Domingo cornered me one day, during a break in the “Operalia” competition. My negativism toward some of his moves with the company had hurt, he said; it was time to start thinking positively. Well, okay; but Domingo doesn’t need the critics to write his publicity, and I still think last season’s La Rondine was a mistake, and a scary one at that. Right now my positive feelings toward the company — after the far horizons revealed by this month’s announcements, the extraordinary level of talent displayed by the top contenders at “Operalia” (the best of them, by the way, clustered around age 26 and therefore well enough along to rank as finished artists rather than merely promising kids) and the brassy-bronze glories of Gergiev’s conducting — have raised my hopes as high as at any time since the company started. A few months ago I was lunched by Edgar Baitzel, the company’s artistic administrator, who tickled my expectations with promises of a Ring and Moses und Aron and Gergiev. I wrote it off at the time as pie in the sky. Now that pie is on the table, Ã la mode.
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