John Ardoin

John Ardoin, (January 8, 1935 in Alexandria, Louisiana – March 18, 2001 in San José, Costa Rica), was best known as the music critic of The Dallas Morning News for thirty-two years and especially for his friendship with and encyclopedic knowledge of the work of the famous opera soprano, Maria Callas, about whom he wrote four books. But his influence stretched much further than Dallas, and he knew many of the most important figures in classical music of the postwar era.

As a child of twelve, he became interested in listening to the Saturday Met broadcasts and also heard and saw many singers of the day on The Voice of Firestone, and The Bell Telephone Hour. As he notes, “the radio was my first important link to the whole world”. He also describes his first experiences of seeing opera:

However, in the same interview, he recounts a visit to the opera in New Orleans with his parents in 1950 or 1951 to see Risë Stevens as Carmen.

Ardoin attended North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) in Denton and later transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. There he studied music theory and composition and obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree. Later, he received his Master of Arts from the University of Oklahoma at Norman and did postgraduate work at Michigan State University at Lansing, Michigan.

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