On 9/10/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
"Accentuate that word 'attempt', for the piece signally fails toanswer the questions it raises. The many conflicting sides to the intriguing figure of Gaddafi are serially presented, uniform by uniform - liberator, ideologue, religious zealot, mass murderer, whacko - but the end-product fails to take a position. The first half is an inert Wikipedia guide to the Libyan leader, a dictator painted by numbers, and the more animated second a confused morass of suggestive set-pieces, sending us back into the night to sort it out over dinner."
I'm struck that en:wp apparently has enough of a perceptible style that it can serve as a reference point for dullness in an opera review. The pain of neutrality!
I disagree that that's how it reads. It sounds to me like they're saying "laying out the facts without any enterpretation" which is, of course, a good thing, and I don't think it's used pejoritively there except in that operas shouldn't be so tame!