the letter scene from Onegin

I'm going through old e-mails at work (a long and boring story that can be summed up as "re-org"; I may soon have all the time for blogging I could dream of) when I came across this one. It was published in the SF Chronicle in December 2004. The Chronicle reviewer had praised the opera's new, Pamela Rosenbergian production of Eugene Onegin and a woman from Walnut Creek (Ms. Peterson) had written in to say she agreed completely and had enjoyed the opera very much, whereupon Mr. Waldorf wrote a letter of elaborate and condescending castigation in which he referred to her and probably anyone else who liked the production as a "newbie" who would sadly never appreciate the true beauty of the art, which apparently consists of accurately reproducing elaborate party scenes among the nineteenth-century upper classes. I was really tired of all the attacks on Rosenberg for attempting to make opera drama, so I wrote a response. (Sending letters to the paper is what we did back in those primitive, pre-blog times.) In retrospect I would have omitted "ridiculous" from the first line, largely because it's implicit and makes my tone too contemptuous, but there you have it. Waldorf actually replied and basically contradicted everything he had said before, claiming that the voice is The Supreme Good and everything else in opera matters -- and I think this is the phrase he actually used -- "not a whit." I don't really agree with that either, but I decided enough was enough and thus the little adventure was concluded.

Someday I may post my "Letter of the Month" from Men's Fitness, for which they later sent me a free T-shirt and the DVD of Troy (love ya Brad!). Anyway, here goes:

I have just read Irving Waldorf's ridiculous letter condescending to Ms. Peterson for enjoying a production of Eugene Onegin that he disliked, apparently on the basis of inappropriate ball gowns. As a long-time opera goer and subscriber, I have seen this opera a number of times with different companies and this evocative and poetic production was easily the best. There will always be those who retreat to the opera for gross fantasies of spurious glamour, rather than for real drama about recognizable human beings. Fortunately Ms. Rosenberg has not catered to this set during her tenure, but has treated opera as a living, important art form. Ms. Peterson, I'm glad you enjoyed the production and whether it was your first or your hundredth, continue to enjoy yourself and ignore the pompous ignorance of those who think opera is about overdressed people warbling in fancy overstuffed chairs.