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]