The Book is open, but only just. I took a stab at updating one of my vanity pages a few days ago and decided to google Matthew Epstein for another innumerable time looking for a link to embed with his name. What I found is a Gold Mine.
Tim Page titled his lunch report “The Book of Matthew”. Tim’s scan of a very few pages in the book that is Matthew’s mind should have given him a better title, like: “The Title Page of the Book of Matthew”. That quibble aside, his article opens a small window on the arguments taking place in the inner circles of the Opera World.
Matthew looks great in the photo that Johannes Ifkovits took back in 2006. If the out of focus space behind Matthew in the photo is his Ansonia apartment, I fancy that at least one of the plants soaking up sun in the background to be a Blake donation to his decor. I love that sunny apartment, and I expect Matthew, a man of good taste, (He signed me up as an artist, didn’t he?) to hold onto it as long as his grip will allow. The “strong right arm” Tim quotes him putting on offer to artists should be matched on his left side, if his personal trainer is worth his/her salt. And, if he has been wiser than most tenors about his personal finances, then his rent will never be more than he can afford. A bit of tenor trivia… I remember Matthew telling me that his space at the Ansonia is a fraction of a larger apartment that belonged to Enrico Caruso.
Matthew’s health report that Tim includes in his “book” article is good news indeed. Once upon a time Matthew shared the news of his HIV positive report with Debbie and me at a restaurant on Manhattan. He told us that this news was fresh out of his doctor’s office which he had just visited that afternoon. He swore Debbie and me to secrecy, and we did our best to be supportive familial stand-ins and felt honored to be promoted to such intimate standing at table with him. It was only a few days later that his news was being offered to us again and again, always with the demand to keep it secret. No, Matthew didn’t forget and tell us again or again. Now that Opera News has made it public, I guess we can talk about it too.
There is a great big difference between personal and public information, and I respect the strictest interpretation of that division, but I wish Matthew would treat the world to a larger view of what he could call the public content of his “Book”. It would be wonderful if he cast even a little of what he knows and thinks into the communication universe in unfiltered form. The Tim Page article in Opera News is a nice teaser worth printing on the inside of a dust cover to a real book entitled “The Mind of Matthew” or on the landing page of a blog sight: http://www.MatthewEpstien.com or how about http://www.TheBookofMatthewEpstien.com.
Come on Matthew!! Tell us more! Forget Opera News. You’re too big for such small pages.
Matthew Epstein a couple of years ago.