Talk:Emmeline (opera)

"Critical response" section

I have removed this recently added section . A series of cherry-picked, out of context positive quotes sourced solely to the composer's website are not appropriate on Wikipedia and are particularly inappropriate for a "critical response" section. The references must be to the original work, with full bibliographic information and where possible a link. Most importantly, the section needs to represent a balanced and accurate coverage of the critical response.

One example of why these out-of-context quotes are very misleading. The section stated:

Bernard Holland of the New York Times raved that Emmeline “is a model of its kind.”

What the NYT actually said in context was:

"Tobias Picker's Emmeline at the New York City Opera is of modest scale and manageable ambition. It deals with plain people and serious matters, neither overreaching nor understating its agenda. An admirable sense of self results in affecting simplicity. The City Opera should put Emmeline in its permanent repertory. It is a model of its kind." [1]

Hardly a "rave". And no, the opera was not the unqualified success suggested by the review snippets taken from Picker's website. Some reviews were mixed but reasonably positive, while others were quite negative, e.g. "Emmeline' Heavy-handed and Empty" by Marc Shugold of the Rocky Mountain News:

"Meanwhile, Picker never found his own compositional voice, dabbling in folkiness here (complete with harmonica-blowing) and studied atonality there, tossing in a little of everything else in between. The orchestration is thick, the presence of interesting musical ideas thin."

– Voceditenore (talk) 16:38, 15 May 2012 (UTC)