AT THE HALF: The Super Bowl musical performances year in, year out are some of the most heavily criticized. But this year’s seemed to attract extra venom. Things didn’t start out well when Christina Aguilera botched the lyrics to the National Anthem. And it was clear many a critic had his knives already sharpened for the Black Eyed Peas. Yahoo.com says, “there might not have been this uneventful a Bowl intermission since the Up With People era of no-name half-time shows.” And the newyorktimes.com Arts Beat blog collected a smattering of tweets about the show. (Personal favorite: “The Black Eyed Peas halftime performance? Mute.i.will.”) Mario Tarradell, who was at the stadium, liked the show alright. Though as he points out in his dallasnews.com review, Slash’s guitar work was kinda wasted.

WHITHER PRINCE? If you were following the saga of theEvent on Friday, you know that the Prince concert was called off in the afternoon. Then an hour later, we all received a “just kidding!” news release, saying the show was back on. And by the time folks showed up at the Hotel Inter-Continental with $1,500 tickets in hand, they were told that the show wasn’t happening after all. So what happened? Three days later, it’s still not exactly clear. But Preston Jones, along with other local music writers, worked the story diligently over the weekend. I fear my eyes would roll back in my head if I tried to explain it all, so if you’re interested, check Preston’s dfw.com story with its multitude of updates.

ON TO OPERA: How about one last item that has absolutely nothing to do with football? The Dallas Opera opens Romeo and Juliet on Friday. The show is being directed by Michael Kahn, the artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. And he talked to theatejones.com about some of the differences between Shakespeare’s play and Gounod’s opera. “Gounod allows them a final moment and Shakespeare doesn’t. But this is an opera, alter all. No one dies in an opera without a final duet (laughs). The audience demands it (laughs again). But seriously, it is really a small concession to the art form and the music is gorgeous.”