from people saying, "Wewant to hire a critic," you
know, "Do you haverecommendations?" from various
smaller papers. I have been onthe faculty since the inception
of a organization called theRubin Institute for Music
Criticism, which is acompetitive biannual institute

(27:11):
held in San Francisco where, fora week, we get together, like,
20 graduate and undergraduatestudents who have some interest
in becoming critics and do acritic boot camp kind of thing.
And that institute has succeededin placing a number of younger
critics in jobs. So, it's notquite as bleak as it once was. I

(27:36):
mean, I believe that the NewYork Times and The Washington
Post are going to keep havingclassical music critics in some
form, and the LA Times. The NewYorker, obviously, Alex Ross is
at The New Yorker and he's themost famous classical music
critic writing today, and he'samazing. But I think The New
Yorker I mean, Alex is young,he's going to be there for a

(27:58):
long time but I would assumethat they would keep that post
going.

Julie McIsaac (28:04):
You've shared with us a little bit about how
you've observed changes, interms of the evolution of the
role of the critic or theplacement of the critic and the
cultural conversation. Are thereany other changes or evolutions
that you've witnessed over thepast 20-25 years that you feel
that you'd like to share withus?

Anne Midgette (28:20):
We review a lot less than we did that's across
the board, no matter what paperyou're at, there are many fewer
concert reviews because welearned, through online
tracking, that people just don'tread concert reviews, they
really were not getting read.
Part of the problem also beingthat you can track readers very
closely online and the onlineaudience has a more national
audience. And, of course,concert reviews are targeting a
more local audience becausepeople who can actually go, who

(28:43):
are getting the print paper aregoing to be local. So, your
hands are a little bit tied tobegin with. But the decline in
coverage means that critics havehad to adapt to a lot of
different kinds of writing. Imean, the critics notebook has
always been a staple, thenotebook being the, sort of,

(29:05):
critical opinion piece, which isincidentally the fourth thing
that I left out when I wastalking about the links between
sports and criticism. Theopinion piece is very important,
you know, whether it's anotebook about Beethoven and his
role, or a notebook about theMetropolitan Opera. And editors
are very into those from

critics (29:28):
they want lots and lots of opinion pieces, not tied to a
particular performance. And, so,there's a lot more emphasis on
that for somebody coming intothe field. My husband teaches a
course at Juilliard [School]that used to be called Music
Criticism, and he noticed thathis enrollment was dropping off
and he realized it was becausenobody read criticism anymore,

(29:51):
or saw its function, and hechanged it to writing about
music I don't remember exactlywhat it's called but it's a
course on how to write and talkabout music. Well, of course,
everybody wants that coursebecause every musician now needs
to be able to write and talkabout music you need to be
able to do it from the stage,you need to be able to talk to
donors, you need to be able towrite your program notes. It's a

(30:11):
skill that, sort of, morphedfrom the critical realm to the
practical realm of peopleactually going out there and
doing it. That's, I think,something that every musician
now needs at his quiver this"his" in "his in her" sense that
needs in "their" quiver. Thistouches on what you were asking
before, Robyn, about mixing up acareer as a performer and a

career as a critic (30:34):
there are people who are definitely doing
both and and that's a shift thatwe did not see 20 years ago,
that you would see a, sort of,freelance musician, critic,
podcast or what have you.

Robyn Grant-Moran (30:47):
Do you have any productions that have really
stood out or made an impact inyour tenure as a critic?

Anne Midgette (30:55):
It's funny, I have my list of, sort of, top
orchestral performances. Topopera performances is rough
there have been so many but Iwill say there was this one
magical year at the WashingtonNational Opera, here I am in
D.C., they did the revisedversion of Philip Glass and
Christopher Hampton's"Appomattox," and then they did
the complete Ring Cycle. And Ihad seen the Francesca Zambello

(31:19):
Ring [Cycle] in San Francisco[Opera], having watched the
genesis of it here but they ranout of money in Washington
before the Gtterdmmerung, soWashington didn't get the
complete Cycle; San Franciscogot it and then Washington took
it over a couple years later.
And that Ring Cycle, with thecast that had been working on it
for, in some cases, 10 years,developing those roles it was
an amazing experience.

(32:08):
It was really remarkable, inyour hometown, to see this Ring.
And it wasn't local biasbecause goodness knows, I was
pretty tough on the WashingtonNational Opera. It was just a
really magical Ring Cycle. Andto have it in the same season as
the Appomattox, which was alsoone of my most amazing premieres
and as somebody who recognizesthat Philip Glass's operatic

(32:30):
output is very up and down, andthere have been some great ones
and there have been some not sogreat ones, and I've called them
both Appomattox, for me, wasmagical. So, that was a year
that stood out and it was, youknow, recently and it wasn't in
one of the great opera houses. Imean, what my bucket list of
opera performances was when Iwas 21, and I just moved in with

(32:54):
a tenor and I was in Paris andwas walking past the Palais
Garnier and saw this enormouscrowd and, it was because
Pavarotti was singing that nightand I had no money, so, I just
went over to look and watch thecrowd, and breathe in the
operatic fumes and, somehow,ended up standing next to the
world's only shy ticket scalperwho was holding up his tickets

(33:14):
and nobody was noticing him andthe crowd is melting away, and
then somebody grabs two of histickets, then somebody grabs one
more of his tickets, and then weare literally alone facing each
other at this auditorium in thelobby that is now empty, and he,
kind of, looks at me and I reachin my pocket and I have less
than $20 and, you know, changein French francs and I said,
"This is all I have," and hegoes, "I'll take it!" and I

(33:35):
ended up with a ticket and I wasright by the stage and it was
Luciano Pavarotti, and DanielaDess and Gabriel Bacquier he
e doing L'elisir d'amore [Te Elixir of Love], and I rememb
r I'd never been in the Palas Garnier before, I'd never se
n Pavarotti on stage live beforeit was really a magical nigh

Robyn Grant-Moran (34:23):
To circle back on how things are changing

and evolvi (34:27):
everything's getting democratized. Anybody can put
their opinions on a blog or onTwitter. Have you encountered
that and what changes are youseeing and would you like to
see?

Anne Midgette (34:45):
I've certainly encountered a lot of
misunderstanding of the critic'srole: people really do believe
you're there to sell tickets,you're there to give ratings
you're there [to give] thumbsup, thumbs down, two stars,
three stars all of that stuff,which is pretty widespread. And,
I mean, it's funny because Istarted at the New York Times in
2001, so, I think of my active,sort of, music critic phase as

(35:07):
being the last 20 years, and, inthat time, we went through blogs
and came out the other end. Youknow, there was that point when
everybody had blogs andbasically blogs kind of lost
their impact because everybodyrealized, at the same time, how
incredibly much work it is tokeep up a blog if you keep
putting that content out.
Whether you're doing it for TheWashington Post, where I had to
produce fresh content five timesa week for that blog, or whether

you're doing it for yourself (35:30):
if you wanted to build a
readership, you had to have thatkind of presence. So, the blogs
that have lasted, many of themhave become like magazines I
mean, parterre box orparterre.com, the classic opera
blog which has some wonderfulreviewers but it's become

really, like, a magazine site: it has its own reviewers, and it (35:48):
undefined
runs reviews by a bunch ofpeople; it is no longer, sort
of, the brainchild of one personputting it out there, which has
been an interesting evolution towatch. But everybody said, "Oh,
blogs are going to be the end ofcriticism because everybody who
has an opinion can put it ontheir blog," and the fact is
that if you don't have anythingworth saying, people aren't

(36:12):
going to read it, you know? Andif you do have something worth
saying, then more power to you;you should be blogging and we
should be reading you. I alwayshad a very welcoming view toward

blogs (36:22):
I want the conversation to expand, I want lots of people
to have a few points, and youjust have to believe that, you
know, as a paid professionalmusic critic, your own viewpoint
is worth having in that mix, andif it's not, then nobody should
read you. I, kind of, feel thatmusic criticism deserves its
demise in some sense because ifyou look back at a lot of what

(36:43):
was written in the 80s, 90s,2000s about opera performance,
about classical musicperformance, a lot of it is just
not very good and not veryinteresting very formulaic,
it's not really good writing,and so it shouldn't exist.
Andrew Porter's reviews,however, in The New Yorker are
still wonderful reading yearslater it has to be good

(37:04):
writing! When you were askingabout what the requirement for a

critic is (37:07):
you're writing a story, you want to tell people a
story that people are going towant to read. And whether it's a
happy story or a sad story oryou know, in terms of the

content. And, also, the story: you don't know what the story is (37:18):
undefined
about until you've been to theperformance. You see this very
formulaic writing of "Okay, I'mgoing to give you the plot of
the opera, and I'm going to giveyou the production," but the
story one night might be thesoprano, and the story another
night might be the productionyou have to go with a really
open mind about what it is thatyou would tell your friend in

(37:39):
the bar after the show. Youknow, "What is it that you would
come out saying," and that'swhat your review needs to be.
So, I think the bloggers whohave survived are all people I
want to read. And, of course,some newspaper reviewers have
become bloggers because theirnewspaper jobs have gone away.
But I'm never worried abouthaving a multiplicity of views

(38:01):
out there because the strongvoices always rise to the top.

Julie McIsaac (38:13):
Something that I really love that Anne shared
with us is the sense that, ifshe's done her job "right,"
there's that space that's beenleft for the person who reads
her review to insert themselvesand what their hypothetical
experience would have been. So,regardless of whether Anne
herself liked or didn't like aproduction, someone could read
it and go, like, "Oh, based onhow she's contextualized it and
what I've read, I would lovethat show," or, "Oh, I would

(38:35):
have hated that show." There'sthat space for them!

Robyn Grant-Moran (38:39):
So, when she talked about how she has this
ongoing relationship withperformers, and with directors,
and companies, because she'sreviewing over many years. Her
relationship changes and evolvesin leaving that space for the

(39:00):
audience member who's readingor the potential audience member
who's reading her review theyevolve with her, too, and I just
find that all very, veryfascinating.

Julie McIsaac (39:13):
I was just thinking back to being a
performer myself, like, back inthe early days of my career and
how someone from whom I'dreceived a negative reaction, I
later got a positive review fromyears later. But that meant more
to me because they weren'twriting from a place of a
vacuum; they'd watched me over anumber of years perform, and,
so, there was, like, thisrelationship that had progressed

(39:34):
in terms of them responding tomy work.

Robyn Grant-Moran (39:37):
And that makes me want to ask you this
question, Julie, because youwere a performer, you're a
director, you're a dramaturg nowyou do a lot, your career has

evolved (39:46):
what's your relationship to criticism?

Julie McIsaac (39:50):
So, I think something I did in the early
days is I did read the reviewsand I read them when they came
out and, in this context, maybeit came out and I still had two
months of performances leftlike, in a theatre context, for
example. And then what? It's aslippery slope because then I
found myself responding to whatthat one critic had said,
like, that criticism and tryingto fix it or trying to address

(40:11):
it and be, like, "No, I'm notthat I'm going to be better, I'm
going to fix it." And, so, Ispent, sort of, two months
focused on that rather thanfocused on all the lovely things
that we had rehearsed and thatthe director had envisioned for
that production. So, definitelya slippery slope. So, I learned
my lesson from that. And then,as a performer, what I would do
is maybe read them after the runof the show but once it had
closed. But then, as a director,it's really different because I

(40:33):
find that, as I'm building theproduction with my colleagues
and as we're rehearsing, I havethis vision in mind of what I
hope we can achieve, of whatthat storytelling experience can
be. So, at every moment, I'm,sort of, judging myself against
that standard or that visionthat I have for the work, and
I'm, sort of, keeping track ofthat and how close I'm getting
to that finish line or whereit's lacking like, where I
haven't figured it out, yet, orI haven't gotten there. And, so,

(40:55):
in a way, when we get to openingnight, I might be very satisfied
with the work or I might bethinking, "Oh, I wish we could
have fixed that. I wish we couldhave clarified that. I wish we
could have strengthened that."And, so, in a way, I've kind of
given myself a grade before thecritics ever receive it I
already, sort of, know how I'mjudging myself or how well I
feel I've done, or what I mightdo differently next time. And,
so, by the time those reviewscome out, it's not, sort of, my

(41:19):
personal way of judging thingsbecause I've already done that
for myself, but it is aninteresting conversation to then
respond to or to then, sort of,view and witness sort of that
conversation that's happeningamong the reviewers, especially
if I've built this productionthinking, like, "Okay, this
production is saying, 'X,' it'sall about 'X,' the theme of 'X'
is going to ring out so truly,"and then I read the review and

(41:40):
they're like, "This productionis all 'Y,'" and I go, "Oh, my
goodness! What's happened withthis disconnect?" And that's
actually fascinating to then,sort of, reverse engineer and
think back and try to figure outwhere that happened.

Robyn Grant-Moran (41:51):
I suppose that could really easily happen
because when you're creating theperformance, you're creating the
production, you are so in it

Julie McIsaac (42:01):
You're very close to it.

Robyn Grant-Moran (42:02):
you don't have that distance, so then a
critic can easily come along andsay, "Oh, I get that thing. That
thing you're trying tocommunicate: I get it loud and
clear." Or, "Huh, what were youtrying to say there?" Or find
that the focus was maybesomething else that you hadn't

(42:25):
anticipated whatsoever.

Julie McIsaac (42:27):
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (42:27):
But because you were so in it.

Julie McIsaac (42:29):
Yeah. Well, and something that Anne shared with
us, too and I appreciate thisis that she's aware of the
fact that you can see a matineeon a Saturday afternoon and
witness a different performancethan if you went on Wednesday at
7 p.m., and that this is a liveart form, that things can
happen, and, so, things can benuanced and different, or they
can be very different. Forexample, if the star soprano was
ill and there's another singerin that role that's going to

(42:50):
make a difference. And likewise,for myself as a director, like,
I know, if I returned to see theproduction, the notes I might
have for the performers on thatday or for the stage manager
might be very different than hadI seen the Friday show.

Robyn Grant-Moran (43:02):
Even something as subtle as the
audience being different willchange a performance. And,
harkening back to ourconversation with Michael
Levine, like, if one littlething is just a hair off if
that light, if that scrim isjust, like, a millimetre off

(43:22):
it will change how you perceiveas an audience member, what your
perception is. And, so, there'sso much variation from
performance to performance.

Julie McIsaac (43:33):
And I'd be really curious, like, Robyn
your take on how critiquingsomething that's live like a
theatre production, an operaproduction how that differs
from critiquing something thatis not live like a film, for
example, or something where theart is separate from the artist
for example, visual art, wherethe painting is hanging on a
wall, and it's complete, andit's separate physically from

(43:53):
the artist who created it.

Robyn Grant-Moran (43:54):
Yeah, like, I've never actually critiqued
visual arts but the past twoyears, I've sat on the
ReelAbilities Film Fest[ival]jury and how I look at the films
is very different than how Ilook at live performance,
because when I look at a film,it's done: the artists have
nothing to do with it anymore.
It's out there, they can't goback and change anything, and

(44:18):
I'm looking at a whole package.
Whereas if I'm looking at a liveperformance, it's really hard to
separate the artist from theart. So, I have to be mindful
about how I frame things. Therewas a horrible example of this:

(44:40):
someone had reviewed "DerRosenkavalier" and they said
that Octavian was believableexcept for their puppy fat. And,
like, you can't that's notgood criticism. Like, how
someone looks, how they take upspace: that's them. But then it

(45:06):
gets into this question of,"What we're criticizing in opera

criticism (45:09):
we're talking about voices," and that's also the
performer but that's what we'rethere to criticize. So, you have
to set very clear boundaries andethics, I think, as a
professional around that becausewhatever you say, you're

(45:34):
impacting that artist verypersonally.

Julie McIsaac (45:37):
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (45:38):
They're impacting their humanity in a
way that I don't think you arewith an art form that is
produced, and out there, andseparate from the performer once
it's done.

Julie McIsaac (45:48):
Because the voices
Yeah, and, like, that comes downto really the specialty of being
they're connected to actualphysical beings who maybe the
review comes out on a Tuesday,then they need to go out on
stage Wednesday or Thursday andperform again. And, also, about

them being human (46:02):
I thought it quite amusing how Anne brought
our attention to the fact thatthe adjectives that are used to
describe people's voice and howhey're connected to foo
, like, "caramel" and "the whippd cream, sort of, coloratura"
it's the lexicon of opera decriptors it's very true! And
hat's sort of a fun game for peole to then go read reviews a
d, sort of, find your favoritesand send them to us. Your favo

(46:24):
ite food analogies to descibe singers voi an opera critic.
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (46:34):
Right? To be able to have this lexicon and
not just have a handful like,"the smoky," "the velvety," "the
honey-infused," but, you know,have a much broader palette.
And, also, understand that operais a live performance and you're

(46:56):
speaking about someone who theyaren't separate from their art;
the noise they're making, theway they move is them.

Julie McIsaac (47:07):
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (47:07):
And that there's a historical context
that's happening, that there's acultural context that's
happening.

Julie McIsaac (47:15):
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (47:15):
And how that all fits together while you're
talking about very real peoplewho are doing things that
they've trained very hard to do.

Julie McIsaac (47:25):
Yeah.

Robyn Grant-Moran (47:27):
So, to have someone who covers musical
theatre maybe isn't the rightperson for opera, unless they
are opera critics as well.

Julie McIsaac (47:39):
Yeah, I hear you.
Like, making a really good casefor someone having that level
of that close knowledge and allthat context around what it
takes, for example, to bring aopera production to the stage,
and all the subtlety and nuancearound that. And, so, this is
our moment of, like, giving outlove to those critics who take
the time to develop thatunderstanding and that deep,
deep context for the work that'shappening. And it makes me think

(48:02):
about how Anne got intocriticism through this love of

opera (48:05):
the fact that she was in this relationship with this
tenor and I'm assuming sheheard him sing all the time
and that she herself trained asa vocalist, as a singer. So,
coming from that place of loveand then evolving that into her
work as a critic, and thereforehaving having that space, sort
of, to love it but also to hateit, and to tell the truth about

(48:26):
hating it if that's how itstruck her.

Robyn Grant-Moran (48:30):
Well, and I think when we talk about us
critics hating things, we shouldbe looking at things being
successful or not successful.
Like, there are productions Ihave hated but they were
incredibly successful. Like,they set out to do the thing
they were trying to do but Ijust hated how it was done. And

(48:52):
that is not indicative of a goodor bad performance; that's
indicative of me not fittingwith the aesthetic of the
director. And that's aconversation that I don't think
is had about criticism enoughand, so, when talking about
contemporary criticism and I'mjust going to bring something up

(49:18):
that we haven't talked aboutthe democratization of it with,
like, "Why [read] critics wheneverybody can be online?"
Everybody can post in one way oranother their response, and
that's not invalid - thosethings are absolutely valid but

(49:38):
there's an expertise thathistorically, you know if we're
creating historical documentsfor people in the future to
understand or get value from it,they need to know the context in
which things were situatedbeyond "I like this" or "I

(49:59):
didn't like it."

Julie McIsaac (50:02):
The context.
Yeah, the greater context.

Robyn Grant-Moran (50:05):
Yeah. And yeah, I just felt that that was
something really worthmentioning.

Julie McIsaac (50:10):
No, it's great, because I'm just thinking about,
like, what is the value ofcriticism in the arts, and I
think you've just sort ofpointed out part of it to us in
the sense that years from now,hopefully someone can read this
documentation, these reviews andnot just get a sense of that
personal reviewer's experiencebut also the greater context in
which this work was happening.
And I think something that Itake away in terms of the value
of it is letting the readersknow that there's room for you

(50:32):
to insert yourself in thisconversation; that you have an
individual point of view andyour own unique experience and
that is part of theconversation, too.

Robyn Grant-Moran (50:41):
Take that space that Anne carves out and
use it because critics aren'tarbiters of taste; critics are a
good guide but not the be-alland end-all in any way
whatsoever. We're the beginningof a conversation; not the end
of it.

Julie McIsaac (51:02):
As we talk about criticism and explore what
voices are currently representedin that part of the arts
landscape, we wanted to mentionsomething that came up in our
chat with theatre critic KarenFricker about a project that
she's been working on.

Robyn Grant-Moran (51:14):
To tease our episode with Karen later on this
season, she's recently beeninvolved with a really
interesting project calledSeeding the Future sponsored by
Brock University and YorkUniversity. The schools ask
Black university-aged studentsfor their response to "21 Black
Futures," a powerful videoseries recently released by the
Obsidian Theatre Company inToronto and CBC Arts.

Julie McIsaac (51:37):
And, to catch up our listeners, 21 Black Futures
is an anthology of 21monodramas. The short one-person
plays were written by 21different Black playwrights,
directed by 21 different Blackdirectors, and performed by 21
different Black actors. And theresulting plays range from
satire to sci-fi, and theyfeature artists from all across

(51:57):
Canada.

Robyn Grant-Moran (51:59):
As Karen shared, the responses gathered
as part of Seeding the Futurehave been overwhelming. CBC Arts
has been posting these responsesto their site, we'll include
that link in our show notes forthis episode, along with the
link to 21 Black Futures. It'sdefinitely worth exploring both.

(52:25):
Thanks for joining us forEpisode 10. We'd love to hear
your questions or feedback oreven ideas for future episodes.

Julie McIsaac (52:32):
Either tag us on social @CanadianOpera or email
us at [e-mail]. You canalso send us a voice memo,
there's instructions for how todo that at coc.ca/KeyChange.

Robyn Grant-Moran (52:45):
We appreciate all the feedback we've received
so far and the reviews you'veleft on Apple Podcasts. And,
remember, if you're a COCsubscriber or member, you have
access to exclusive bonuscontent and extended interviews.

Julie McIsaac (52:58):
Next week, we'll be releasing a little bit more
of our fantastic chat with Annethat we couldn't quite fit into
today's episode.

Robyn Grant-Moran (53:04):
So, if you're a COC supporter, keep an eye out
for a link in your supporternewsletter on Thursdays.

Julie McIsaac (53:11):
And coming up on our next episode
up our audience mailbag for aspecial "ask us anything"
edition of Key Change.

Robyn Grant-Moran (53:18):
And it's been really cool to see the range of
inquiries that have rolled inover the past few weeks.

Julie McIsaac (53:23):
And, of course, if Robyn and I don't have a
ready answer for you, we'll bereaching out to a few friends
for their expertise. So, you'llcertainly want to tune in and
meet our mystery guests.

Robyn Grant-Moran (53:32):
Exciting times! I'm looking forward.
Be the first to find out aboutfree events and concerts from
the COC by signing up for ourmonthly eOpera newsletter at
coc.ca/eOpera.

Julie McIsaac (53:55):
Thank you to all of our supporters for making Key
Change possible. This week wewant to especially thank every
COC member, subscriber, anddonor for coming on this journey
with us as we explore new waysto share opera's unique power.

Robyn Grant-Moran (54:09):
So, to make sure you don't miss an episode,
subscribe to Key Change whereveryou get your podcasts.

Julie McIsaac (54:15):
Key Change is produced by the Canadian Opera
Company and hosted by RobynGrant-Moran and Julie McIsaac.

Robyn Grant-Moran (54:22):
To learn more about today's guests and see the
show notes, please visit ourwebsite at coc.ca/KeyChange.