Michael Shmith has resigned after Victoria’s daily newspaper declined to run a Lyric Opera of Melbourne review.

Michael Shmith has resigned from his role as opera critic for The Age in protest at the shrinking space for arts coverage. His abrupt depature was prompted by the newspaper’s refusal to find space in the paper or online for a review of the Lyric Opera of Melbourne’s recent production of The Coronation of Poppea (reviewed here by Limelight).

In an article published by Australian Book Review Arts entitled Why I quit as opera critic of The Age, he explained his decision. Shmith has been the paper’s opera critic since 2010, a role he continued after retiring from full-time journalism three years ago. From 1985 to 1993 he was Arts Editor of The Age. “I left because of the sad but inevitable realisation that The Age’s arts page no longer truly represented or upheld the critical standards that were once imperative to its existence and whose values remain of vital concern to me. And when I say ‘me’, I mean, by default, the artform I had the privilege to review,” he wrote.

“Opera is but one of the many artforms under review...