戏剧家Lloyd Webber
A standard criticism of Lloyd Webber, especially from drama critics, is that his music is derivative—a gloss on his betters when it is not an outright theft. Since most drama critics are,to put it charitably, nonmusical, this is an odd criticism, and one that smacks of received opinion: "Puccini-esque" is a term one encounters often in criticism of Lloyd Webber's music,32 but aside from "Growltiger's Last Stand," which parodies the first-act love duet from Madama Butterfly, there is precious little Puccini in Cats. Indeed, Lloyd Webber has always been more highly regarded by music critics, who not only know the repertoire he is alleged to be pilfering, but also can place him correctly in dramatic-operatic context. Far from being the love child of Puccini and Barry Manilow, as some would have it, Lloyd Webber is more correctly seen as a kind of latter-day Giacomo Meyerbeer, the king of the Paris Opera in the mid-19th century, whose name was synonymous with spectacle. But a little ignorance goes a long way, and with "Memory" the notion that Lloyd Webber is a secondhand pastiche artist—if not an outright plagiarist—got its start.
