THE CRITIC AND HIS CRITIC: A LONG-PREYING DIALOGUE

Leopold Langspiel looked quizzical. Actually, he always looks quizzical, but this time there was something especially ominous about the way his beady purple eyes glared, about the way the corners of his lips held their poetic droop in dark perpetuum.

Leopold usually entraps his favorite critical churl at cultural palaces. He stakes out the prey at intermission time, then pounces just as the innocent journalistic analyst tries to bolt for the nearest al-fresco haven: a bush, a phone booth, the trunk of a convenient car, a nomadic pretzel stand.

Always generous with advice, never greedy when it comes to sharing self-evident inner truths, good old Leopold has for many years symbolized all that is pure, lofty, intelligent, subjective and recriminating in the world of music and, more important, the world of music makers.

One doesn’t often see Leopold in the daytime. They keep him very busy, he says, at his job in the cherry-canning factory where he works as pit remover. But here he was.

He stumbled into my luxurious office without knocking, sank into the plush couch that flanks the southerly window, surveyed the gallery of lovingly autographed photos of victimized musicians on the walls, helped himself to some champagne and interrupted a deep critical thought. I pretended not to see him.

“You’re in trouble,” my intruder gasped.

“Oh, it’s you, Leopold.” I looked up and forced a smile. “How did you get past the guards?”

“Never mind the cordialities,” he replied. “We must talk.”

I stopped smiling.

“You have had quite a summer, haven’t you, Mr. Critic?” Leopold Langspiel likes to ask the sort of question that requires no answer.

“First you went to Seattle for Wagner’s ‘Ring.’ ”

I pleaded guilty.

“Never mind that you wasted all that space talking about the staging when we wanted to know about the music, first, last and foremost. Never mind that you had the audacity to write that the conductor wasn’t very good, when the conductor got standing ovations at every performance. Never mind that you failed to boost a struggling and idealistic organization that needs all the help it can get. . . . “

“OK, never mind.” I said. “What was my really serious offense?”

“That is the right word,” responded Leopold. “Offense. You insulted the soprano. You couldn’t complain about her voice--and how many sopranos can even begin to sing Bruennhilde these days, Mr. Know-It-All?--but you had to complain about her size. You actually called her obese.”

Leopold paused to let the enormity of the word sink in.

“In the first place,” he continued, “it probably isn’t her fault if she is fat. And in the second place, who cares if she looks wrong as long as she sounds right?”

“I’m afraid I care.”

“Pooey,” said Leopold. His yellowed collars were beginning to curl.

“You see,” I tried to explain, “opera isn’t a concert. It isn’t abstract. It is supposed to be musical drama--vital, gripping, eloquent. The best operatic artists don’t just make beautiful sounds. They act with their voices, their faces, their bodies. The total illusion is what counts.”

“So the lady was a bit overweight,” replied Leoplold. “Big deal. Flagstad and Traubel were overweight too.”

“One can make certain visual adjustments,” I admitted, “especially if the vocal and emotional impressions are exceptionally strong. But when it comes to the suspension of disbelief, there are limits.”

“That’s ridiculous,” sputtered Leopold. His avoirdupois, incidentally, outweighs even that of the resident Beckmesser.

“It isn’t as ridiculous as a presumably lithe, passionate, mercurial, radiantly beautiful, erotically appealing, instantly desirable, eminently lustrous Valkyrie maiden who resembles a tea cozy.”

“Fat people need love too,” argued Leopold.

“Not necessarily on the stage of an opera house,” I countered.

“Why don’t you review with your eyes closed?”

“So, Mr. Smartnose, you think it is legitimate to complain about the way an artist looks in opera?”

“Yes.”

“And in a concert, too?”

“Well. . . . “

It was time for equivocation. “On the stage of a concert hall, appearances may not count quite so much.”

“Then what about Leonard Bernstein?” Leopold Langspiel pronounced the name slowly, ponderously, in tones dripping with reverence and awe. He was setting a trap.

“Didn’t you write something about him wiggling and jiggling and bumping and grinding so much all over the stage that you couldn’t appreciate his conducting of the ‘Pathetique’?”

“I did.”

“And didn’t the great maestro write a letter to The Times putting you in your place, even accusing you . . .

Leopold tried in vain to stifle a giggle.

. . . of defecating all over the page?”

“He did.”

“And what do you say to that?”

“I say it was a funny letter. I wrote my reactions, he wrote his. Fair’s fair. All’s fair, as a matter of fact, in hate and music.” I was getting carried away.

Leopold stopped the flow. “But why shouldn’t a conductor do anything he wants to do on the podium if it helps him project his interpretation of the music, if it helps the orchestra?”

“Sometimes,” I said, “one gets the feeling that the conductor is getting in the way of the music. Sometimes one feels the orchestra is playing well in spite of, not because of, him. He may be putting on a show for the orchestra, or, more likely, for the audience.

“ ‘Look at me emoting,’ he seems to say. ‘Look at me dancing. Look at me acting out every minute expressive impulse. Look at me leaping and diving. Isn’t it wonderful, the way I can suffer and do acrobatic stunts and strut my stuff on behalf of the divine Tchaikovsky?’ ”

“You are a hopeless cynic,” said Leopold. “Bernstein does such things because that is how he feels the music. He is sincere. I just know it. If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”

“But he wants me to watch. He dares me not to watch. He is fun to watch. How can one ignore Leonard Bernstein?”

“It might be nice if you tried,” said my friendly antagonist.

“And if you can’t bring yourself to do that, you could at least spell Lenny correctly. Why did you refer to this as the ‘ Lennie Bernstein Show’?” Leopold spelled out the name.

“I didn’t mean to. It was a dumb mistake, a temporary aberration,” I pleaded. “The devil made me do it.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“And another thing,” added Leopold. “Who appointed you a pop-music critic? Who gave you the authority to review Frank Sinatra and John Denver and Julie Andrews and Pandora, whatever that is?”

My visitor was referring to a gala benefit concert featuring Placido Domingo and friends. The friends turned out to be Sinatra, Denver, Andrews and a Mexican teenie-bop trio called Pandora.

“I don’t usually write about artists like that, but artists like that don’t usually appear in tandem with supertenors from the Met,” I explained. “And artists like that don’t usually take part in concerts that include a Verdi aria. This is dirty work, I know, but somebody has to do it.”

“Very cute,” sneered Leopold. “But you know full well that an enlightened pop critic wouldn’t have criticized Domingo for yelling, wouldn’t have bothered to say that Sinatra really knows how to use a microphone, wouldn’t have called Denver hokey and Andrews pallid.”

“ Chacun a son degout ,” I said, hoping to sound sophisticated.

“Don’t try to deflect me with your Italian,” said Leopold. “Why don’t you leave the other kind of music to the other kind of critics?”

“There is only one kind of music worthy of our attention,” I said. “Good music. Everyone says that. Even Placido Domingo. Even Ernest Fleischmann. Therefore, in the final analysis, there need be only one kind of music critic.”

“Not your kind,” snarled Leopold. He was getting nasty now. His elbows began to twitch with tension if not excitement.

“It would have been a lousy thing for you to write this way about these great artists under any circumstance. Here, it was even more lousy. This was a benefit, a concert to help the victims of the Mexican earthquake. These great singers donated their services, worked their larynxes off for a good cause, and what did they get from the newspaper? Nasty criticism. It is a shame, a disgrace, a . . . . “

“What would have happened,” I asked, “if everyone had been wonderful? Would it have been wrong to say that?”

Langspiel sputtered.

“And what about the people who paid $100 for a ticket? Didn’t they have a right to expect good sound, polished performances, appropriate repertory?”

Langspiel shrugged.

“Are people--not just professional pundits but genuine human beings--supposed to adopt double standards: one for regular performances and another for benefits? Are they supposed to park their critical faculties with their cars just because the profits from a concert will go to a worthy charity? Isn’t that an insult to everyone’s intelligence?”

Langspiel scowled. Then he caught his breath.

“Listen, Mr. Stubborn Artsy Superior,” he growled, “everyone knows you are wrongheaded. Even Carol Burnett wrote a letter to The Times to deplore your reviewing a benefit.”

“I love Carol Burnett,” I said.

“ Chacun a son gout ,” replied Leopold Langspiel.

“You never can leave bad enough alone.”

“What do you mean, Leopold?”

“Luciano Pavarotti is the greatest tenor in the world. It says so right here on the cover of Martin Mayer’s new biography. He comes to town for another benefit, this one for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Tickets cost as much as $250. When his intended partner, Dame Joan Somebody-or-Other, gets sick, Pavarotti--bless him--saves the day. He sings an extended program, brings in another soprano to help--a real looker, too!--and makes everybody happy. Everybody except the great critic.”

“Wait just a minute!” The great critic is getting flustered. “Putting a hype citation on the cover of a coffee-table book doesn’t mean a thing. Only his publicity mavens and groupies would say Pavarotti is the greatest anything in the world. He’s a man, not a refrigerator.”

“Pooey.”

“And, unlike the singers at the Domingo benefit, Pavarotti did not--repeat, not--contribute his services. He got his usual fee, and it is almost as big as his avoirdupois. . . . “

“There you go again.”

“And he didn’t do anyone a favor by bringing along his favorite obscure mini-soprano. Lots of people had paid good money to hear one of the greatest sopranos in the world. No one even made an effort to find a suitable replacement for her. Now that’s cynical.”

“Double pooey,” said Leopold. “If the audience doesn’t complain, why should you?”

“Just doing my job.”

“Someday,” muttered Leopold Langspiel as he stumbled out of the critical lair, “perhaps you’ll get an honest job.”

“Sure,” I said to no one in particular. “A job removing the pits from canned cherries.”