Ian Strasfogel

I remember Luciano best when he was living in New York in the 1960s and a new and animating presence at the Juilliard School. He asked me to direct a double bill of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Passaggio in New York and Cambridge and we spent many months, usually late at night, hashing things out with lots of heated arguments and even more wild laughter. I cherish a group of hilarious, passionate and brilliant letters he sent me during this period, while I still was serving in the U.S. Army, «final proof,» as he put it, «that your soul really belongs to a pre-Nazi bourgeois society.»
What a delight, what an honor to be called «beloved» or «honey» by such a world genius.
How terribly I miss him.

Ian Strasfogel

Juilliard program notes (page with subtitles and text written four hands by Luciano Berio and Ian Strasfogel)