Lorin Maazel‘s opera based on George Orwell‘s 1984 opened in London Tuesday night (see Tuesday’s MobyLives news digest) and the reviews in yesterday’s newspapers were not good. A BBC News feature provides clips from several, including this one from Andrew Clements of The Guardian: “It is both shocking and outrageous that the Royal Opera, a company of supposedly international standards and standing, should be putting on a new opera of such wretchedness and lack of musical worth.” Robert Thicknesse, of The Times, calls the play “ungood,” and says, “Lorin Maazel’s new opera is not as awful as some feared, but it does share one property with Room 101, and that is the urgent desire it inspires for it to be over.”