Remembering Goldberg

Even though it is a common denominator for all of us at some time, the death of Albert Goldberg and the rather touching “An Appreciation” by Martin Bernheimer (Feb. 6) started this day on a sad note for me. So much of what Bernheimer wrote about Goldberg brought back memories to me. On the few occasions at operas and recitals that I conversed with Albert, he struck me not only as the lucid, perceptive critic that he was, but as a consummate gentleman. The amenities, the social graces, were always there.

I really only began to take note of opera in my student days, later studied voice and sang a bit, and it was in those days when the San Francisco Opera used to make annual visits to the Shrine Auditorium that I became an avid reader of Goldberg’s opera reviews for The Times. There was always that eagerness and anticipation to get his “slant” on a production. It became ritualistic.

The last time I spoke with the then emeritus critic was when I spied him at the last recital of the great diva Lily Pons in Palm Springs in 1973. His review read, “. . . Unmistakably Lily Pons!” Goldberg’s writing through the years surely causes me to add, “Unmistakably Albert Goldberg!”

FRANK R. WYNNE, Los Alamitos