V podstatě nejpoutavějším z uvedených melodramů bylo „The Mystery of Man“ (Tajemství Člověka) od českého skladatele Emila Viklického. Autor vybral útržky Havlových projevů a dopisů z vězení a vetkal je do libreta, jež přednesli Mario Van Peebles a Alfre Woodardová spolu s hudbou Ellingtonovského rozmachu, plnou citového rozpoložení a dramatického napětí.

Všichni zúčastnění interpreti usilovali o vytvoření působivého celku, obzvláště dirigent David Berger (povolán Wyntonem Marsalisem „zpět do akce“), jenž decentně usměrňoval role jednotlivých účastníků koncertu. Stejně bouřlivě, jak může někdy Václav Havel mluvit na veřejnosti, bylo celé představení působivé svou rafinovanou jemností a současně naléhavostí.

By Gene Seymour, staff writer, www.newsday.com, Nov 1st, 2004.

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Conceptually, the most absorbing of the presentations was "The Mystery of Man," by Czech composer Emil Viklicky, which took fragments from Havel's prison letters and speeches and weaved them into a spoken-word libretto with Van Peebles and Woodard trading verbal choruses with the music's Ellingtonian sweep of mood and drama. All involved were challenged to make it through this complex course, especially conductor David Berger ("called back into action," as Marsalis put it), who quietly put forth a clinic on deploying cues. As windy as Havel's public rhetoric can sometimes be, the whole piece made a deep impression with both its intricacy and its insistence.

 Gene Seymour, staff writer, www.newsday.com, Nov 1st, 2004

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The program did have its share of happy marriages. Emil Viklicky cloaked the writings of Vaclav Havel in two distinctly different garments – a slinky, flirtatious raiment to accompany an early work and a gray, bluesy fleece that provided a huddling place for a prison letter afforded a witty reading by Mario Van Peebles.

David Sprague – VARIETY, Oct. 29, 2004

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Czech Republic composer Emil Viklicky wrote a pulsing, alluring work, with a long, pensive blues movement, to words by Czech playwright, and former political prisoner and then president Vaclav Havel. During the blues section, Alfre Woodard and Mario Van Peebles read Havel's words as if they were singing those blues.

Zan Stewart, The Star-Ledger, Oct. 30, 2004, New York