Talking About Critics

After decades of Martin Bernheimer’s barbs, it is hard to adjust to the sweetness of current Times music critic Mark Swed. Take for instance recent weeks of the music season.

From Swed’s words, readers would have no idea that both the L.A. Opera and L.A. Philharmonic have run aground. What fun Bernheimer would have had reporting on L.A. Opera’s amplified and penny-pinched operetta “Countess Maritza” or its miscast “Fedora”--surely the weakest opening in the company’s 12-year history.

And what colorful warning he would no doubt have sounded of the Philharmonic’s costly but deadly dull “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,” allegedly “dramatized and semi-staged” by Esa-Pekka Salonen’s fellow Finn Juha Hemanus. These are artistic and management debacles that would once have been gleefully etched in The Times.

ANDREW POWELL

Santa Monica