In Tuesday’s (5/22) New York Times, Daniel J. Wakin reports, “Opera News, 76 years old and one of the leading classical music magazines in the country, said on Monday that it would stop reviewing the Metropolitan Opera, a policy prompted by the Met’s dissatisfaction over negative critiques. The decision by the magazine, which is published by an organization that supports opera, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, but “which freely reviews companies around the world, troubles some opera experts. It is also the latest sign of sensitivity from the Met under its general manager, Peter Gelb, in the face of criticism over its productions. The move came after a review in April took aim at the Met’s new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle—a hallmark of Mr. Gelb’s tenure that has led to a firestorm—and after a top Opera News editor criticized the Met’s direction in a scathing essay in the May issue. Mr. Gelb said in an interview on Monday that the decision was made ‘in collaboration with the guild’ but that he never liked the idea that an organization created to support the Met had a publication passing judgment on its productions. … Citing a circulation of 100,000, the largest for a classical music magazine in the country, [Opera News] provides information on Met casts and broadcasts and glossy profiles of star singers.”
Posted May 22, 2012
