Another anti-culture rant

[Mashinka]

The Guardian has sent yet another of its seemingly brain-dead moronic contributors (of whom the paper seems to have an endlessly large supply) to the opera: not just once but four times!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/sep/0...almusicandopera

If the woman at Glyndebourne's comment about taking a photo is genuine, I'd be very surprised; though I'll concede that press photographers can be intrusive and disrespectful when going about their work.

What angers me about this piece is that it is part of a concerted campaign from the British press to heap scorn on anything that isn't pop culture: mercifully there is no reference to government subsidies (Glyndebourne of course doesn't receive any) but any day now there will be an article appearing somewhere questioning the wisdom of supporting the arts in a time of financial restraint. It's all so predictable.

Am I the only one sick to the back teeth at this kind of thing?

[diane]

You are probably not the only one to feel sick about this sort of thing. ;-)

I was unaware of a concerted campaign by the British press to be scornfull to anything that is not pop-culture, but I do not live in Britain. It also happens in other places, alas.

It is so easy to scorn anything one does not understand or just has not grown up with.

Things take time; someone hearing rock-n'-roll for the first time may not like that, either.

The debate about supporting arts is an old one, and will probably never end.

-sigh-

-d-

[GoCoyote!]

Yes that was awful, bland, childish writing. Actually a child would be far more likely to write something interesting, honest, innocently insightful about their brand new and privileged (not in the class sense) experience of seeing world class live opera than this load of self centered blatherings. Her focus, and entire reason for writing (and possibly being) it appears, is to labour the point of just how much she is a 'cheap rosé swigging' culturally free spirited 'one of us' .... (but obviously how much more cool/ cute/ endearing she is than even that because she also gets to go to lots of operas and is bored by it). It is like reading some grotesque Private Eye parody of this very kind of vacuous and giggly 'journalism'.

The article is also inverted snobbery from start to finish. Imagine if it was re-written the other way round: I'm an Opera Buff - Get Me Out of Here! ... well-to-do lady goes to rock gigs/ festivals (having been only once ten years before) and finds the music repetitive, boring and not to her taste and the whole scene frightfully lower class and attended by rude, unsavoury people (some of which jostled her at the bar!) all smelling of lager and fags ....

All in all it's such a lazy, unimaginative, uninspiring way to present the opera, the ROH and the audience. I like the comment about Patti Smith raving about Madame Butterfly though. Shame the Guardian couldn't pay her to write an article explaining her experiences of Opera and why she might recommend it to others .... and leave Laura Barton to write about herself in her own private bedside journal.

[bart]

Such a bizarre jouralistic assigment. It's as though the paper sent me, for example, to a plumbing supply convention. (My qualification is that I have used these products before.) They urge me to be withering, pay me by the word (the more words, the more $$$), and require me to turn off completely both my sense of humor and my willingness to learn.

Does anyone in Britain actually care whether this woman likes opera or not?

[papeetepatrick]

Does anyone in Britain actually care whether this woman likes opera or not?

Of course not, it's just a feature assigned to someone precisely because of her near-illiteracy, but at least this happened:

"There is one exception: the woman who glares at us as the photographer takes my picture on the lawn. "That's so not Glyndebourne!" she hisses. "

That is the kind of haughtiness that becomes necessary for this kind of urchin, who only wanted to 'soil' things. So cool she had been, and how boring and unimaginative.

Her attempts to be 'magnanimous' to some of the works, as opposed to the obviously tedious ones were especially trying. How wonderful that we can be privy to her connoisseurship of opera and cheap beer. This sort of reverse noblesse oblige she's managed to sustain throughout the whole hideous little gig.

May she please read my review of her.

[dirac]

Thank you for posting the link to this item, Mashinka. I have as little use for this sort of thing as anyone else posting here, although I do remember in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll that the mainstream press used regularly to trundle out some uncomprehending classical music critic or fan to shout “Bah! Humbug! Don’t understand a word of it!”

[sidwich]

Such a bizarre jouralistic assigment.

I agree. The paper sends out its most "hardcore" rock journalist on the assignment?

I think her opinion is legitimate, though. If the art form of opera doesn't speak to her, it doesn't speak to her anymore than hip hop may speak to some Verdi afficionadoes.

Personally, although I adore much music that originates in opera, I don't enjoy the form at all. After an act or two, I'm usually either nodding off or heading for the exit.

[SandyMcKean]

I can't see getting upset about this article. I found the article rather good in that it clearly expresses a relevant point-of-view (that of a rock-n-roll fan listening to opera). It seemed quite an honest article to me. I wonder what someone who loves opera but dislikes rock-n-roll would say if they attended a crunge band concert and were this honest in an article?

The young (I assume) lady (I assume) doesn't like opera......so what? It took me 30 years to truly love opera -- now I go to all productions in a Seattle season, and always attend 2 performances of the same opera, and most of the time 3 or 4 performances of each opera. That didn't happen overnight. Perhaps she will learn to love opera in time......at least she attended.

Her conclusion was:

"It is the fact that I just cannot find a friend in this music. I can see it is beautiful. I can tell they are singing magnificently, but it stirs nothing in my belly, conjures nothing in my heart. It carries for me none of the fire, the spine-tingling, stomach-flipping, bone-chilling lifeblood of rock'n'roll."

That doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

I have 2 related criticisms however. She never owns up to the possibility that there is more to opera than she can currently understand (which there must be since so many folks love it and spent big bucks to see/hear it). And she is extremely judgmental about other audience members without ever, it seems, considering the possiblity that her dislike of other audience members may be more her problem than their problem (The fact that she couldn't wait to get back to her "own kind" in her own "comfort environment" ought to have been a hint to her that the former is more likely than the latter.)

I can't imagine why anyone would be offended by an article like this. It's at least an honest look -- if a very narrow look. Frankly, if I feel anything, I feel sorry for her that she is not allowing herself to see/hear the shear beauty that is opera.

[papeetepatrick]

It's not offensive in terms of opinion, Sandy, it's a stupid feature, as sidwich and others pointed out 'a bizarre journalistic assignment.' It is not interesting, because it only exposes her ignorance; it does not tell you anything about opera itself. And it's not the same as if a classically-oriented opera person, etc., went to hip-hop or grunge: They'd be able to point out what they heard and describe it accurately. She can't and she doesn't. When she says 'I can see that it is beautiful', she cannot really. If I could see hip-hop is beautiful, it would do something for me, and one of the filthiest of all, Dr. Dre, has sometimes moved me musically because of his talent, and I don't mind the obscene words even if I don't want to dwell on them. She does not see any importance in history or tradition in any sense, otherwise she wouldn't ask idiotic things like 'why do they keep repeating themselves' in 'Figaro.' She leaves out all importance in learning about difficult things. An adventurer trained in classical music and opera who was given an assignment to write about rap and hip-hop would know how to blend in as much as possible, if only because that would be necessary in some of those venues for safety.

What would have been a feature worth publishing would have been a rock fan who was open to the new experience and not some brat who they should have known to begin with was just going to write from a reverse-condescending point of view. She was even paid for this crap, I guess. That she has those opinions is not offensive, since they are common ones in every sense of the word. But that it would be published in a journal like the Guardian is somewhat offensive, because it is not professional.

It does point out that high and low art still have quite a divide, and that democracy in terms of judgment may not apply. Mashinka calls it anti-culture, which may not quite work since you're stuck with the 'culture' in 'pop culture', but it is definitely anti-intellectual--and that's where the classical musician exploring pop and rock has something over someone like this who makes it sound like she was displaying some sort of largesse to the worlds of classical music and opera.

[GoCoyote!]

.......I think her opinion is legitimate, though. If the art form of opera doesn't speak to her, it doesn't speak to her anymore than hip hop may speak to some Verdi afficionadoes......

Her opinion might be a legitimate one but I don't think it is enough of an opinion to deserve any column space. It is not an opinion worth paying for. It could be if she had said something - anything - remotely interesting / meaningful/ of substance about the actual experience of seeing a (world class, full production of) an opera live, perhaps with the refreshing insight of an 'ignorant' non opera goer who is supposedly more used to watching rock bands. But instead we get an endless stream of anecdotal wittering and mind numbing mini-dramas to hold our attention, all centered around the only subject she seems qualified/ interested in talking about: herself.

Maybe this article is more annoying to those already saturated with this kind of vapid journalistic style which is now so common in the UK. To me it all sounds like it is being written by the same ghastly person- LOL!

The truth is anyone can write in this style about just about anything - because all you have to do is disengage the higher functions of your brain and start typing about yourself - look it's easy! (Maybe someone from the UK can score me for authenticity here....)

Next week: A self confessed urbanite walks the famous and historic Pennine Way - "'I'm a city gal - get me out of here!' ... usually at this time on a Saturday I am having coffee with my friends and planning our assault on London's trendiest boutiques. Instead I find myself on a windswept muddy track in the North of England with sore feet, dressed in the most unbecoming ensemble of outdoorwear imaginable (bought hastily the day before). It is raining and my legs are tired. I think of my friends back home, sipping cappuccinos..... perhaps eating a warm chicken salad - I wonder how I ever got talked into this. Walking is boring, that's why we invented taxis. I shout at my photographer that I want to go home, he rolls his eyes and says nothing, as if he knows better than to. This is an one of England's most ancient pathways I have been told by our guide Steve, a compact, rugged man of few words, who seems oblivious to the rain and probably walks a hundred miles every day. He is waiting for us up ahead looking somewhat impatient. Suddenly I feel like I'm on a school geography trip .... etc etc etc

[diane]

So funny, CoCoyote!

Thanks for the laugh.

I suppose what bothers me most is that - this type of article gets published (with its dearth of real information, sadly), and that there appears to be a very strong leaning toward anti-intellectualism, yes, even towards proud-ignorance in society in general and echoed in the press.

That is scary.

The world needs thinkers and ponderers - more than ever before, and not only in the area of music-critics.

It appears that non-thinkers are poised to take over (slightly exaggerating here...), and the results will not be positive.

-d-

[Mel Johnson]

If I were running the music desk, or even the features desk, I'd want a writer with not much of a familiarity with opera to see more accessible shows. Three out of four of them are not beginner material.

[Mashinka]

GoCoyote! You get ten out of ten for that wonderful example of the Art of a Guardian Features Writer.

A Google search on Ms Laura Barton reveals that she writes regularly in the ‘culture’ section of the Guardian, primarily on the subjects of pop music, down-market TV and films and er… kittens. She is the kind of young and attractive person so necessary to the Guardian to maintain its youthful image as it is essential to have a portrait of a good-looker to accompany their articles; good journalism isn’t on the job description. Had you seen the hard copy of yesterday’s Guardian you would have had the pleasure of seeing of Ms Barton looking extremely fetching in her long gown posing on the lawn in front of the Glyndebourne manor house, a great pity that picture wasn’t published on line. And how very generous of the Guardian to have bought or hired such a lovely dress for Ms B. as I can’t imagine that such a lover of “cheap beer and loud rock” could possibly own such a garment herself.

I’ve now re-read the offending article and have spotted a couple of very odd things. When she goes to The Rakes Progress at Covent Garden, Ms B. makes reference to the foyer being “flooded with people in evening dress”: Evening dress? at Covent Garden? That’s a new one on me. Unless that specific performance were designated a gala or something, the likelihood of spotting someone in evening dress is very slight indeed as unlike the London pubs that are clearly the lady’s natural habitat which frequently ban people from entry when wearing jeans and/or trainers, the Opera House operates no dress code whatsoever.

Then there is Ms Barton’s un-named pal who is sympathetic to opera and goes to The Marriage of Figaro because “He, however, is enthusiastic, because he wants to hear the famous "Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!" passage.” Well, as the opera performed wasn’t The Barber of Seville, I imagine that friend was more than a bit disappointed if that was all he had gone to hear. Does Ms B. mention that? No, she doesn’t. I would have thought she would made a complaint under the ‘Trades Description Act’ at seeing an opera with Figaro in the title that didn’t feature the eponymous song, but strangely the friend’s reactions to that aren’t even mentioned.

The Glyndebourne incident: on Monday I dozed off in front of the telly and when I woke up I found myself watching a rather dire comedy film about ancient Rome. One bit was rather good though with an ancient Briton trading insults with an ancient Scot. The Scot issued a curse along the lines of ‘may your country be forever cursed by inflexible class barriers and may you always be ruled by ponces’. Yes, class barriers still remain alive and well and I will admit that I was foolishly put off for years from visiting Glyndebourne because of its elitist image. I’ll not deny that a fair number of toffs make up much of the core clientele at Glyndebourne, but they clearly love their opera and are a knowledgeable and generous audience – and far less prejudiced than the audience at Covent Garden.

For those unfamiliar with Glyndebourne, it is a very modern opera house adjacent to a beautiful old manor house situated in the midst of the South Downs, a range of hills just above the south coast. The grounds are vast with gardens, sweeping lawns, a lake and flocks of sheep providing their own rather unique muzak in the distance. One of the intervals of the opera is stretched out so that patrons can enjoy this rustic idyll by picnicking on the lawns and if it is a fine night it’s not unknown for them to linger in the grounds to enjoy the country setting while enjoying a final glass of wine or two. However Glyndebourne remains someone’s home and the founder John Christie asked that visitors wear evening dress and this tradition has remained to this day.

Here is the Glyndebourne web site and I would like you to scroll down to ‘Share your photos’ where people are positively encouraged to take photographs of their memorable day (notice the popularity of the sheep).

http://www.glyndebourne.com

How very convenient for Ms Barton that she was able to encounter the one ugly character to visit Glyndebourne in the entire season. Just a moment though, what did that woman say, (sorry hiss) again?

That's so not Glyndebourne!

If there is one thing those Glyndebourne toffs don’t do, it’s speak ungrammatical English. The only people that would speak that poorly would be……now let me think ………..Guardian rock chicks!

Frankly I don’t think anyone said anything of the kind, indeed I put it to you, members of the jury, that pretty much all of this piece was fabricated and the people that Ms Barton found herself rubbing shoulders with at the opera were probably rather nice, but that wouldn’t fit in with the piece she intended to write, so she invented incidents that would illustrate her own noxious prejudices.

I think people must attend opera in the same way they introduce roughage to their diet - because they ought to, rather than because they want to.

And I think people write fatuous articles for the Guardian because they are handsomely paid to do so.

[Ray]

I like this quote: "I find it extremely annoying that they keep repeating everything." AS IF pop music doesn't use repetition of both words and musical motifs!

[Leigh Witchel]

To show that the Guardian can do a better job at this -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/20...gby.castaignede

Castaignede, a former rugby player and now a sports columnist for the Guardian is a good deal more open. It's interesting to watch him because he links what he sees to his own experience a rugby player - something obvious for anyone new to something but honestly still surprising to me whenever I see it because of where the new experiences come from.

[papeetepatrick]

That's so not Glyndebourne!

If there is one thing those Glyndebourne toffs don’t do, it’s speak ungrammatical English. The only people that would speak that poorly would be……now let me think ………..Guardian rock chicks!

Frankly I don’t think anyone said anything of the kind, indeed I put it to you, members of the jury, that pretty much all of this piece was fabricated and the people that Ms Barton found herself rubbing shoulders with at the opera were probably rather nice, but that wouldn’t fit in with the piece she intended to write, so she invented incidents that would illustrate her own noxious prejudices.

There's be some 'Glyndebourne toffs' young enough to occasionally use pop-language, which would be said ''That's sooooooo not Glyndebourne' and you hear everywhere sleazily by now. With the attitude of low-cool chic Ms. Barton was exuding from every pore, I don't see why this is an ugly incident, except it's not so much ungrammatical as just trendy talk (incidentally, it's also possible that this 'toff' knew what s/he was doing, and was parodying this kind of talk and pegging Ms. Barton). I agree though, that it's unlikely that anyone would have even said 'That's just not what we want at Glyndebourne', or other versions. But not impossible, of course; toffs say sharp things, and in this case I just think it was well-earned. Her attitude is repulsive, she was making no serious effort to enter in something that should have been the objective of someone new to opera. The article is successful as a document of her failure to enter into opera, while always holding up proletarian symbols self-righteously.

I think people must attend opera in the same way they introduce roughage to their diet - because they ought to, rather than because they want to.

Yes, that was the killer remark, the cool paean to junk food always included. God forbid someone should do anything that they 'ought to', by the way, even though opera for those of us totally involved with it is hardly something enforced. You fell asleep by the telly, which I might do too, but right now I am writing about this bimbo while listening to Flagstad's 1937 recording with Fritz Reiner of Der Fliegende Hollander, and it is not impossible that there are other things I should be doing instead! There is nothing I'd rather hear than Flagstad pre-war. I am not very concerned if I love this 'instinctively', or 'learned how to like it' due to too much education or somthing or other.

And I think people write fatuous articles for the Guardian because they are handsomely paid to do so.

Like very much the use of the word 'fatuous' for this, because it's a word she'd use (if she uses it) for all the opera buffs were she to have tea with them. But yes, it is a fatuous piec.

I like this quote: "I find it extremely annoying that they keep repeating everything." AS IF pop music doesn't use repetition of both words and musical motifs!

And some of these repeat only a single one of these for an entire song, which never occurs in Figaro. I heard something by The Dresden Dolls which is mostly one tritone arpeggio with diminished triad combined with a a dminished 7th chord an octave higher. Then there are all those drone pieces that are becoming more and more popular and more and more morbid.

I also like this: "to see Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, and Samson by Handel. Buxton is a gorgeous place and the crowd far less annoying. I have been listening to Madame Butterfly repeatedly, to accustom myself to the style of singing. It seems to be paying off: I enjoy Dido and Aeneas far more than I expect. Samson, though, is a struggle."

I think we deserve a titter at her expense, since she's so 'cool-superior' to all this pretentious, over-produced thing. So I think I will listen to the old Mexico City version of 'Aida' with Callas/DelMonaco to accustom myself to a production of Schoenberg's 'Moses and Aaron' I'll be seeing soon. That way I'll accustom myself to the style of singing.

[sandik]

To show that the Guardian can do a better job at this -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/20...gby.castaignede

Castaignede, a former rugby player and now a sports columnist for the Guardian is a good deal more open. It's interesting to watch him because he links what he sees to his own experience a rugby player - something obvious for anyone new to something but honestly still surprising to me whenever I see it because of where the new experiences come from.

Leigh, thanks so much for the link -- I would have missed this otherwise.

I loved the moment when he said that it was good to explore different things. For me, that's at the heart of talking to people outside the mainstream arts audience, the idea that they might want to have this new experience.

And I truly appreciated his observations about the complexity of the production -- that behind the performers on stage (just like his experience as an athlete on the field) there are many people working to make the whole operation go.

[Leigh Witchel]

Another funny counterpoint to Barton's carping about the audience is the happy man shaking Castaignede's hand and talking about what an excellent rugby player he was. Typical opera house snob.

To expand on what I said earlier about Castaignede using prior experiences to understand the current one; what's interesting is that Barton does the same thing - take her prior experiences to relate to what's happening to her currently - only instead of helping her to translate, it blocks her. I wonder if she had written on anything else - sports for instance, rather than a different form of music, if she would have had less difficulty. She seemed so invested in her position. It reminds me of how much work it took to learn to love Ashton's choreography.

[papeetepatrick]

Leigh--that is an excellent group of little vignettes, and since you didn't mention the others--about other sports figures on Louise Bourgeois at the Pompidou Center, pianists like Bronfman and the Finnish Saarinen, I thought I'd just say that they all went in with an open mind, and this many more than Castaignede's by itself sets out Barton's sullen piece in great relief. Her piece should have been thrown out and never published, as the point was not to give a greater insight into class warfare and people somehow wearing their lack of discipline as a badge. It's informative about a serious loss of standards though, and this is the kind of thing that should have just appeared as, say, a blog entry on her own blog. It's the kind of thing for which people should be fired. And hers was an attitude cultivated as well--in all 4 or 5 of the sports vignettes, you saw people of good will and with an open mind who wanted to look at someone else's worlds, secure in their own. Anyway, read all the others too., as they are all something Ms. Barton ought to learn from--not least that the football and golf writers gave reasons why they couldn't fully (or in the case of the dance, appreciate very much at all) appreciate Brahms and Saarinen--but these did not have the tone of people who thought they were somehow writing authoritatively about something of which they were very aware that they knew little. Brat writing should just be on the blogs.

[dirac]

And it's not the same as if a classically-oriented opera person, etc., went to hip-hop or grunge: They'd be able to point out what they heard and describe it accurately.

Not necessarily. If their minds aren't open to it and they aren't empathetic enough to understand other people's responses, they can be quite as resistant and uncomprehending as this writer.

[Leigh Witchel]

Alas, anyone can be closed-minded.

I'm just curious - does anyone else think that the proximity of discipline may have had something to do with it? Is it easier for a sportswriter to approach opera with an open mind than a rock critic because there isn't a turf issue? Taking this back to dance, I have seen things like this between ballet and modern - even more so between different styles of ballet!

[dirac]

I don’t know that it’s actually a turf issue. (I’m not sure if Laura Barton is an actual pop music critic or if she just doesn’t like opera.) As with ballet and modern dance, hackles and voices become raised when one side regards the other as a kind of threat or as competition. Also, there can be genuine aesthetic issues to be argued over.

Rock criticism developed as a specialization because so many of the traditional music critics covering classical and/or jazz were unable or unwilling to understand it and thus write about it intelligently and in a way that would appeal to readers/listeners who knew the music well and could make distinctions. Jonathan Cott, who once did a fine interview with Balanchine, is a rock critic who can write well about classical and pop. Alex Ross is a classical critic who writes well about rock. It's not always a war.

[papeetepatrick]

I'm just curious - does anyone else think that the proximity of discipline may have had something to do with it? Is it easier for a sportswriter to approach opera with an open mind than a rock critic because there isn't a turf issue? Taking this back to dance, I have seen things like this between ballet and modern - even more so between different styles of ballet!

'Proximity of discipline definitely had everything to do with it. The discipline would knock out the turf issue, and classically-trained people definitely are more intellectual as a group than rock music people. That doesn't mean they are greater artists, but that they are used to think in more lucid ways than people who go to all the rock concerts--this is a big exciting messy emotional thing. And while going to a ballet or opera isn't going to attract nothing but thinking people (anybody can see that), they do understand certain rules and regulations, e.g., people may 'BOO!!' opera singers off the stage, but they don't ever stampede people to death as at some rock festivals. She had the very attitude of non-discipline--all sports stars would have much discipline too, but as for sportswriters, not necessarily more either, unless they had had to work very hard to become great tennis players, etc. Just look at TV sportscasters and you're not going to find very many intellectuals, but on the other hand, you may well (and often do) find some who are very affable, and not trying to prove how smart-ass they are. I know plenty of rock writers who don't have such an absurd attitude about the classical arts. Furthermore, many rock writers write about jazz--that's where all the Voice's pazz/jop stuff comes from. And people like Gary Giddins have always been able to write intelligently about whatever music he chooses to write about, even though his encyclopedic knowledge is jazz.

Actually, the interesting question is can Ms. Barton, in her endless cheap-sensation-seeking, write about pop and rock music? I am sure that I would not think she can do that either, and that she would think she wrote even more profoundly about that than she did about opera. There's a long tradition of rock writers which is very anti-intellectual, and you can find that going back to Greg Tate writing about rock and black music in the Voice in the 70s, riffin' all over the place and talkin' about politics and social problems the whole time. There's a whole genre of that kind of pop and jazz writing. This type does not ever observe any of the academic social conventions of any kind of formal writing, so it comes across as this sort of expressionistic thing. The least Ms. Barton could have done is say 'I don't get it', instead she more or less implies 'opera lovers don't get it' and there is no way that they love their roughage. Yes--not only do I want cheap rose, but I want to drink all my wine straight from the bottle--it's so much more REAL that way. I agree with Mashinka--moronic and brain-dead.

[papeetepatrick]

I left the above since people were reading it, even though I realized it was wrong in terms of Leigh's 'proximity of discipline', regarding rock music and opera as opposed to sports. I was stuck in Ms. Barton's basically undisciplined approach to whatever. Anyway, I'm not sure, even though there are rock operas, that most rock music and opera are any closer than opera and sports. But I know that there are major differences in critical writing for rock, jazz and classical music. Classical criticism is still more formal, but there's still a lot of jazzy new stuff, sort of PoMo-affect, that repudiates modernism in just as 'fun' a way as Ms. Barton does. Also don't know that even if you call rock music music and one legitimate realm of music, that it is ever, including its criticism, referred to as a 'discipline', even though many of the best practitioners in that field are disciplined artists. Maybe so, but it begins to seem like some lines of demarcation oughtn't to have been let to disappear quite as much as they have, as it all starts mixing into some mulligan stew.

[sidwich]

I'm just curious - does anyone else think that the proximity of discipline may have had something to do with it? Is it easier for a sportswriter to approach opera with an open mind than a rock critic because there isn't a turf issue?

I think that is part of it. Ms. Barton does start off coming off as rather defensive about how classical music professionals and enthusiasts regard their music as "high art" and pop as something beneath it.

I think part of it is also that the two pieces are coming from two different directions. My impression of Ms. Barton's piece is that it is intended to address the question of whether attempts to reach out to wider audience are successful, and these are her experiences as a newbie operagoer. Now there are all sorts of question as to whether she was a good choice for the assignment and whether the choices of opera were appropriate (because it all does smell of "set up to fail"), but the piece is about her personal experiences going to the opera and whether she would go again rather than attempting any objective critique of the operas themselves.

The sportswriter piece seems to be part of a featured series in which writers effectively "switch beats" for a week. Although part of the appeal of the series is undoubtedly the "fish out of water" aspect, my impression is that there is still a marginal attempt at objectivity and appeal to the regular beat-readers out there.