Opinion: can we just drop star ratings, please?

I had a polite but frank exchange several weeks ago with the general manager of an ensemble. After she authorised our use of their press photos, I sent a link to my published review. She enjoyed reading it – my verdict was generally very positive – but professed that her “heart sank” at seeing the 3-star rating. The implication was that, having survived the pandemic by the skin of their teeth, they deserved to be cut some slack and awarded a couple more of those spangly stars.

My heart sank too. Three stars is a positive review, but too often it is interpreted by the public – and promoters – as a bit “meh”... and it’s really not. Bachtrack is one of the few sites that publishes its star rating criteria. In any review, hover your mouse over the question mark by the star rating and you’ll see this:

“An event that generally lived up to expectations” – which this concert certainly did. When our writers request to review a performance, one would hope that they go into it with high expectations and that the repertoire or performers – or both – appeal. A performance that generally delivers the goods is clearly 3*.

Could I have awarded a fourth star? “An excellent event that will be one of the best things you’ve seen this year” No, it was good, but it wasn’t one of the best things I’d seen this year. It wasn’t even one of the best things I saw that week. To maintain integrity, I had to give it an honest rating.

But it’s all relative. I could well have been at that concert with another of our reviewers who perhaps doesn’t experience the same range of performances or get to as many concerts as I’m lucky enough to attend. Maybe for them, it could have been one of the best things they’ve seen this year. As an editor, I do find our reviewers tend towards the over-generous on these things and I sometimes have to question a 4* rating that doesn’t read like a 4* review.

Perhaps the problem is in our descriptors. The only time I regret not having awarded something 5* was Romeo Castellucci’s Salome at the Salzburg Festival. I had some reservations about the production, but it – and the performance of Asmik Grigorian – knocked me sideways. “One of your best experiences ever.” It was. “An event that you will remember happily and be talking about in five years time.” Well, it was nearly four years ago now, but it is still most definitely seared into my memory.

Asmik Grigorian (Salome)

My reservations about the production – which still persist – got the better of me. Perhaps I was also conscious that I’d already awarded 5* to another Salzburg production the night before. Was I trying to avoid looking like a pushover?

It maddens me that the star rating is what people latch onto in a review. It maddens me that so much work goes into getting a performance onto a stage or concert platform and all readers and promoters are interested in is the star rating. It also, frankly, reduces the writers' efforts in providing a thoughtful response to what they’ve seen to a few stars. At least Bachtrack, in common with publications like The Financial Times, places the star rating at the foot of the review to encourage the reader to engage with the actual writing first. But then, I wonder how many scroll straight to the bottom first. “How many stars?”

Isn’t it time we just scrapped star ratings altogether and allow the writers' words to do the talking?

John Sweeney, Wednesday 20 April 2022 17:46

Absolutely agree with the article and the first comment - so many concerts/productions/films I've seen have extraordinary things in them, whilst some bits IMO just didn't work, while other concerts/productions etc have had a generally high level all the way through but weren't in any way extraordinary; with the star ratings I guess they're both three stars, but they're very different experiences. I remember a production of Tristan where the Isolde had the flu and was replaced by someone different for the last act, and where at no point was the orchestra playing tightly together, and yet the performance was a revelation, and I still remember it well after 30 years. I'm old enough to remember when most reviews, certainly live concert and theatre reviews, didn't have star ratings, so you read all the review to get a sense of whether you'd find the experience of it interesting/worthwhile. Now it's so easy to look at the star ratings and think, three stars, not worth my time, without getting any sense of what it is that you're missing. Maybe one partial solution is to have the star ratings hidden, and you have to click somewhere to see what the rating is.

Alexander Hall, Tuesday 29 March 2022 15:23

Exactly my sentiments too. We live, however, in an age when many people appear to be utterly mesmerised by figures and numbers: NHS targets, the Covid infection R number (no longer quoted as often as before and how objectively reliable anyway?), inflation rates, consumer feedback surveys, examination grades and a particular bete noire of mine, schools' league tables. As one wisecrack aptly put it, nobody ever grew by being measured.
As a contributor to these pages I have often spent more time on working out whether the rating I wished to give was 3.45 and therefore 3, or 3.55 and therefore 4, than on an eye-catching headline. Other websites which carry reviews of classical music and opera manage very happily without the prominent stars that high-ranking officers in USSR times felt they needed to adorn their chests with. If the writing is to the point and conveys a sufficient awareness of quality (or lack of it, as the case may be), stars are entirely superfluous.
It's a bit like downsizing and decluttering. Some people cling onto possessions, fearing the consequences of not having the many props they have surrounded themselves with. In most cases they find that life is actually a good deal easier without all the encumbrances they once considered vital.
So the long and short of it is: scrap the stars. They won't be missed.