For Peter G. Davis

Peter G. Davis, the longtime classical critic of New York magazine, one of the best and wisest practitioners of this odd profession, has died at the age of eighty-four. Peter was best known as an authority on opera — his 1997 book The American Opera Singer is an essential work — but he covered every form of music-making with expertise and panache. He studied composition seriously in his youth, and that training showed whenever he approached new music. At Columbia he wrote a thesis on Richard Strauss's Daphne and Die Liebe der Danae. He also studied in Germany and Austria, and had many encounters with the extraordinary musicians of the mid-century. You had only to ask him about favorite performances of, say, Salome, and he'd describe outings by Welitsch, Borkh, and Varnay as if he'd heard them the day before. He had a marvelous wry sense of humor that gave a playful edge to his often very tart comments about the foibles of musical life. As a colleague, he was unassuming, sweet, and generous. When I was a neophyte critic, I received schooling through innumerable intermission chats, and felt a mixture of pride and insecurity when my installation at The New Yorker led me to be seated behind Peter at many events. I recall fondly certain moments at the Met when, about twenty minutes into a performance that was veering toward disaster, he'd incline his head ever so slightly in my direction, with an unmistakable signal of "Oh God, here we go." I feel much the same as when Andrew Porter died: an immense storehouse of experience and perception is suddenly gone. My heartfelt condolences to Scott Parris.