I don't explicitly guide the other critics who write for the paper. By the time they are ready to write for the Washington Post, they know the business, they know the craft, and they have the necessary flexibility to set their own standards. I've observed that in many of your reviews, particularly those of operas you don't appear to particularly care for, you spend a lot ofspace in the review about the work itself and discussing your problems with it, and it appears that the space devoted to the performance is much less in proportion. Of course, in the event of a new or recent work, I would expect much of a review's space to concern the merits of the work. But in the case of a standard repertory opera, I'm curious as to why so much of your space is devoted to the work as opposed to the performance you attended.
Criticism allows for the continual reevaulation of the canon.
If not, then the canon is dead. If we say, for instance, that anything by a dead master must be masterful, we consign the music of the past to irrelevancy. In fact, arguing with history clarifies our approach to judging new works as well. That's pure foolishness, though plenty of critics indulge in this kind of personal self aggrandizement. My interest in reevaluating works, like, say, Verdi's Aida, which I've said is not as great or important as Don Carlos, is to diagnose why the lesser work has long supplanted the greater in the popular imagination.