Could A New Box Set Redeem 20th-Century Opera's Grandest Flop?

Critics the world over flocked to New York in 1966 for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center - and they hated the piece composed for the occasion, Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra. The work's reputation never recovered (and neither, in truth, did Barber himself). But after listening to a radio broadcast of the original production, recently released by the Met as part of a box set, David Patrick Stearns says that "Barber's fall from grace is confounding" and that, [...]