¡Tunes offering us one of the more raffiniert and exquisite treasures of the operatic repertory, is doing J.C. Bach's Amadis des Gaules: A wonder in itself, but something rather more, in that, it proves, and proves amply, that Mozart 's and Gainsborough's (whose portrait of the Master this is) and my sense, that J.C. could, when he wanted, write music of stunning originality, depth, and beauty--and, what is more, music which is perfectly adapted for the human voice. Which his father, notably, in all charity, really did not have the knack of. If only this were being sung in its original French, not German, as these singers [of the Stuttgart Bach Collegium, directed by Helmuth Rilling] might so easily have done--I know a (brilliant, witty) woman from Stuttgart, who when she sees me immediately starts talking French to me. I asked her why; she said "Educated Germans prefer to talk French when they can." Alors, à propos des bottes:

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