Louis Roney: A critic criticizes criticism

• Before I got the job writing this column, I depended upon making my living for some 35 years by singing opera in about a dozen countries in North America and Europe. People used to ask me how I learned all those operas in all those languages. My answer was, “First you buy the book, then you sit down and open it — you learn the first page, then the second page — and take it from there.”

I never bought an opera score until I had a job to sing that particular opera. The first opera I ever sang was “Tosca” (in Italian) with the New York Philharmonic. The first in Germany was “La Boheme,” in the Berlin State Opera in German. The first in the Paris Opera was “Carmen” in French, and the first in Italy was Cherubini’s “Gli Abenceragi” in Italian in Florence. I sang several operas in three languages (or four) if they paid me to relearn the text. For enough money I would have sung in Chinese!

•At the time of my career’s beginning, the opera conductor was the “king of the hill.” It was Toscanini’s “Otello,” and von Karajan’s “Ring.” We have lived until a time when the stage director has become the “king” in opera, the grabber of high critical acclaim. In New York Magazine, we read of how the Metropolitan Opera lavished $16 million on a new version of Wagner’s “Ring” including cute gimmicks of stagecraft and costuming that propel the accoutrements of Wagner’s overstuffed oeuvre. Not one penny of the $16 million went into the orchestra pit or the singers! In the present “Ring ” production, all of what is good — as well as outrageous — can be laid at the feet of the stage director, except for the most important thing of all: the singing, which makes or breaks the success of everything else operatic with every audience I’ve ever known. It is singing that draws people into the opera house, isn’t it? Who goes to opera for scenery, stage direction or conducting? I’ll wager that if a Pavarotti and Callas were announced in the cast of a bare-staged Verdi opera, the house would sell out!

• “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain — and most fools do.” — Dale Carnegie.

All of us are constant critics in our daily lives. We assess all that we buy, that we eat, that we drink, that we drive, that we wear — even that we marry. Criticism requires emphasis on goodness or inferiority. If you tell your wife that you think her new dress is pretty, you are a critic. Period. In this column I often write my opinions and am by definition a critic. As a person whose opinions are often published in a newspaper, I enjoy much more writing things that are complimentary rather than derogatory. I recently penned a positive critique of a musical performance, which my neighbor — who takes the daily newspaper — said was not liked so well by the daily’s critic. As a concert and opera singer for many years, I myself have long been the object of slings and arrows in the press after performances I sang.

So I know whereof I speak! If I am to write my opinion of a local performance, dear reader, I do not resort to the evaluation standards that I bring to highly skilled and highly paid visiting professionals.

Local performers must be encouraged to go on bettering themselves, and I feel are not the proper subjects for discouraging attacks. But, full-fledged pros are to be judged as what they purport themselves to be and are getting paid to be. The qualified critic will know what professionals should be. In the long run, audience response is the vital critique that determines the success or failure of an artist. The Grand Ole Opry is a big hit in the right venues, but it would not have survived if it depended on a classical music audience. There is filet mignon and then there are hotdogs, both most enjoyable. You won’t find filet mignon at a ball game. People of Catholic taste enjoy the widest range of qualities and are not ashamed that they find the time for Dixieland as well as Schubert quartets. If you enjoy it, buy it and applaud it! And remember: In the end, you are the only critic that counts.