Michael Tilson Thomas's fanboy meeting with James Brown (just scroll down & read post below) made Opera Chic think: if we could meet a composer, any composer, who would we choose?
As much as Opera Chic worships Verdi, we're sure that he'd bore us to death with the finer points of the boiling of his favorite cold cut, spalla cotta. So sorry, maestro Verdi! Beethoven we couldn't really have a conversation with, not because of his audio problems, but for his extreme case of crankiness. Haendel? Bah. Bach? Nah. Schubert? Maybe, ok. Bruckner would methodically bore us, too, and poor Gustav Mahler would just make Opera Chic anxious. Or sad. Or both. Bellini? A genius, but terrible personal hygiene, and we're pretty icky like that, Opera Chic is a girl who loves her running hot water (Barber Wilsons shower heads, of course) and Verde of Hampstead organic soaps, so no Bellini, sorry. Ol' Dirty Bastard? That'd be an interesting conversation, for sure, if he managed to stay awake long enough without dozing off in a drunken/drugged stupor. Lenny we'd love to meet, yes: we'd talk about fashion and Gershwin and how cool must have been to step on the Carnegie Hall podium that night in 1943, almost a boy, to replace Bruno Walter who had fallen ill. It'd be really cool, because we <3 Lenny so much.
But really, the answer, the obvious answer, is just one. And somebody already made the case. And you cannot say it any better than that:
If we could really encounter voices from the past, there is a musician I would like to meet -- it is Mozart. If I could choose, I would not ask for either Bach, Leonardo or Michelangelo, but just Mozart as I would like to understand who this man was and why there was such power beyond the natural and not supernatural in him that fills us with awe. Mozart gives you the idea of something more, which exists somewhere and has become music and taken a human form in him.
Mozart is clearly the expression of other worlds and other possibilities, which are revealed in him. Hence I would like to meet him face to face to see who this man was, who was charged with such boundlessness.
Riccardo Muti
You cannot say it any better, really.