Is there a critic in the house?

There was a time when critics were needed, were lauded even. Remember back to the olden days when people read newspapers and, in the big cities, discerning audiences often relied on critics to tell them if a show, opera, or concert was worthy of their attending? Many of these critics influenced box office receipts - a great review could save a season; a terrible review could plummet earned income and risk ruin for the producer or producing company.

There was also a time when I was lauded by critics. My favorites come from a Bluebeard’s Castle I conducted at Opera Festival of New Jersey about twenty years ago: New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini praised my “lithe pacing and vivid colors” while Pulitzer prize-winning London Financial Times critic Martin Bernheimer wrote “Hansen respected the delicate balance between passion and introspection. He made much of Bartok’s epic essay in psycho-sexual angst.” and David Patrick Stearns in the Philadelphia Inquirer noted “Hansen revealed another side of the score: stroke after stroke of musical characterization that’s often obscured by dazzling orchestral color, skillfully drawing the ear into the two characters’ hearts of darkness.” 

Obviously these were great critics. I mean, psycho-sexual angst and hearts of darkness!

I’ve also gotten my share of terrible reviews (obviously by uninformed critics LOL), been misquoted by the press, and had my name misspelled (Peter Henson was my fav). As I tell my students, if you believe the good reviews, you must believe the bad ones. Therefore, ignore them all – unless you need a press quote for your bio!

Don’t get me wrong, there’s been some great critics. The composer Virgil Thompson was a noted critic (the book to read is “Composer on the Aisle” by that brilliant critic cited above, Anthony Tommasini), Alex Ross (another book to read is “The Rest Is Noise”, simply the best book on the 20th century musical universe), and Anne Midgett (although there are some who point to a few “mean” reviews, I often agreed with her). It was the influential NY Times critic Harold C. Schoenberg who said, ''Criticism is only informed opinion. I write a piece that is a personal reaction based, hopefully, on a lot of years of study, background, scholarship and whatever intuition I have. It's not a critic's job to be right or wrong; it's his job to express an opinion in readable English.''

Apologies to any non-English, non-male critics…

When I told my wife the title to this article, “Is there a critic in the house?”, she thought I had asked “Is there a cricket in the house?” We laughed.

Yet, like a lone cricket chirping away in a quiet room, a critic in the house can be sort of annoying. Not for anyone in the audience during the actual performance, but for the performers who are informed of a critic’s presence beforehand or for a nervous producer wondering if the reviews will “pan” the show or lead to a run at the box office, the knowledge that a critic is going to chirp their thoughts after the show from an unseen location you can’t find, is very unnerving. A performer’s internal monologue can be hijacked with nerves or worry (the last time so-and-so heard me they hated/loved me) and I understand, from first-hand experience, how knowing a Tommasini is in the house can add a wee bit more sweat to my pits.

Broadway still relies on these reviews. A terrific show gets panned and it’ll close the next day, or soon thereafter. The influence of reviews on audiences and shows alike is well documented by anecdotes. I produced a very boring opera (in my opinion) that on opening night was lightly attended and politely applauded. Then this amazing review came out the next day, “run to see this show” (I’m paraphrasing) and we sold out the run. The performances got better as there was more feedback from the audience - laughter, riotous applause, standing ovations.

David Hyde Pierce talks about how a bad review shut down a show (and even changed the audience reactions) in this interview: https://youtu.be/9jU8xcYrBcw?si=TE7bRxREjYGVBzzG  (If you don’t want to go to the video… Basically, during previews the audiences were laughing hysterically, then came a terrible review after opening night and that next performance audiences sat in silence. The show closed two weeks later.)

So, critics can wield a big trophy or an axe. For operas, I’ve been wondering for decades why music critics were sent to review operas instead of theatre critics. I’ve asked around. Often I get the “but opera is about the singing” (no it’s not, that’s called a recital and even then, it’s about the singing and the pianist.) I’ve been told that some theatre critics are “tone deaf”, or not “educated enough” to apply their informed opinions to opera. Is opera that convoluted? Is opera so difficult to penetrate from a musical standpoint? Is opera singing so foreign that someone can’t judge it who might also judge musical theatre? I’d love for theatre critics to come and take a critical eye to the latest libretto being given a production, or have them turn their informed opinions to how the costume plot supported the director’s choices of movement, or any such thing that music critics seldom if ever even touch upon (let alone can see.) So why do music critics, adept at recital and/or concert repertoire, review the opera? 

Often in reviews, the conductors are ignored or hardly mentioned (“so-and-so kept things together”). I think it is because they aren’t on a podium. Just read any orchestral review and there are sometimes paragraphs about the gestures, how they communicated, how those things affected the music, and still to this day if it’s a women conductor, what they might have worn (can that stop please?!) Being down in the pit renders a conductor invisible and so, for many critics, this renders their informed opinion useless. For you see, I believe they don’t really know what’s going on down there unless they can see the arms and gestures of the conductors. 

But these critics CAN see what’s on the stage, so that gets reviewed. Costumes were colorful, or cheap looking, sets were spectacular or drab, singers acted well, were funny, overacted, or were histrionic. The lighting design seldom gets a mention (and lighting is the crucial component in opera because it affects everything, from the color palette of the costumes, makeup, hair and set painting down to whether a singer can see the conductor.) Directors, the ones actually responsible for putting all those visual elements together, often get ignored or barely mentioned (“moved the singers well”). Many times, singers get criticized for acting choices they did not make - hello, it was the director! As well, I’ve often seen poor reviews for a stage director while everyone performing got rave reviews - for their acting and movement! Again, it was probably a director responsible. 

Recently, a local critic reviewed a student performance of an opera I produced (to be clear, I did not conduct it or direct it). It goes without saying that some critics simply can’t tell the difference between professional and student productions. In Montreal, my program once received a review that was unbelievably positive and even compared us to the multi-million dollar L’opéra de Montreal (as in, our show was just as good as anything recently on the OdM’s stage; first off, no it wasn’t and secondly why write that?!) We’ve also received a handful of terrible reviews, and many mixed reviews. But most reviews for students – either when mentioned too negatively, or not mentioned at all – can be detrimental and often hurtful to training young singers. It teaches them to be careful and to worry about what others might think of their choices just when we are trying to get them to try to make choices. 

We have a policy of not posting reviews - good or bad - because someone almost always either gets left out of the accolades, or a student gets targeted publicly for a bad performance, either by name or by innuendo. This latest review (not gonna link it, not gonna quote it) was so problematic on so many levels. Pointing out who among the students gave wonderful performances is terrific. Thanks. But writing that some of the singers in smaller roles need to be given an honest talking to by their voice teachers (intimating that they’re not good enough to pursue a career in singing) stepped over a line. And it was an ignorant thing to write.

Why ignorant?

Because those of us who work with young singers (from undergraduates through young artists to even established emerging stars) know that THINGS CHANGE DYNAMICALLY from week to week, month to month, and year to year. We understand that young singers need time and experience in order to develop onstage skills. So they need to be onstage, even if they're not ready to debut Tosca.

Most of us in the biz have worked with astonishing young talents, yet seen many of them falter. I have worked with questionable talent and seen them, often through sheer willpower, have huge careers. My roommate in my undergraduate school was told by many judgmental voice teachers (often at voice competitions) that if they kept singing that way, they’d ruin their voice. Many who knew them in their first few years might have discounted their talent. I'd be willing to bet that this Montreal critic probably would have lumped them into needing an honest talk because their voice was not put together when they were first on the stage. But they learned to sing, applied a work ethic beyond their peers, and developed by being given opportunities to be on the operatic stage. It is a process.  I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to witness their Met debut standing on that stage taking their bow!

With all that said, I think I should ask some questions about criticism. 

Is criticism, for criticism’s sake, important to classical music? If so, why? When? How? At what point? Has the time come to think of new ways of criticizing/reviewing? I’d be interested in knowing others’ thoughts.

But before I leave this subject, I’d like to write about the real critics - the teachers, coaches, conductors, directors, gatekeepers (the artistic administrators, directors of programs, and adjudicators) - who are the most influential critics when it comes time to teach and prepare young singers for a career.

Why can’t we sit and enjoy a singer doing something that only a microscopic fraction of the world’s population attempts to do, without judging them at the same time? When I write “judging”, I mean observing what is not quite right, what needs work, or what is wrong. Perhaps the judgement (or the grade) should happen earlier in the process so these young singers can walk onto the stage and be a lot more free to perform, and gosh perhaps be more free to entertain.

Why take the parts of an opera singer’s performance apart in order to judge them better? Is it necessary to do so while they perform? Why not see the whole first, discuss that, then get down to details? Why start with what's not quite right?

How integral to training is constant, unceasing, glaring judgement? 

It’s totally cool to think “beautiful voice, but their top is tight” and another thing to tell the singer that they need to “fix their top”. Or to judge a lack of getting through a long phrase and have that turn into a takedown of their entire support system. Or to see some tension in a jaw and think that what will help will be to tell them that their jaw is tight, so be less tight. 

Has anyone read “The Inner Game of Tennis”? Pointing out what’s wrong often causes it to continue or get worse. The mind is a huge part of being a performer and when the mind is filled with “don’ts” instead of tangible things to “do”, many do not perform optimally, and many do not get better technically because they’re singing to fix something.

Speaking of fixing - why the need to "fix" singers? Why insist that teaching a singer is about working on their weaknesses? Are these broken things that need fixing? Why do singers even refer to themselves as needing to be fixed? No one is a donut - there isn't a huge hole in the middle of a young artist that needs to be covered up with frosting, glaze, or sprinkles so that others won't notice said hole. I worry too many coachings and lessons are about these coverups and not enough are about making sure the ingredients and processes needed are better nurtured, cared for, understood. There's a craft to creating a donut, and certainly there's a LOT of craft needed to nurture a young singer.

So how about focusing on positive points? Those positive habits and talents are probably what got the singer into said program or cast in said role. Teaching is not just pointing out what the problems are. It should also be pointing out what the great things are.

Okay, yes, I hear the backlash even as I write these sentences. Yes, everyone needs to work on stuff. That’s not my point. Continue the work, of course. But a sole concentration on what’s wrong will ignore what’s right and that part of a singer must also be nurtured!

But the same goes for what learning is! This notion is hard for young musicians to hear, let alone understand fully. I’ve oft been told that I should be “more critical” or that the coaching was “too positive” (that comment was fun, because I was digging into details and I thought I’d been too hard on them!). Singers especially confuse learning and good teaching with needing to be in a room with someone who is going to fix them, someone who will turn them into a real artist, someone who will make them better, some magical being who will yada yada yada.

Yes, we need critical thinking. Yes, we need objective criticism. Yes, we need to be judgmental when it comes to picking a winner or who is going to sing Fiordiligi. Yes, all of us musicians need our critical minds at play, 90% of the time. It’s about balance. Learning to turn off the inner critic so that the instinctive performer has a chance to dance on the stage without fear.

A final parting idea:

Today’s opera world does not need some critic telling audiences to shut up and behave because their cheering was disturbing the Heilige Kunst present in the Hallowed Halls of Opera. That’s just Victorian colonialism and classicism turned into pretentious bullshit. We don’t need that in today’s worrisome climate of low ticket sales. The last thing we need is to ostracize today’s new opera going audiences who already might feel uncomfortable in these strange spaces (what to wear, when to clap, etc.). 

How lucky and wondrous was it to have a big audience yelling and whistling and being boisterous at a comic opera telling the story of Cinderella to the (to-my-ears) kinda boring Massenet score (I can tolerate only so many diminished chords going nowhere)? I was thrilled others were having a good ol' time! The days of sitting in silence are over. If one needs abject obeisance for the classical clergy to worship a dead composer, I’d suggest investing in a home entertainment system. 

But FFS, do not judge audiences for enjoying themselves and sharing that emotion in public. That space is not just yours, it is a communal space and nowadays we need that space to be filled with joy, cheers, whistles, bravos, and standing ovations. Audiences need to feel they belong, so we need to pivot and be less uptight.

(And that goes for those of us responsible for the care and nurturing of young singers!)