Caro JMo: A Tribute to John Moriarty

Today would have been John Moriarty’s ninety-second birthday, and a year ago today was the last time I spoke with him.

With John Moriarty at the street named for him in Colorado

John was many men in one indomitable man: a virtuoso pianist with a pedigree stretching back to Busoni and Liszt via Egon Petri; an opera conductor who knew the art form from every angle; a stage director - by today’s standards, a very conservative one - for whom a character’s inner drama drove everything (he was heavily influenced by Italian Neorealism); an arts administrator who never forgot a name and remembered every audition he ever heard; a linguist specializing in operatic lyric diction, who nevertheless also championed the performance of opera in vernacular English; an author of books on diction and other matters, tantalizingly including an unpublished manuscript on the history of Santa Fe Opera; a historian of Americana and sharp-eyed collector of American antiques; to many, he was an educator who shared his vast knowledge and experience with generations of singers, pianists, conductors and stage directors, but to me, he was a friend.

During the year I spent in Boston I approached John to ask if I could sit in on his French diction and song literature classes at the New England Conservatory. I was hoping to at least observe and audit the class but ended up accompanying a remarkable group of singers. John never let the slightest error slide. I was once having trouble forming the French “œ” vowel, so John grabbed me by the face and squeezed my jaw in such a way that it had to produce that tricky sound. He was a stickler for details but his broader understanding of style and rubato was deep. His teaching revealed the universe of French poetry and song literature and unleashed my imagination. For anyone who has experienced this revelation, the soul soars at the mere thought of names like Duparc, Chabrier, Fauré, Hahn, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Éluard… I sadly don’t do much of this repertoire at this point in my life, but I cannot imagine conducting the orchestral works of Debussy and Ravel without having embraced their vocal music.

John’s connection to French music was direct. In Paris in the 1950s he accompanied the interpretation class of the baritone (or rather, baryton-martin) Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc’s recital partner and muse. John, who always took delight in the bawdy, was a silent witness to petty backstage arguments between Poulenc and Bernac before they would march onstage - all smiles - with John trailing behind to turn pages. John knew Poulenc during the composition of Dialogues des Carmélites, but it was after he returned to the States that he met the other composer closest to his heart - first steadily serving him his favorite American scotch, Chivas Regal, and later preparing and performing productions of his complete works for stage and voices at Santa Fe with with le maître himself. This was of course Igor Stravinsky. John revered him, and whenever I was studying his works, John’s keen memory recalled details of Stravinsky’s rehearsals to share with me. When I first learned A Rake’s Progress, I wrote John almost daily. John had played this pianistically impossible score for Stravinsky, and he reminded me that beneath the cool neoclassical exterior of this music there is a deep well of profound feeling that should be encouraged in performance.

I miss John’s wit and salty New England humor. (I once accidentally called him - trying to reach an Irish friend also named John - and told him to get his Irish ass to a particular bar in Harvard Square. He cackled so hard I was worried for his health.) I don’t remember what we talked about a year ago today, but the warm timbre of his voice is still in my ear. For over ten years I always called him on Christmas, but last year I did not, for no particular reason, and he was gone shortly thereafter. Today I perused the over two hundred e-mails we exchanged. We addressed each other with superlatives and diminutives in various languages, but the most frequent is “caro.” Sometimes I’m even “carissimo Levissimo,” and for the rest of my life John will remain affectionately in my heart and music-making as “caro JMo.”