[78-L] well, no one's ever mourned a critic

[Philip Carli]

"A tenor is not a man, but a disease" - Hans von Bülow.  Amongst my accompanying brethren we sometimes call certain singers "throats" when they're out of earshot.  I doubt I was an opera singer in a previous life...they're more likely to be reincarnated as chickens or reptiles, according to current critical opinion.  (Some have reached the chicken stage in this lifetime, like Natalie Dessay.)  But I love opera; it's just a bit like "France is wasted on the French" - which, strangely, may have been said by Shaw.
________________________________________
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com [78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] on behalf of Don Cox [doncox at enterprise.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2013 5:17 AM
To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
Subject: Re: [78-L] well, no one's ever mourned a critic

On 01/03/2013, Philip Carli wrote:

> I wouldn't dispute your own deriving entertainment from his work, but
> I would shy from personally extending it as a general premise. I've
> ploughed through those three volumes, as until recently there's been
> very little easily accessible collected late-Victorian music
> criticism, and found considerable viciousness and pretension rather
> than insight; if he hadn't become a successful playwright ("there's a
> very good word called 'dramatist'", wrote W. S. Gilbert with some
> irritation when he was knighted as a "playwright", but I won't apply
> it to Shaw) his criticism would be buried with Louis Engel's and James
> Davison's, and certainly not given the unmerited weight by historians
> that it has been. I'm not fond of Shaw in any medium except his 1928
> Movietone short film appearance. PC
>
Maybe you were an opera singer in an earlier reincarnation ?   ;-)

Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox at enterprise.net

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