Finished WORKING

Today I finished reading the Studs Terkel book WORKING.  Some really good "slice of life" stories in it.

I've resumed reading the "Intoxication" issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  I was reading it during the idle periods at the opera this evening.  Intoxication was an appropriate theme since we were putting on TALES OF HOFFMANN.  Lawrence mentioned that it's one of his favorite periodicals.  I found a quote where Rossini told Balzac: "Coffee is an affair of fifteen or twenty days; just the right amount of time, fortunately, to write an opera." William said that quote was awesome.

In the master class, William and Rob are singing "Au fond du temple saint," the famous duet from Georges Bizet's THE PEARL FISHERS.  A wonderful number, but very challenging for singers.  Giuseppe mentioned that Jussi Bjoerling and Robert Merrill did a famous version of it, so I listened to it on Youtube.  I also heard Bjoerling doing a nice aria from the same opera, "Je crois entendre encore."

Bizet was just 25 when he composed THE PEARL FISHERS! (Rossini was even younger when he did THE BARBER OF SEVILLE.) He died before he was forty, just after he achieved immortality with CARMEN.  Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin all died young, but they were so prolific during their short time that their careers seem full.  Of all the early deaths in music, Bizet's is one of the most tragic because he hadn't composed so much. (And his widow was careless with his archive:  his original handwritten PEARL FISHERS score is lost.) What other great operas might he have come up with?