Classical Life

Andrew Porter, who passed away last week at the age of 86, was the distinguished music critic at The New Yorker from 1972-1992. Alex Ross has a fascinating Postscript here.

I had but one personal encounter with the very friendly Porter, in 2000. It was a phone interview on the topic of his English-language translation of “The Magic Flute,” which Opera Pacific was about to perform at the time. Porter’s opera translations are the best I’ve encountered (I’ve heard several, including his Ring cycle). Here’s what he said, and I wrote, on the topic in 2000:

Largish bodies of water seem to have played an important part in Andrew Porter’s English translation of “The Magic Flute.”

“I sit in the bath thinking of each phrase,” says Porter, describing the process, “thinking about it always in the original language. And then trying to think what English words will make that particular phrase sound right musically.”

The former music critic of The New Yorker worked closely with the singers, too, such as his first Pamina. “We sat beside the pool in St. Louis and she would try this vowel and that vowel. And we found the one that worked.” It focuses the mind, water does.

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