No Common Language

How can Times Music Critic Martin Bernheimer pass so easily from his sometimes interesting reviews about Wagner’s “Ring” in San Francisco to a commentary on “Oklahoma!” (June 25)?

Operas and musical comedy cannot be friends, for they talk a totally different language. The musicals regurgitate half-truths, half-dramas, half-thoughts, half-music that can make Middle America perfectly happy--but not those accustomed to the absolute wholeness of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach.

“Richard Rodgers’ inspired score remains a revelation (eat your mask out, A.L. Webber!).” So Bernheimer says. But if he uses such distinguished words as inspired and revelation for the little notes of Rodgers, what terms he can adopt to describe the power of Beethoven’s music?

The musical is an American form of music, as some contend? Wrong again. The musical is nothing but the stale, surpassed and silly operetta of our Austrian and Polish great-great-grandfathers.

FRANK MERCIREAU

South Lake Tahoe