Walkabout

 John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles pleased most critics when it opened at the Metropolitan Opera at the end of 1991. I was not among them; in a review for The New Republic I described the opera as "nowhere music," a miscellaneous pastiche of Romantic and modernist styles. I recently listened again to a recording of the work and found myself liking it a great deal more. Even if the composer's voice remains at times elusive, the craftsmanship and vitality of the writing make a powerful i