Andrew McGregor wrote a positive review for
BBC Music, stating that the video for the third act (“Dolly”) was the most effective and arguing that “Reich and Korot can't give you the answer [to where the human race is headed], but they frame the questions more memorably and insistently than most.” Kila Packett also gave the opera a positive review in
PopMatters; she argued that the first act (“Hindenburg”) is the most musically satisfying and the third act the most thought-provoking, and interpreted the work as a “a bittersweet love letter romanticizing the tragic beauty of destruction and the inevitable folly of human achievement”, but she found Korot's work on the first act to “lack visual imagination”. Andrew Clements of
The Guardian awarded
Three Tales a full five stars, writing “The three movements get progressively weightier, more discursive, more visually inventive [...] this piece represents a quantum leap in complexity and technological achievement.” K Smith wrote an unfavorable review in
Gramophone, stating that Reich and Korot seem oblivious to “how the Faustian pact with technology that they decry in society has also affected their own work.” Smith argued, “In both its emotional evocations as well as its compositional process,
Three Tales is highly manipulative. [...] For artists so quick to criticise others for playing God, they prove vulnerable to the same temptation themselves.” In 2016, Clements ranked the piece as one of Reich's 10 greatest. ==Recordings==