“To hell with beauty, it’s a kitsch notion; I don’t feel this business of being overwhelmed by it.”

Did opera director/doctor/wit Jonathan Miller really say that?

Been laid up, not leaving the house, so indulging myself with opera via Youtube and heretofore unwatched DVDs.

And yeah, having a few granny-reactions - WHAAAAA? did that Rhinemaiden really just....? I can't believe Don Giovanni would have ever....! I hope they paid those dancers enough for letting someone... and sometimes just ewwwwwwwwww!

So some of the carping I'd heard about regie, I just attributed to the carpers fundamentalism, lack of sophistication, want of artistic imagination...
But it seems that opera has more in common with pop culture than I'd known, coarse, sluttish and degrading behavior really is the order of the day.

But when I came across that quote from Miller, (some of whose work I very much admired,) it disturbed me. (I haven't read it anywhere than in that article, and others that reference it, so perhaps it's not quite what he said? I can hope.)

Beauty is beside the point?

No wonder the world is in such a state when intelligent, talented and influential individuals can say such a thing.

Yeah, #!@$%  the transcendentals....

The sad thing is, by disdaining beauty, by neglecting goodness, the purveyors of evil ugliness deny themselves the chance of ever actually achieving truth, the one value they putatively pursue, the one value they claim to rank above all else.