Metropolitan Opera Attacks Opera News

Met Guild publication to cease reviews of Met productions.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

(Ed. Note: This story has since been updated, with the Metropolitan Opera issuing a press release stating that Opera News will continue to review its performances. Read more about it here.)

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb has struck again, this time close to his own opera house.

According to a report by Daniel J. Wakin in the New York Times, Opera News, the 76-year old publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, announced today that they will no longer be reviewing Metropolitan Opera productions. The decision comes following the Met's "dissatisfaction" with the magazine's reviews of recent Met shows, most notably its controversial, expensive production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

A Blogger Walks the Plank

Met management fights to defend the Ring...from reporters.

by Paul Pelkonen

Women and bloggers first. Lego® sculpture by Sir Dillon.

Like the whirring, clanking planks that make up the set of its new multi-million dollar production of Wagner's Ring, Metropolitan Opera's general manager Peter Gelb has been spinning in recent weeks. His object: to draw audiences to the company's new production of the Ring Cycle in  following a scathing critique from Alex Ross in the pages of the New Yorker. The latest victim of the hype is WQXR blogger Olivia Giovetti.

Ms. Giovetti is one of the writers of OperaVore, the classical music station's blog covering the ups and downs of our fair city's opera companies. (It's kind of like this blog, without the humor and snappy color scheme.)

The Met general manager objected to Ms. Giovetti's recent post, Three Things We Learned From Peter Gelb Today. That post was then withdrawn from the WQXR website.

THIS ███████ CAN BE CENSORED.

Stop Internet censorship--or we kill this bird-catcher.

Baritone █████ Dore as Papageno in Mozart's Die  █████flöte.
Production from the Dortmund Opera. Photo by Menne.

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit  http://americancensorship.org.

███████ a ███████ and ███████████ ██████ of ██████'s █████, ████ the ████████████ █████, ████ René ████ as the █████ and a █████ lot of ████ ██████ ███████ █████ ██████ █████. █████ ██████████████ for all of ████ █████████ and █████ █████!

I'm censoring the above paragraph in protest of two bills that would censor the web. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP act would give our government and corporations the power to take down entire websites over infringing posts by users, endangering the Internet as we know it.

And yes, Virginia, that includes Blogger, the home of Superconductor.



To uncensor this post and ensure that internet censorship never becomes law in America contact your congressperson now. Thanks for doing this. Or all operas will soon be Lorin Maazel's 1984.
Paul Pelkonen,
Editor
Superconductor.