Critical and Audience Reception
At the opening night performance, the majority of the audience showed their disappointment. During the second act, Barrie and Doyle left their private box. Ford was applauded for his music, but the audience did not call for the authors. "Towards the end it became more and more apparent that the audience were getting rather bored, and the final verdict... was far from enthusiastic."
The critics generally condemned the opera, calling the authors to task for a boring story and criticising Ford for his highly derivative score. The Stage wrote that, "Dramatically, Jane Annie is simply a sketch of schoolgirl caprice and persistent waywardness". The paper lamented that the opera was funnier to read than to see on stage. The Times had a more favourable view of the piece. The cast and crew were praised by some critics for their efforts at working such unworthy parts. "However hard worked, she remained thoroughly embarrassed by the whole thing. As curtain-calls were being taken, she refused to come out of her dressing-room, though pit and gallery shouted for her for five minutes; and when at length the piece was taken on tour, she absolutely refused to go with it."
Read more about this topic: Jane Annie
Famous quotes containing the words critical, audience and/or reception:
“The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“There’s more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that’s because the audience doesn’t really know what’s happening.”
—Pat Metheny (b. 1954)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)