More Soprano, Please, More Tenor

           My new favorite Prague ticket taker is the one     to whom I present myself for the Czech Philharmonicconcert which started at 7:30, only I have arrived          at 8:00, since the majority or at least the plurality     of every other musical event I have ever been toin my entire life has started at that hour, and this is          because he, the ticket taker, says, "The second half

          is the best—that's the Dvořák." The first half     was Brahms, about whom the less said, the better.Well, not really. I like him fine now, though not          as much as I like Dvořák. And even when I thought     I didn't like Brahms, my dislike wasn't so strongthat I didn't have to be reminded of it from time          to time. One Christmas my hardshell Baptist

          brother-in-law is visiting with his six-year-old son,     and we are decorating the tree, and oneof the decorations is a tiny St. Peter's Cathedral,          and the little boy says, "What's this?" and Barbara     says, "It's a church, a Catholic church,"and the little boy says, "We hate Catholics,          right, Dad?" Back then, that's the way I felt

          about Brahms. Like everybody, I love Bach,     Beethoven, and Mozart, but wheneverI found myself flipping through the program          as I waited for the orchestra to begin and saw     Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, and the like,I always pointed to Brahms's name and said,          "We hate Brahms, right, Barbara?" and she

          would say no, we just don't like him as much     as we do the others. Actually, Brahms was pretty cagey:when his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Opus 15          premiered in 1859, the audience didn't like it     because it had an at-that-time-unfamiliar symphoniccharacter, and the people in the posh seats were          expecting something they were used to. The 25-year-old

          Brahms thought better of his work than they did,     though, so he kept working it into performancesover the next several decades until it became          a standard in the repertoire of concert pianists     and today is one of the most popular pianoconcertos of all time. Oh, wait, now he's my hero.          I used to think I didn't like Brahms, but now I do.

          In truth, my new favorite Prague ticket taker     is my only Prague ticket taker, since I've been tothat storied city just once and heard the Czech          Philharmonic just once and spent the rest     of my days there wandering the streets and thinkingabout music and the lives of the people          who make it and my own life and pausing from time

          to time to drink slivovitz and eat sausages,     dumplings, strudel. The more you know,the more you sympathize: the great love          of Brahms's life was Clara Schumann, whom     he met when he was twenty and she not only14 years older but married to Robert          Schumann as well as the mother of his six children

          and pregnant with a seventh—talk about unattainable!     Yet Brahms soldiered on, producing one workafter another and convincing people to love them,          using the method outlined above. Actually, the one     composer for whom my affection has never waveredin the least is Puccini, and of all his monumental works—     Turandot, Tosca, Manon Lescaut—

          the most majestic is La Bohème, of which there is no     greater tale of woe, as Shakespeare saidof his own great tale of woe, Romeo and Juliet,          which itself became an opera by Charles Gounod,     though not a very good one or at least an opera,which music critic Sutherland Edwards called,          following its first London performance in 1867,

          "always pleasing, though seldom impressive."La Bohème is always impressive. Even bad     productions of La Bohème are good, though one          in my experience stands head and shoulders     above all others. You know the story: Rodolfothe writer is freezing to death in his Paris garret          when Mimi, his neighbor, pops in to borrow

          matches but faints and...