Charlie Parker's Yardbird

I recently attended a performance of the contemporary opera "Charlie Parker's Yardbird," which, among other things, left me thinking about the age-old question of whether an individual's artistic or intellectual accomplishments stand on their own, or whether they are forever linked to the life of the person who created them and should be evaluated in that context.

For example, as a New York Times article of November 2019 asked: "Is it time to stop looking at Gaugin altogether?"  That would be because the French artist apparently repeatedly had sex with young girls during the years he lived in Tahiti and fathered children with one or more of them.