Upcoming Issue of Opera News

The September issue of Opera News is hitting newstands now, and it's really worth seeking out. (Its content is not yet up on the Opera News web site.) Just to point out a few highlights:

• Renee Fleming on current singers: "I just sang a gala last night in Montreal. ... It was Matthew Polenzani, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and me. And they were just spectacular. Spectacular. Those three artists have it all. Stage presence and beauty and charm and unbelievable virtuosity and charisma. There are probably fifteen singers about whom that could be said right now, and ten years ago, there ... three, maybe. The bar is very high right now." (from her cover-story interview with F. Paul Driscoll)
• A profile of the likeable, up-and-coming American tenor Lawrence Brownlee.
• Some perceptive comments on Leonard Bernstein's much-maligned Mass, from Nico Muhly. One sample: "I have always liked to think about Mass as a Christian appropriation of the pagan holiday that is West Side Story."
• And, in the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, yours truly has a signed article in the august pages of the world's pre-eminent opera magazine: a book review of a memoir by Michael Kaiser, who runs the Kennedy Center in Washington.

And, yes, I do work for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, publisher of Opera News, but I'm writing this of my own volition.

A Scorecard Might Help

Those of us who are fond of the music of France during the fin-de-siècle have our hands full keeping names straight. It’s not just about knowing your Chabrier from your Chausson. The great composer Gabriel Fauré had a dear friend named Gabriel Faure—no accent. Weirder still, Faure wrote a biography of Fauré—one that can presumably be shelved with equal usefulness by author or by subject.

But if that isn’t confusing enough, just think of the confusion that the Erlangers caused their local post offices. There’s Camille Erlanger, a Parisian, whose operas include Aphrodite, Saint Julien l’Hopitalier, and Le fils d’étoile, perhaps the only opera about Simon Bar-Kokhba. There’s Frédéric Erlanger, who was part German, part American, who held the title of Baron, lived in England, worked primarily as a banker, and wrote an opera called Tess, based on Hardy’s novel, to an Italian text by Puccini’s librettist Luigi Illica.

And then there’s Rodolphe Erlanger, also a Baron, resident of Tunisia, famous for his ethno-musicological investigations of the Arab world.

Camille was born in 1863; Frédéric in 1868; and Rodolphe in 1872. Three musical Erlangers born within nine years of each other, and none related!