Concerning "The Crucible," by Robert Ward, Walter Meyer wrote:

>As for the music otherwise, it seemed unobtrusively appropriate, like well
>written film music.  Except for Tituba's song (sung by Annette Daniels),
>and a hymn in the first act, all of the words could have been spoken as
>well as sung as far as I was concerned.  The work simply did not seem
>musical to me.

I find that to be true of many contemporary operas I have heard, and it
seems we have an ally in the New York Times critic K. Robert Schwarz, who
had a piece in Sunday's Times about the "neo-Romantic" composer Lowell
Liebermann's new opera, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Schwarz was quite
enthusiastic about this work, which will be given its American premiere
next Friday in Milwaukee.  He writes:

"Never ashamed to revel in hummable tunes, Mr. Liebermann presents vocal
lines of soaring, expansive lyricism.  He mostly shuns recitative and
avoids the generic, colorless parlando that defaces so many American
operas.  The stage seems occupied by flesh-and-blood characters, not
cardboard cutouts."

Perhaps Mr. Meyer will find this opera more to his liking. If yer gonna
write an opera, might's well go whole hog and write an *opera,* says I.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]