To the editor of the New Music Connoisseur:
Opera News has been at it again: its July issue carried an irresponsible review of the Albany Records release of my opera Burning Bright, based on the play by John Steinbeck. In smart-alecky language the review puts down the performers, the composer, the opera's libretto and music, Steinbeck's play, and the quality of the recording. All the while, though, it mauls the facts. For example, the statement that the opera follows the play closely is false. The libretto departs radically from the play, so it seems the reviewer had not read Steinbeck's original. The review's flip tone and unfounded opinions recall the distasteful ragging of Leonard Lehrman's reconstruction of the Sacco and Vanzetti opera, which appeared in an earlier issue of Opera News.
After first consulting a member of the magazine's Advisory Board and then a member of its Editorial Committee, I sent a list of errors and misstatements to the editor, Rudolph Rauch. I also expressed my dismay at the offensive tone of the review. His reply was in a similarly insulting vein. He defended both the content and style of the review, and charged that I objected because the review was not favorable.
Since I had never heard of the reviewer, Fred Cohn, and sought some reason for his evident bias, I asked F. P. Driscoll, the executive editor of Opera News, for some biographical information; he replied that it was against policy to give information on contributors (even though articles in Opera News regularly carry a paragraph describing the author) and asked that I request the information by writing to the reviewer in care of the magazine. I did so but received no reply. Thus, one cannot tell whether lack of professionalism or malice produced this supercilious diatribe.
Enclosed is a copy of my correspondence with the editor of Opera News. It includes reviews in Gramophone and the New Music Box, referred to in my first letter to Opera News in which I listed the errors in its review. Feel free to share this material, or any part of it, with your readers.
Best regards,
Frank Lewin
[Ed. note: As noted correctly by Mr. Lewin, this is not the first complaint by a composer against alleged "irresponsible" comments about an opera by a reviewer at Opera News to be mentioned on these pages. It is, however, the first such letter addressed specifically to NMC to be published. Our policy is that any reader has the right to submit a letter of this nature to us and that we will consider publishing it. To do so does not and should not imply that we are backing the position of the writer. We are simply opening our pages to a justifiable discussion of a work of new music and its reaction by the music community. We did not have space in the NMC to reprint the review by Mr. Cohn or the heated exchange of letters, so we put them here.]
Frank Lewin saw John Steinbeck's 1950 play Burning Bright in its New Haven tryout. A high-minded attempt to create a modern myth about male fertility, it quickly flopped on Broadway: even fifty years ago, its self-consciously poetic language must have seemed corny and pretentious. But Burning Bright haunted Lewin for the next four decades, and he finally finished this operatic adaptation in 1989. It had its première at Yale, where Lewin is a music professor, in 1993.
The libretto, by Lewin himself, stays close to the original play. Joe Saul, a middle-aged Everyman, longs for a child but is unable to sire one. His devoted wife, Mordeen, seduces Joe Saul's young assistant, Victor, in order to get pregnant. When Joe Saul discovers the ruse, he threatens to kill Victor, but once the baby is born, he accepts it as his own.
To emphasize the intended universality of his characters, Steinbeck set each of the play's three acts in a different milieu: they're circus people in the first act, farmers in the second, sea folk in the third. Lewin keeps this scheme, along with much of Steinbeck's dialogue, except that he sets the last scene of Act III, after the birth of the baby, on a a spaceship. His major change is giving the characters ethnic identities, depicted through accents and dialect, that change from act to act. Joe Saul's ethnicity, for instance, shifts from Middle Eastern to Scottish to Polynesian in the course of the three acts
It's a disastrous tactic. According to the CD booklet, the idea was to "[give] the characters strong individuality" and "establish an emotional rapport." But it has just the opposite effect, adding another layer of stiltedness to the proceedings. Lewin's spelled-out dialect is often appallingly awkward ("Y' pro'ly luv'im like a father"). Moreover, regional accents just aren't in the skill set of most classically trained singers, and the efforts of the present cast give off a distince whiff of community theater.
Lewin's eclectic musical vocabulary is the opera's most interesting element. The mode ranges from Coplandesque folksiness to Brittenesque dissonance. The first act is played out against a recording of bouncy, deliberately banal circus music, in stark contrast to subdued, harmonically ambiguous chords from the live orchestra. The last act, essentially atonal, ends with a final duet as diatonic as Der Rosenkavalier's. For all of his resourcefulness as a composer, though, Lewin hasn't solved the problem of breathing dramatic life into his tendentious material. Burning Bright's three acts move slowly. Despite the opera's pretensions to epic significance, its three-plus hours seem way out of proportion to the small-scale domestic situation it describes.
The recording, which was produced under Lewin's supervision, is boxy, sounding almost like a radio play - the voices closely miked and unresonant, the orchestra recessed. They're clearly in separate acoustical spaces, making it sound as if the singers were dubbed in over prerecorded orchestral tracks. The peculiar recorded balance makes it difficult to judge the work of conductor Rossen Milanov and his Sofia forces. It's hard to work up much enthusiasm for the singers themselves: the effort needed to sustain a variety of accents seems to prevent them from projecting words and music to expressive effect.
- Fred Cohn
A richly imagined setting of Steinbeck.
John Steinbeck wrote Burning Bright in 1950 as a play-novelette, a form he also employed for one of his most famous works, Of Mice and Men, which later became a successful opera by Carlisle Floyd. Among the theatergoers who saw Burning Bright in New Haven during its pre-Broadway tryout was Frank Lewin, at the time a composition student at the Yale School of Music, who was so taken with Steinbeck's experimental play that he decided to turn it into an opera. The play - produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, who later made a musical, Pipe Dream, out of Steinbeck's Cannery Row - closed after two weeks on Broadway in October 1950. The opera's gestation was long, finally receiving its première in 1993 at Yale University, where Lewin was then a composition faculty member. The oringal play has faded into relative obscurity, a fate that Lewin's opera doesn't deserve. This recording reveals his Burning Bright to be an affecting work of rich imagination.
The four-character opera closely follows Steinbeck's structure, although Lewin's libretto pares the language to its essentials to clarify characters and situations. In probing the theme of a man seeking to extend his heritage by becoming a parent, Steinbeck devised a story that chganged locales per act to reflect the universal message. Lewin's largely tonal score takes advantage of these settings - a Midwest circus; a farm in Pennsylvania; a ship moored in New York harbor - through music that embraces American and other folk idioms. The pacing is sometimes slow, but Lewin, with ample experience as a concert, film and television composer, has such a wide and sure command of vocal and instrumental colours that the piece holds the attention. The first act's layering of offstage circus music with the unfolding onstage drama is especially impressive. Elsewhere, Lewin provides rapturous and evocative writing that enables the characters to come across as flesh-and-blood figures.
The recording was supervised by the composer, which would seem to guarantee interpretive truth. While the performance has ample intensity and detail as conducted by Rossen Milanov (with the offstage circus music led by Otto-Werner Mueller), much of the singing is dry and variable of pitch. The finest contribution is made by tenor Rinde Eckert as Victor, the young man who supplies the seed for Mordeen, the impotent Joe Saul's wife, to become pregnant, unbeknownst to her much-older husband. Eckert inflects every line vividly. Baritone Lee Velta (Joe Saul) and soprano Sherry Overholt (Mordeen) are compelling artists who sometimes sound taxed. As Friend Ed, bass-baritone Scott Altman does dignified work. The playing of the New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia is responsive, though too often placed in the distance. Despite these shortcomings, Lewin's opera makes a powerful, poignant impact.
- Donald Rosenberg
It took 26 years from the time Frank Lewin took out an option to make John Steinbeck's novel Burning Bright into an opera for it to receive its première performance. The result is an opera that is as American in timbre and sound as John Steinbeck's literary voice. Lewin particularly focuses on the various ethnic and folk traditions that have become part and parcel of American culture.
- From Frank Lewin to Rudolph S. Rauch, 6/18/02
Dear Mr. Rauch:
Walter Lippincott suggested that I communicate with you in regard to the review of my opera Burning Bright which appeared in the July issue of Opera News. Professor Glenn Bowersock also intends to mention this matter to you.
The review contains misstatements and unfounded conclusions, as well as errors of fact and imprecise musical definitions.
• "The libretto by Lewin himself stays close to the original play." Not correct: from midpoint onward, the libretto departs radically from the play in both the action and motivation of its characters.
• "Lewin keeps this scheme [different locactions in each act] along with Steinbeck's dialogue..." Not correct: the language of the play is florid, whereas the opera uses simple, often colloquial language. "His major change is giving the characters ethnic identities..." The use of accents is not a major change. In fact, a note in the libretto suggests that the accents be applied lightly.
• "This is a disastrous tactic." The reviewer claims that the singers are not able to convey the dialects successfuly in this recording, likening their efforts to "a whiff of community theater." In fact, this recording followed the suggestion of the libretto: except for a handful of instances where dialect is used for dramatic--occasionally comic--effect, the singers have no ethnic inflections. (See comment in Music Box review.)
• "Lewin's spelled-out dialect is often appallingly awkward ("Y' pro'ly luv'im like a father"). This is not an instance of dialect, but merely the intentionally careless speech of the character.
• "The first act is played out against a recording of bouncy, deliberately banal circus music." This phrase is hardly a description of the waltzes and other slow numbers in the circus music: far from intending to be "banal," the music is often meant to convey nostalgia, especially when it quotes traditional circus compositions and Irish folk songs.
• "...in stark contrast to subdued, harmonically ambiguous chords from the live orchestra." Harmonic ambiguity--actualy bitonality--occurs in only one passage, where it portrays the conflict of the character with his present situation. Throughout the act, the orchestra carries out its normal operatic function of supporting the voices. In those sections where the circus music is heard, the interaction is similar to the interchange between on-stage English horn, orchestra and voice in the third act of Tristan.
• "The last act, essentially atonal..." Except for some passages where a momentary harmonic color abandons tonality, the opera is completely tonal. In fact, there are four set numbers in the third act each of which is in a tonality clearly confirmed by cadences.
• "...with a final duet as diatonic as Der Rosenkavalier's." Actually, the entire opera is diatonic, with the possible exception of the barbershop harmonies in Act I, which may be described as chromatic.
• "...Lewin hasn't solved the problem of breathing life into his tendentious material." The direct opposite has been experienced by listeners and is described in the attached review in Gramophone.
• "...sounding almost like a radio play." The impression of a radio play was precisely the objective of the recording: to create a drama issuing from the loudspeakers in a listener's home, without the need to read along in a libretto.
• "...making it sound as if the singers were dubbed in over previously recorded tracks." The "as if" denotes that the reviewer did not investigate just how this recording was created. His opinion on the balance of voice against orchestra is completely contrary to reactions from other listeners.
• "It's hard to work up much enthusiasm for the singers..." How the reviewer can fail to recognize the achievement of singers such as the virtuoso performer Rinde Eckert is hard to understand.
• It may be noted that, contrary to the statement in the review, I have not been on the faculty of the Yale School of Music for the past ten years.
I am dismayed that a review of this tone and caliber was published by Opera News.
Sincerely,
Frank Lewin
- From Rudolph S. Rauch to Frank Lewin, 6/21/02
Dear Professor Lewin,
I have read your letter objecting to the review of the recording of Burning Bright that we published in the July issue of Opera News. It seems to me that what you chiefly dislike is the reaction of the critic to the piece. Were I in your shoes, I would likely feel the same way. But the only point on which readers of good will must agree that we have erred is when we say that you are still on the faculty of the Yale school of muysic. This we can correct, and we will. The other points you raise are largely matters of opinion, and as we have asked our critic to give us his opinion, I do not see why we should reprove him for doing so.
Opera News has for years been a champion of new opera. Advocacy does not imply blanket approbation, though, and as long as our critics express their views clearly and with due respect, it seems to me that we ought not to interfere with them.
Thank you for your letter.
Sincerely,
Rudolph S. Rauch
- From Frank Lewin to Rudolph S. Rauch, 6/26/02
Dear Mr. Rauch:
Thank you for your letter of 6/21/02. There is no point in publishing a correction of the Yale misinformation unless you also address the other, more serious errors, detailed in my letter of 6/18/02.
I have written more than 25 reviews for your publication over the years. Checking the accuracy of facts was a given for me; when something negative needed reporting, I made certain that the language did not wound. The same standards were observed when other reviewers covered my own work; in fact, two stagings of Burning Bright received professional evaluations in Opera News.
You claim that the review of the recording is no more than the expression of a negative opinion. However, this review is neither informed nor civil. Instead of attempting to correct the misstatements in the review of the Burning Bright recording, I suggest you print a retraction of the entire article.
Yours,
Frank Lewin
- From Rudolph S. Rauch to Frank Lewin, 7/10/02
Dear Mr. Lewin,
I am sorry if the review of the recording of your opera wounded you. I truly am. Still, sorry as I am to learn that you have been wounded, I do not see it as the duty of a reviewer or an editor to edulcorate writing to the point of inoffensiveness. Further, with the exception of the question of your tenure at Yale, which I have told you we will correct, I have to say that the objections you raised in your first letter strike me as being closer to cavils than to demonstrations of error.
I cannot imagine retracting a review because the author of the work under review did not like what was said. It would be a ludicrous thing to do, and I wonder that the author of "more than 25 reviews for [this] publication" would conceive of such an idea.
Sincerely,
Rudolph S. Rauch
cc: Glen W. Bowersock
Walter H. Lippincott
- From Frank Lewin to Rudolph S. Rauch, 7/15/02
Dear Mr. Rauch:
Your mocking letter of 7/10/02 indicates that objectivity is not part of the present editorial policy at Opera News. You deliberately misundersand my objection to the review of Burning Bright: the writer vents opinions without first getting his facts straight; he uses a language of insults and wisecracks which is not appropriate for a professional report.
What is Opera News coming to? First the scurrilous diatribe against the Sacco and Vanzetti reconstruction, then this noisome review of Burning Bright--both of them nasty in tone while ignorant of their subjects. As long as such examples of gutter journalism are tolerated in its pages, Opera News is not likely to regain the respected position it once held.
Yours,
Frank Lewin
- From Rudolph S. Rauch to Frank Lewin, 7/22/02
Dear Mr. Lewin,
Thank you for your letter, which will be deposited in the growing file of your complaints about our treatment of the recording of your opera.
I do not think that it is useful for me to respond further to your communications on this subject. Your pride is evidently too wounded by our writer's inability to deliver a glowing review of the recording to allow for a balanced correspondence. Accordingly, this will be my last letter.
With best wishes, I am,
Sincerely,
Rudolph S. Rauch