Yes, well, I mean of course Lisa and I have included negative or lukewarm responses to Soloviev in People’s Artist.
No performer, no matter how great or celebrated, is subject to anything but a wide range of opinions, and describing what someone thought a performer couldn’t do not only maintains impartiality but illuminates that performer’s work.
But if the quality of the performer you’re writing about didn’t mean something to you, would you really put in heart and soul and every other faculty you’ve got to muster to do a book?
CON’T
And so it was nice, when I went to the electronic Financial Times Historical Archive (I was steered to it by the librarians at the NYPL business branch in the old B.Altman’s) to check the date of a quote by Andrew Porter cited in Diane Solway’s biography of Nureyev —
to find the full descriptions that Porter gave of Soloviev during the Kirov’s London debut in 1961.
Among them:
“His leaps are astounding. Every limb of his body seems to fall, by natural enchantment, into its ideal position at each moment of a phrase. His motion is heart-catchingly beautiful. We have seen no one like him.”