A large crow in the doomed saloon.(Music)(spell checking manuscripts)

MY ADMIRATION for the vanishing profession of humans who check written copy before it reaches official print is, within certain limits, unbounded. They are being made extinct by such unpredictable inventions as spellcheck, but they have been invaluable though never infallible. Here are some musical memorabilia for their epitaphs.

Take opera. An English newspaper reviewed an Offenbach operetta titled All Fierce in the Underworld. Another one translated Monteverdi's opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea as The Coronation of the Pope. A Verdi opera article discussed the love of Radames for AIDS; no wonder they locked him up in a subterranean isolation ward before he could spread it to Aida. The Duel Song from Act III of Gounod's Faust has been mentioned, and a popular musical was called Piddler on the Roof A translation referring to the magic bullets fired by Max in Weber's Der Freischutz asked, "Whence gottest thou such wondrous balls?" Operas are sometimes revised rather than revived. Purcell wrote the first English opera, titled Dildo and Aeneas. The Queen of Carthage must have been overworked. I have read of Gilbert and Sullivan's Goldoniers and Puccini's one-act opera Sour Angelica (perhaps the performance was a lemon).

Musical copy, in which I dabble, is very vulnerable. Bach's music has been divided into secular and scared, while the hymn I Need Thee Every Hour became I Need Three Every Hour. We have Chopin's Polonoises, a Schubert Leiderabend, and a Concerto for Voilin and Paino, presumably a transcription. A leading motet choir became a motel choir. We have read about Beethoven's famous Sympathy No. 5, and found Vaughan Williams engaged in an activity called tedeuming when he was merely writing a Te Deum. A setting of the Roman Missal became the Roman Missil, presumably with a defective nuclear warhead. In the baroque era, leading composers like Bach, Handel and Vivaldi became barbecue composers.

A composer who has been canonised is St. Ravinsky, notable for Rite of String and other ballet scores. The Media Strip Quartet turned out to be the fully-clothed Medici String Quartet. Olivier Messiaen's Quart for the End of Time was a pint or two short of the full quartet. We have had the Gilbert and Sullivan classic Princess Aida. Prominent Australian composer Carl Vine wrote a Cafe Concertino which in print became a Cathay Concertino. Sections of the Mass have clearly had something to do with a Scotsman named Angus Dei. A Freudian slip referred to a piece for choir and percussion as for choir and compassion. An Alliance Francaise scholarship took a pianist to Parish, presumably the clerical, or scared, capital of France.

We have had songs from a well-known soprana, presumably a female soprano. Violists turn into violinists, and recently one baffled the audience when she actually dazzled them. Brahms' lied Im Herbst (In Autumn) has been translated as I'm Herbert. The soloist with a Sydney orchestra sang an aria from Verdi's Rigoletto titled on the printed program as Wild Rose of Counties, which must have caused guffaws among a Wild Race of Courtiers. One of Verdi's top operas has been quoted as La Triviata. Then there is a popular violin encore by Sarasate called Gypsy Lawns. What on earth could that be? It turned out to be Gypsy Melodies, mistranslated from Zigeunerwiesen instead of Zigeunerweisen.

Factual boo-boos are not uncommon. A television guide about an SBS program called Great Cities of the World told us that "Vienna was also the birthplace of great classical composers such as Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms". I hope there were repercussions ...