Ardoin, John, 1935-2001

ARDOIN, JOHN (1935–2001).John Ardoin, music critic, musicologist, and author, was born on January 8, 1935, in Alexandria, Louisiana. He developed an interest in opera around the age of twelve and was inspired by radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and by singers featured on the programs The Bell Telephone Hour and The Voice of Firestone. In the early 1950s his parents took him to see Carmen in New Orleans. Ardoin went to Denton to attend North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) but eventually transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a B.A. degree in music theory and composition. He went on to receive his M.A. from the University of Oklahoma and also did postgraduate studies at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He served in the United States Army and was stationed at Stuttgart, Germany, where he had occasional opportunities to experience some impressive operatic performances, including that of soprano Martha Mödl.

In the late 1950s, after returning to the United States, Ardoin lived in New York and began his career as a music writer and editor. He edited Musical America magazine and was the New York critic for Opera and The Times of London. He was also a staff writer for the Saturday Review of Literature and managing editor for the program books of Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center.

In 1966 Ardoin moved to Dallas and went to work as the music critic for the Dallas Morning News. He became only that newspaper’s second employed music critic; the first was John Rosenfield from 1925 to 1966. For more than thirty years he served as the city’s eminent voice on classical music. Ardoin was especially knowledgeable on the subject of opera and was internationally recognized as the foremost authority on the famed Maria Callas, known as the godmother of Dallas opera. He authored several books on Callas including Callas: The Art and the Life (with Gerald Fitzgerald, 1974) and Callas at Julliard: The Master Classes (1987) which inspired the Tony Award-winning Master Class by playwright Terrence McNally.

His influence as a “prominent and sometimes caustic commentator on the musical life of Dallas,” as the Dallas Morning News described him, reached beyond North Texas to international classical circles. Ardoin often appeared as a commentator on the weekly radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, and he served as a consultant for the PBS television series Great Performances for twenty years. Known as a musicologist with impeccable standards, Ardoin was considered “among the very great critics who viewed perfection as his standard…,” according to Dallas Morning News publisher Burl Osborne. His personal associations did not interfere with his uncompromising critiques; his friendship with Callas ended in 1974 when he wrote a negative review.

In addition to his studies on Callas, Ardoin wrote other books, including The Furtwängler Record (1994) about famed German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and Valery Gergiev and the Kirov: A Story of Survival (2001) about the history of the Mariinsky Theatre. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Texas in 1987. Ardoin retired from the Dallas Morning News in 1998 and moved to Costa Rica. He died there from lymphoma on March 18, 2001. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over Costa Rica. Notable celebrities who extended condolences included Van Cliburn, Walter Cronkite, and Beverly Sills. Ardoin had written the scripts for Cronkite’s narration of the Vienna Philharmonic’s telecasted New Year’s Day concerts, and the music critic had recently written the script for Beverly Sills for a Live From Lincoln Center telecast of La Bohème from the New York City Opera.

Name: John Louis Ardoin
[John L Ardoin]
Gender: Male
Race: White
Birth Date: 8 Jan 1935
Birth Place: Alexandria R, Louisiana
Death Date: 18 Mar 2001
Father:
Louis Ardoin
Mother:
Ruth Herren
SSN: 461529578
Notes: May 1951: Name listed as JOHN LOUIS ARDOIN; 14 Jun 2001: Name listed as JOHN L ARDOIN

John Ardoin, (January 8, 1935 in Alexandria, Louisiana – March 18, 2001 in San José, Costa Rica), was best known as the music critic of The Dallas Morning News for thirty-two years and especially for his friendship with and encyclopedic knowledge of the work of the famous opera soprano, Maria Callas, about whom he wrote four books. But his influence stretched much further than Dallas, and he knew many of the most important figures in classical music of the postwar era.

As a child of twelve, he became interested in listening to the Saturday Met broadcasts and also heard and saw many singers of the day on The Voice of Firestone, and The Bell Telephone Hour. As he notes, "the radio was my first important link to the whole world".[1] He also describes his first experiences of seeing opera:

it wasn't until I was about 16 or 17 I saw my first opera – the old Charles Wagner Company, which used to barnstorm around towns, with Beverly Sills. Wait, I should say, that was my second opera, because I heard my first opera, La bohème, and then I saw the next year this neighboring city was doing La traviata. I went, and there was a baby Bev and John Alexander.[2]

However, in the same interview, he recounts a visit to the opera in New Orleans with his parents in 1950 or 1951 to see Risë Stevens as Carmen.

Ardoin attended North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) in Denton and later transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. There he studied music theory and composition and obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree. Later, he received his Master of Arts from the University of Oklahoma at Norman and did postgraduate work at Michigan State University at East Lansing, Michigan.

During his army service spent in Stuttgart, (Germany), Ardoin had several important operatic experiences, not the least of which was a Ring cycle and a later Tristan und Isolde with the soprano Martha Mödl who "knocked me for a loop. From then on, I was searching for that same sort of incandescence in others…..Mödl was electricity – from her toes to the top of her head. Never once a second out of character. I mean, the concentration was so fierce".[2]

Upon returning to the US, he went to New York in the late 1950s and, for seven years, wrote about music. He was editor of Musical America magazine, managing editor of the program books for Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center, a writer for the Saturday Review of Literature, as well as New York critic for The Times of London and Opera.

In June 1966 he became the music critic at The Dallas Morning News, only the second person to do so, but his most well-known writings were about Maria Callas, who was considered the godmother of the Dallas Opera after her 1958 appearances there. He became friendly with Callas during the 1960s and his 1977 book, The Callas Legacy, is an overview of her recordings, now in its 4th edition. Callas at Juilliard (1988) focuses on her master classes given in New York in the 1970s and it inspired playwright Terrence McNally to write the Tony Award-winning play Master Class. Ardoin also collaborated with Gerald Fitzgerald, and in 1974 they published Callas: the Art and the Life.

Frequently, Ardoin was a commentator on the Metropolitan Opera's weekly radio broadcasts and was a consultant to the PBS Great Performances series for twenty years. He wrote the script for Walter Cronkite's narration of the New Year's Day international telecasts of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on New Year's Day.

He was given an honorary doctorate from the University of North Texas for his work in criticism in 1987, and, after retiring from the Morning News in 1998, Ardoin retired to Costa Rica.

... Ardoin’s love for artists as people, his zeal to be active somehow in the process of making music, is perhaps the most remarkable thing about him. “Critics are second-class citizens,” he says impatiently. “We don’t do. I’d love to do.” He took a year’s leave of absence from the newspaper to research a book on the Kirov, the great opera and ballet theater of St. Petersburg.

He didn’t sit getting eyestrain in the archives. From 1993-96 Ardoin had considerable influence on casting and repertory there, and the results were of sufficient international interest that the Met will sponsor a “Kirov” season next year.

“Larry Kelly was almost psychic about talent,” remembers Charlotte Schumacher. “He could be in the back of a crowded room and just feel there was someone special there.”

That rubbed off on Ardoin. He is one of the great discoverers of talent. The Kirov is run by Valéry Gergiev, the one youngish conductor regarded by most music business heavyweights as a “comer.” Ardoin’s was an early lonely voice crying his name in the West. Then there is Cecilia Bartoli. Jack Mastroiani discovered Bartoli and is her manager. “There was a time when Cecilia’s record company wasn’t sending out CDs,” says Mastroiani. “John heard her and started sending them out to other critics, to managers, to orchestras-he did it for free and at his own expense. He is one of the few nowadays who just believes in talent and will do anything to advance it.”

...

His New York agent, the formidable and frightening Helen Merrill-who died suddenly in August-dubbed him “Beloved Overfat.” (Merrill was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and though a tiny 80-year-old, once cowed a street gang bent on robbing her by snarling at them-softly.)

Merrill met Ardoin “when he was 23 and conquering New York” back in the late ’50s. Naturally she took credit for the Callas books. Stopping her lunch of red wine and unfiltered Camels, she coughed and said, “I said to him one day, ’Shut up about Maria this and Maria that and write about her!” Of course I said to him, ’As your agent I am duly bound to assure you the books won’t sell.’ And he said, ’I don’t care, I must write what I love.”’

She punched in five numbers on her cellular phone and growled, “The one thing you must know about John is he is an unbelievably hard worker.” Before she stomped out of the cafe, looking around hopefully for another gang to scare, she allowed, “I cried when he left for Dallas. But I understood. Good Texans have a need to go home.”

John Ardoin was born in Louisiana but settled in Port Arthur. Texas with his family when he was 3. John became an opera addict early. “My mother said as a child the only time I was quiet was when there was music on the radio. I grew up with the Met broadcasts. I’ve been collecting records since I was 12 years old. Across the street from my junior high school was the Port Arthur public library, and there 1 discovered writing about music. I remember the day I found the Metropolitan Opera Annals-what that was doing in Port Arthur, I’ve never known. I checked it out and kept it. I don’t think anyone else ever got near that book. I read every one of those casts.”

Ardoin’s mother died last year and he remembers her not only with love but gratitude. “I was very lucky. Mother saw to it I had piano lessons, and when I said I wanted to compose saw that I had composition lessons. And she drove me all over-bless her. Port Arthur had four community concerts a year. Orange had more, and we went to them all.”

Ardoin first attended North Texas State University and after two years switched to the University of Texas. In that orbit he met Ivan Davis, who was raised in Dallas. Davis is a virtuoso pianist of international standing, artist-in-residence at the University of Miami, and an opera obsessive. He’s Ardoin’s oldest friend-they’ve known each other for 45 years....