How not to write an article

Norman Lebrecht notches up an impressive list of inaccuracies in one short article

Are we down to our last tenor?

• Rolando Villazón...looked cheerful enough in a flowered shirt at an impromptu Covent Garden recital

almost certainly from the description the 'In Conversation with...' evening, which I attended

• What seemed to be an orderly succession to the semi-retired Placido Domingo with Villazon as front-runner has now become a very open question.

Semi-retired? Semi-retired? (I work with someone who's just a bit younger than Plácido, and is now working four days a week rather than five, but Dave is no more semi-retired than the thirty-something four dayers and me as a three-dayer)

• but what it takes a tenor to sustain an entire role is more than just a voice – as Andrea Bocelli, the former pop balladeer, discovered

I'm no Bocelli fan but what he has proved is that he can sing the occasional performance. Not great, by reports not very  good, but arguably not the worst tenor performing professionally (and isn't the worst thing about him his voice?)

• José Cura, 46, who flowered for a couple of seasons before deciding that he needed to be a conductor, a composer, a stage director, a visiting professor - anything other than a high-hitting tenor. His schedule over the coming year involves productions in Zurich, Liege and Oslo, no longer the heights of parnassus.

And this current season he has sung Dick Johnson and Calaf at Covent Garden to critical acclaim. If he chooses to sing at prestigious Zurich plus the lesser houses of Liege and Oslo he probably has his reasons. Perhaps they pay more than the bigger houses! (JDF alluded to this on the so-called Culture Show)

• His compatriot Marcelo Alvarez had even less time at the top before he began to market himself as Il Duetto with the unremarkable Italian, Salvatore Licitra.

in what parallel world is Marcelo Alvarez not at the top?* Il Duetto was several years ago, a CD and a few concerts. Marcelo picks his houses carefully; he won't sing at Vienna until Hollander retires, he's fallen out with the unprofessionalism at La Scala, he's disinclined to work at Mortier's Madrid, and family reasons mean he doesn't venture out of Europe too often.

• Rolando Villazon ...with a range that descended to low baritone

WTF? Having a dark colouring to the voice doesn't a baritone make

• That leaves just two lyric tenors still standing. Juan Diego Florez...

    two? Doesn't that contradict the headline

...is a hard-working colleague with no outsized ego – something of a backhanded compliment, since it implies a lack of strong charisma.

I get the sense from Stage Door/signings that JDF is quite a reserved person, but hasn't Lebrecht seen him perform? I would describe him as charming more than charismatic, but that's hair-splitting.

• It has taken the tousle-haired Jonas Kaufmann until he is 40 to become a heartthrob and his rise has been so swift that his record label has yet to launch a working website

wasn't Lebrecht aware of performances of La Rondine in November 2004, when Jonas was 35, newly discovered by Angela Gheorghiu. And what's heartthrob got to do with it.It wouldn't matter if he looked like the back end of a bus; has Lebrecht heard the voice and witnessed the Stage Presence

But even without these elementary mistakes, the article is flawed.

If his criterion is finding somone with the Superstar/name recognition of The Three Tenors, that isn't going to happen. Record companies have tried on numerous occasions to do the impossible - recreate a phenomenon.

If he is looking for attractive engaging tenors with the ability to bring something special to the roles they choose, he seems to have overlooked, for example, Piotr Bieczala and Joseph Calleja, both of whom have been round for quite some time (and Jospeh Calleja is still extraordinarily young considering it's ten years since he was an Operalia finalist).

There are plenty of lyric tenors who are still too young to be considered yet in their prime (names such as Saimir Pirgu and Dmitry Korchak spring immediately to mind). The likes of Barry Banks and Paul Groves are never going to be considered glamorous, but it would be fool who avoided their performances because of a perception of an absence of glamour. And there are always new names emerging. Some won't make it, but some will. Last year I especially noticed Ed Lyon, Ji min Park and Ismael Jordi.

* excluding the world of the senile unmusical thicko from New York who vents his personal vendetta against Alvarez in an increasingly repetitive manner on sundry newsgroups