To the editors:
After reading Dennis Polkow’s recent review of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring as performed by Chicago Opera Theater [April 14], I find myself with severe doubts regarding his qualifications to critique opera. I found a number of things with which to disagree–and only one of them was a purely subjective judgement.
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Item. Mr. Polkow holds that the snare drum got ahead of the rest of the orchestra in the beginning of the third act. Some acquaintanceship with the score would have shown him that the snare drum is supposed to be ahead of the rest of the orchestra at that point.
Item. Most damningly, Mr. Polkow demonstrates that he is not only unacquainted with the score at hand–he is even unacquainted with voice parts! Of the six singers he mentions by fach, he has mislabelled four: two mezzos, a baritone, and a bass. It is, frankly, unbelievable that anyone claiming any interest in vocal music could make such an astonishing mistake. Different kinds of voices, and the differing colors they supply, are, if you will, a fundamental building block of opera, and of every other kind of vocal music. No musically educated person could call a bass a baritone, or vice versa; for someone who is published as a professional critic to do it is simply grotesque.
Regarding the subject of voice types and labels, I very much subscribe to the idea that one’s voice type and its appropriate label should be based on God-given ability–where one’s voice is most comfortable and where it sounds the best–not the voice type that a composer indicates, which may or may not best describe the voice of a given person singing that role. How often has a baritone quite successfully carried off a role listed by a composer as bass? How often has a soprano successfully carried off a role intended for a mezzo- soprano? In fact, in Albert Herring Julia Parks sounded to my ears like a soprano, although she effectively carried off a role labeled by Britten as mezzo-soprano. It should also be remembered that a composer is sometimes inexact in his designation. Bartok, for example, labeled the role of Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle as soprano, although the role would be more aptly labeled mezzo-soprano, given its range and color.
