Facing Cruelty and the Classical Music Critic

Now that Los Angeles has a world-class opera company, it is time for the Los Angeles Times to reconsider the critical coverage it provides to the classical music community.

This need was brought home to me when I saw a review of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera production of “Elektra” by Richard Strauss in the arts page of London’s Financial Times. It was distressing to compare the reasoned, intelligent review by Max Loppert with the sarcastic, mean-spirited writing of the Los Angeles Times’ senior music critic, Martin Bernheimer.

Both reviews were favorable--I am sure most Los Angeles Times readers would consider Bernheimer’s review almost a rave--but even in such a favorable review, Bernheimer managed to show contempt for the artists and creators of a production that Loppert called a “triumph which would do any company credit.”

Bernheimer demeaned David Pountney and John Bury, director and designer respectively, dismissing their innovations as “trendy gimmicks” that “did no serious harm” to the opera. Later, he offhandedly ridiculed one singer’s “helden-sputter.” Perhaps Los Angeles Times readers, accustomed to Bernheimer’s sense of humor, think that’s funny. It seems vicious to me. I am sure Bernheimer would say it was a favorable mention because he called it a “nice” helden-sputter.

It has been suggested that people don’t like Bernheimer because he is a “tough” critic with high standards. But many music critics are more demanding than he is. They are critical and perceptive, but at the same time they have respect and empathy for the gifted--and not so gifted--artists who spend their lives trying to move and inspire us. They want the best, but when they don’t get it, they don’t dismiss the performer as a charlatan.

Bernheimer, on the other hand, uses his typewriter like a dagger to lacerate artists and demonstrate his own clever way with words. He builds whole articles toward a climactic pun, barely suppressing his glee at being able to reach the coup de grace of a “better never than late” or some other witticism. Accompanying this cleverness is a contempt for talent and a cruelty toward vulnerable performers.

Indeed, in a series of reviews about a year ago, Bernheimer made “cruelty” his theme. He opened a review of the San Francisco Opera’s “Madama Butterfly” with the line, “Supertitles can be cruel.” Then our critic wrote that while the translation projected above the proscenium described the heroine as a “delicate flower,” Cio-Cio-San “fluttered in and looked like the whole greenhouse.” The supertitles are cruel?

A few days later, in a review of the San Francisco Opera’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” by Richard Strauss, Bernheimer said, “Strauss could be cruel” and then described the five leading singers as “a quintet that only a hearing-impaired optimist would call ideal.”

And in a review of the same opera performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, he tells of the “cruel” demands made by Strauss on the principal tenor, who “all but strangled on the dramatic outbursts.”

Yes, supertitles, tessituras and Strauss may be cruel, but unlike Bernheimer, they don’t mean it.

It is unfortunate Bernheimer won a Pulitzer, for now we seem to be stuck with him. Generating controversy through sarcasm is one matter, and reasoned, intelligent criticism is another. Los Angeles has reached world-class status in the arts and deserves world-class music critics.