From an article by the singer Ian Bostridge in Prospect magazine:
I only met Pierre Boulez (born 1925) once, and the circumstances were not propitious. Back in 2010, I’d been asked to sing in Stravinsky’s short opera Le Rossignol; a concert performance with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by said Boulez. I agreed and put it to the back of my mind. Some months after the enquiry, I happened to be in the café of the Hotel Imperial in Vienna, having the best Wiener schnitzel in the world (by far) for lunch. As I walked into the loos for a postprandial pee, who should I bump into but Boulez? I knew who he was, of course; he had no idea who I was. I introduced myself, said we would soon be working together and he left, seeming a little dazed and confused. A few months later, I had to withdraw from the concert. I’d assumed Le Rossignol was in French. In fact, as any fule kno, the text is in Russian and I hadn’t left enough time to prepare. And so my only chance to work with one of the legends of 20th-century music, as composer and conductor, perished from my own ignorance.
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