*HISTORIC RECORDING
Charles Paxton January 10th, 2008
by William Wood
When on the eighteenth of May, nineteen thirty six
A man in the stalls of the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden coughed two minutes into the
Prelude to act one of Tristan und Isolde
He could not have imagined how much he would spoil
The pleasure of a man in a new century
Listening in his electronic home to a
Digitally remastered compact disc of this
Historic recording, a performance even
Today unsurpassed, featuring Kirsten Flagstad
Lauritz Melchior and the cursed man with the cough.