With 2006 well behind us, it behooves us to look back at what we liked and disliked about the year; to pay tribute here and there, and to play the curmudgeon where needed. Comments here won't be made in any particular order, but will run randomly as they come to mind in this co-operative venture by our team of co-workers, all of whom have some issue they would like to shower with praise or spit at with 'raspberries'.

Some of us attended a very worthwhile, informative convention held jointly by the American Theater Critics Association and the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. The event took place in two venues here in Ontario, at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. At the latter, the speakers also included British theater critic, Ian Herbert, who confirmed what we here in North America have had to deal with for many years now, namely that even in Britain the print media are less and less inclined to give large spaces to any form of arts criticism. Instead—as here in North America—newspapers and many periodicals have reduced space for critiquing. There, as here, critics are expected to write vapid pieces that offer not so much insight into a work but oversight. What passes for critiquing is really a re-telling of the story with minor commentary on acting, set design, lighting and costumes, in the case of theater. The same, of course, applies to opera, except that here music also comes into the equation.

The discussion did not venture into the other arts, but concentrated solely on theater. The reference to the other arts came about during private conversations by participants during lunches and at coffee breaks. One form of criticism, albeit in very short form, appears to find favor in today's newspapers, namely the one that demolishes a show with smart phrases, the kind that readers might retain, the kind that are akin to the gutter press, but have little to do with insight or with true wit. The sad conclusion? Critiquing is out, superficial reviewing is in, and woe be to anyone who dares to give the reader something to think about, or even dares to attempt a little education on the side.

Where then can writers go to write in depth about what goes on in the arts? To the Internet. There plenty of space is available to write real opinion pieces about the arts. The only problem that exists there is that readers have already been trained to accept shorter and shorter articles by the print media and consequently they are developing a shorter and shorter attention span. This sad fact insures that readers shy away from any long articles of serious writing. Strangely enough, however, if readers are given a lengthy piece of gossip about their favorite bimbos— female and male—in the entertainment world, they don't seem to mind that the story goes well beyond 1,000 words. So, there is a dumbing down of society, and the media are as much to blame as the readers and viewers—in the case of television. God forgive us for all those 'Idol' & reality shows. While no medium should ram dull 'educational' pieces down an audience's combined throat, it seems to us that the media should attempt to entertain as well as enlighten, something that no longer takes place. Enlightenment is out for the most part.

In June we attended the opening ceremony of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, i.e. Toronto's brand new opera house. The buildings totally blew us away with its fine interior space. In September we spent a week in Toronto to see the complete Ring des Niebelungen, Richard Wagner's magnum opus of 15 hours of opera in four separate operas that opens with Das Rheingold and closes with Götterdämmerung. This was a singular event in Canadian opera history and really showed off the magnificent sound of the new house, and the fine design of the hall, which ensures that there is really no bad seat in the house.

Well, not quite. Those seats in the upper tiers of the horseshoe-shaped hall that are closest to the stage are a bit obscured and necessitate the seat holder to bend far forward to see what is happening on either stage left or right, depending on which side of the hall the individual is seated. In the case of the Ring series, a great deal of action took place on stage left, so the ticket holder sitting on the right side of the hall, closest to the stage in the upper tiers often could not see the entire action. This is something that stage directors might keep in mind when they design new operas for the new house. The same, of course, applies to the productions of the National Ballet Company of Canada, a tenant of the new opera house. This applies, however, to only a very small number of seats when applied to the overall capacity of the house. Still, it is something we feel we must bring to the attention of the COC and the NBofC.

All this musing about the new opera house brings us to something that has been in our craw for some time now. What is bothering Christopher Hume, the architectural critic of the Toronto Star? Why is he constantly harping about the lack of exterior excitement or flare of the new opera house? Yes, it is rather restraint in its exterior, being all glass on the outside on two sides, and all brick on the remaining walls. There are many reasons for the choice of this design. One is the small acreage that had been made available to the company, secondly the high cost a more elaborate exterior would have entailed. What Hume completely overlooks is the imaginative manner in which the lobby spaces have been designed by Diamond & Schmid Architects. The unusual use of materials-wood and glass-that make the lobbies a joy to behold. At night, when the house is seen from University Avenue, it is a glittering jewel of light, which certainly is nothing to be sneezed at, nor is the play of light on the exterior during daylight. What is most important, however, is that the architects and the COC management decided that 'sound' and sightlines are the most important aspects of an opera house. They have not failed the audience and the performers in that respect. The actual hall is a beautiful-to-look-at modern hall that will not seem drab even decades from now. Its acoustics are good beyond all expectations. It is a joy for the singers to sing in, the musicians to play in. Perhaps Hume is tone deaf and so cares little that the Sidney Opera House, which he has praised so much for adding flare to the waterfront of an otherwise dull city, is an acoustic nightmare. The building took ages to build, ran way over cost and in the end turned out to be a dud for the purposes for which it had been built. So, please, Mr. Hume, stop your whining. Looks are not everything. Besides, it appears Hume is color-blind as well. He keeps referring to the bricks that face the two unglazed walls of the Toronto opera house as being black and blue. Sorry, chum, they are brown in an overall effect, containing a number of different colors. Light has a considerable impact on the exterior of the building, including the glass walls. No matter under what lighting conditions the brick walls have been viewed, except in the dark of night, those walls are brown in the overall effect. If Hume finds the walls so uninspiring, why doesn't he start a fund to raise money to pay a world-renowned artist to create a permanent painting on the wall that fits in with the surroundings of the University Avenue architecture? If he did that, he would be putting a positive spin on what he finds so negative.

We also greatly enjoyed the opening of the re-built and refurbished Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto. It is a small, but exciting space. Hume praises it much, but if one is to be honest, it is, after all, on the exterior a rather boxy, state building set on a very small space. Architects KPMB did a tremendous job with what they had by taking a 1980s structure and giving it more space on the inside, and better, lighter display spaces. Even the exterior is less plain than it was in its original form, especially with the addition of an upper storey glass-enclosed outside patio space, and with the louvered walls that allow light into the building without overpowering the interior or damage the displays.

For the past few years a dumbing down of CBC Radio Two has also been observed, but 2006 seems to have been the worst yet. The national FM radio network's original reasons for coming into existence had been to serve those listeners who prefer classical music over pop, and who are not too interested in a lot of talk. CBC Radio One is an almost all-talk station, with music on the lowbrow, or popular side of the listening scale, and some repeats of Radio Two programs.

We have been a consistent fan of Radio Two, but now found that in the year of Mozart—his 250^th Birthday year—we did not only get a surfeit of this composer's music, but discovered that it appears that hosts now have a mandate to include music that cannot in any way be considered on the scale of what is loosely defined as classical. We get to hear c&w, r&r, r&b, folk, and whatever else there is out there-except so far we have not heard rap during the daytime-on the various daytime programs.

May we ask, what is the purpose of this? Surely, this will drive away longtime listeners such as ourselves-more of that shortly-and it will certainly not attract younger, less enlightened listeners, because they will still be scared away by the occasional classical music, and by the talk that happens on such programs as Eric Friesen's noon-time Radio Sparks program from the Sparks Street studio in Ottawa. The talk is sometimes enlightening, but many times it is rather deadly in its attempt to educate the listener about the creative process of composing, or the lives of composers, or the process of playing an instrument. His mixed program of music includes some very good jazz, but lately also music that surely has no place on what used to be a classical music station. Jazz is forgiven, but the rest, well, NO. By the way, there is a jazz program on CBC Radio Two late at night. So that form of music is given considerable exposure on the network.

Friesen's mixed program of music is a bit of plagiarism from Jurgen Gothe's program, DiscDrive, which celebrated its 20th season on the air in 2005. Our radios have been tuned steadily to the program, aimed at the driving home commuting public. It essentially still conforms to the classical music concept peppered with lighter works, and the occasional highly unusual piece of music dug out from god-knows-where to add a bit of humor to the afternoon show, which also includes Gothe's highly quirky humor. In 2006, we noticed however, that the classical music quotient has dropped, more folk, C&W, r&r, etc. has been included, and there are fewer of the silly pieces that added a smile to one's afternoon drive home. Even Gothe's own humor is less in evidence now.

In the morning, the request program that features Shelley Soames as host includes a lot of light music, ethnic music—soorrry, but not all ethnic music falls under the rubric of some exotic country's classical period. Most of it falls under that of folk music, which has no business on a classical music station. We may appear to be snobs, but ethnic music is a pain in the butt most of the time, and highly boring. We are not in favor of multi-culturalism at its lowest form.

So, as mentioned above, this might drive listeners away. We said might, but actually it has driven us away. Since the Internet offers a surfeit of selections of music, we have now turned our computers into music machines during working hours. One of our most favorite stations comes to us over the ether from Britain, the other is a well known local station. Now we get the kind of music we enjoy and which is inspiring enough during hours whiled away toiling at the computer, putting down thoughts, or designing a brochure or whatever we do here at our little company. As a consequence, all three programs have lost a number of listeners who pay taxes to support CBC Radio, but get little benefit from it.

We have long ago stopped watching CBC TV, and deeply resent that the nationa TV network has a news channel that is unavailable to us because we are located in an area where there is no cable TV, no broadband or high-speed connection available. The high-speed wireless Internet connection for our computers has been created at our own expense, without benefit of the public purse. There is a high resentment factor here that our tax dollars are being used by the public network to create a news channel that cannot be viewed by every taxpayer. So, if the network's budget is being slashed for television production, so be it. The few times that we watched CBC News on its regular channel, we were thoroughly disgusted by the superficiality of its coverage of news.

Please note CBC management, we really don't care whether or not the TV end of the network stays on the air. As for the radio end of it, we have always support its existence as a unifying entity in this vast country, but now feel sidelined here as well.

As we mentioned earlier, 2006 was Mozart's 250^th birthday year. Let us hope that we will get less of Mozart in 2007 on all radio stations. Some of us really don't care too much about this composer. His music does, in fact, get on our collective nerves. One of us keeps describing him as the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the 18^th century. Yes, Mozart he has written some great music, but most of what we have heard in 2006, composed from his childhood onward, is really below standard. Blind adoration of any artist is a sad thing. Let's be honest. He may have been a child prodigy, but what he wrote at age nine, or even 16, surely is of little real value. Just because he wrote it doesn't make it great. So, please, whoever is out there programming, just keep in mind that Mozart is not to the liking of everyone. His tinkling at the harpsichord—in fact, we dislike almost all of the baroque repertoire, regardless of the composer—is really a pain to listen to on a steady basis.