On some critics

Know-all, pontificating, self-aggrandizing, self-appointed critics are the sort I do not like. I also occasionally write reviews, but they are based on how deeply my intellect, my emotions and my experience gathered in a long lifetime in opera, and music in general, are engaged.

I have deep respect even for performers who do not impress me sufficiently, and I would hate to treat them with the contemptuous nonchalance of some of the professional critics. They write about great performers as if they were the prosecution, judge and jury rolled into one supreme authority.

I heard Di Stefano, then at the height of his career, mercilessly booed in the Scala because he slipped on a notoriously difficult passage. Some critics almost hope for something to go wrong, for the opportunity to pontificate on the minor mishaps that can befall even truly great performers, or to speculate how their best years are already behind them.

If I were to write about Bryn Terfel as Mephisto, I would not say how much better Chaliapin sang the role, although I heard and admired his hamming in his favourite role in the late 1920s.

Great performers are great in their own right - which is not to say that sensible, considered criticism of them does not have its place, but I would rather they were not considered as X-Factor fodder.