This Is Why I Love Opera

How many people can do this live without a serious sound engineer working overtime?

Karajan Reviled

I came across a rather startling article in the British publication The Independent. This weekend marks the centenary of Herbert von Karajan's birth, the Austrian conductor who dominated the symphonic and operatic scene in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In my home growing up, Karajan was the standard of excellence that every performance was measured against. He was considered the great modernizer, the passionate madman who brought true fire to every work he tackled. His tempos were faster or slower than others', his dynamics louder or softer. I've never read a true rebuke of his work such as this one. Norman Lebrecht, a prominent British cultural commentator, spares no words for the man he feels destroyed the classical music industry in the twentieth century:

"Whether Herbert von Karajan was a bad man or a good man is immaterial. He was a brilliant organiser with the gift of tuning an orchestra to his personal sound, an ability that he exploited to extreme ends. He inflicted his ego on the world of classical music in a way that crushed independence and creativity and damaged its image for future generations. It is not the bad man he was that we should deplore but the reactionary and exclusivist legacy which is being "celebrated". For music lovers, there is not much to celebrate. Once the centenary is over, we will drop the curtain once and for all on a discreditable life that yielded no fresh thought and upheld no worthwhile human value. Karajan is dead. Music is much better off without him."