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Editor’s note: Opera and the Morbidity of Music, the collected commentaries for The New York Review of Books by noted critic and UC Berkeley music professor emeritus Joseph Kerman, will be published next month. This appreciation appeared in The Review in 1981, four years after the death of Maria Callas.

If Pauline Viardot hadn’t actually lived, some opera composer might have invented her. The life of the 19th-century French singer-composer is the stuff of drama, and nearly a century after her death, she remains one of the more intriguing figures of European musical history. If you’ve been to a vocal recital in the last few decades, chances are you’ve heard Viardot’s work as a composer.

Editor's Note: The new book Artists in Exile, written by the noted music critic and lecturer Joseph Horowitz, analyzes the ways in which émigré artists made an impact on American culture and were in turn influenced by it.

Ed Sullivan, it is said, had a surefire method for putting together a successful show: Open big, schedule a good comedy act, put in something for children, and keep it clean. If only planning a symphony season were that easy.

What would happen if you took the “postmodern” project to its logical conclusion and eradicated the theoretical, conceptual, and practical boundaries between large genres of music like, say, classical, jazz, popular, sound experiments, and electronic composition?

What would happen if you took the “postmodern” project to its logical conclusion and eradicated the theoretical, conceptual, and practical boundaries between large genres of music like, say, classical, jazz, popular, sound experiments, and electronic composition?

What would happen if you took the “postmodern” project to its logical conclusion and eradicated the theoretical, conceptual, and practical boundaries between large genres of music like, say, classical, jazz, popular, sound experiments, and electronic composition?

What would happen if you took the “postmodern” project to its logical conclusion and eradicated the theoretical, conceptual, and practical boundaries between large genres of music like, say, classical, jazz, popular, sound experiments, and electronic composition?

If the name Composers Inc. evokes thoughts of a corporate approach to music making, think again. This may very well be the most open-minded, eclectic new-music series in town. Composers Inc. was formed in 1984 as a nonprofit advocate for living American composers.