MAKE UP YOUR MIND

Reviews for John Harbison’s “Great Gatsby” were all over the map. A third loved it. Another third thought it awful, and another regretted that it didn’t work, though they wanted it to. “As a whole, the reviews present a more dismaying portrait of the profession of music criticism than they do of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ The opera was criticized for both being too old-fashioned and traditional, and for being too modern and ‘cacophonous’ in sound.” – Boston Globe

RECONCEIVING BERLIN

A new plan for Berlin’s Museum Island with its five great museums marks the reorganization of Berlin’s museum holdings. The plan “advocates a return to the Hegelian universalism that underpinned the creation of the island in the nineteenth century. The five buildings, which are to be connected by a series of underground passageways, will together present an overview of European painting and sculpture from its beginnings to the nineteenth century.” – The Art Newspaper