In the middle of my run of my new opera The Pig, The Farmer, and The Artist. I am amazed at the lack of interest and apathy form the world of classical critics. There is just silence. Writing a new two hour opera means nothing. But I pick up the New York Times and read a new review of a girl playing Bach. Maybe that is news. It seems like the critics already have in their minds who is a worthy artist and who is not, and do not even bother to to experience the work. The name before the work means a lot more than the work itself. Better to see another bad production of Tosca than to see a completely new work by just another idiot composer not worthy of ink. Perhaps it was that this work was created outside the institutional venues. Maybe new art must be presented in the correct venue by the proper promoters in order to be taken seriously as art. In either case the composer is reduced to a mere street beggar pleading for someone to take a chance and listen to something new. As I write this letter I see myself dying slowly. All the work and effort means nothing if you are on the outside. They might as well just pick up a gun and pump a bullet into your head,it is the same thing, they leave you for dead.
What is the point for any artist to try to create something new in this apathetic climate we live in today. Has it always been like this, if so it is a wonder that anything of any value was ever created
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