Letter To Eye Weekly (Toronto) re: The Translator
(The Toronto-based weekly Eye neither published nor acknowledged the following letter sent February 26, 2008.  Although conventional wisdom has it that artists are not supposed to respond to criticism, I felt that the Eye reviewer's specific misrepresentation of the story in the short opera The Translator should not be allowed to pass without public objection. -David Ogborn, March 20, 2008.)

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the online edition of Christopher Hoile's review (Feb 18) of Tapestry New Opera's Opera To Go 2008, and in particular to his comments about the piece "The Translator" (composed by me, with a libretto from Leanna Brodie and video imagery by Jarek Obsadny).

Hoile is entitled to his opinion of the piece's merit, but his description of the text as "a general anti-American screed" is a political slander rather than an aesthetic evaluation.  There is nothing anti-American about this work, and if there had been I would have refused my involvement.

Brodie's text is a poetic meditation on the situation of the witness, a translator who comes to a tragically clear understanding of the crudeness, brutality and violence inherent in arguments that "you are either for us [them] or against us [them]".

Sincerely,
David Ogborn
Toronto