Joel Honig.(Obituaries)(Obituary)

JOEL HONIG, Chicago, IL, October 13, 1936--New York City, September 25, 2003

With Joel Honig's recent death from renal cancer, OPERA NEWS lost a gifted writer who was one of the magazine's most provocative contributors for forty years. Joel generally produced his articles in a once-a-year rhythm. He would sign a contract only when the topic truly engaged him, and when he had developed a sufficiently strong point of view about it. My favorite of his many contributions was "Passing Time in Spoleto" [May, 1994], a brilliant meditation on his return, after a thirty-two-year absence, to Italy's Spoleto Festival, where he had once worked as personal secretary to Gian Carlo Menotti. The views stated in his articles were always well-considered but often cantankerous, and they reflected his deep connection to New York's cultural past. "I'm the one," he once laughed, "who's always telling you it's never been the same since Technicolor[R]."

Joel's gifts announced themselves at an early age. Always an avid reader, he was already devouring The New York Times at age five; his teachers attempted to skip him from kindergarten to fourth grade. He had a remarkable facility for the piano and studied privately at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1955, he entered Columbia ...