Talk:An American Tragedy (opera)

"Critical response" section

I have removed this 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.

To show how misleading these out of context quotes can be, the article states:

And Alex Ross of The New Yorker, said that the opera "hits the mark" and is "a serious, substantial piece"

But this is the actual context of the original:

"The opera is a fitfully inspired creation, wavering along the fine line between tragedy and turgidity, but, on a primal, Pucciniesque level, it hits the mark". [1]

Ross went on to say elsewhere in the review:

"The vocal lines flow, but the prosody is odd; long stretches of text are shoehorned into a set melodic pattern, whether or not the pattern fits."

The New York Times review was likewise far more nuanced (and quite critical in places), than the cherry-picked snippets in the article suggest. Voceditenore (talk) 07:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)