In Brief

Here is your regular Sunday dosage of interesting items, from Blogville and beyond:

• Now installed in New York, soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird is covering the role of Jano in the Met's production of Jenůfa this spring. This week, Karita Mattila started rehearsals, and Jano was sick, so Coach sent in Anne-Carolyn. [The Concert]
  
• January 17 was the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the oddest and most surprising of influential early Americans. [Wonkette]
  
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge is responsible for an anonymous English translation of Goethe's Faust. Of several possible authors suggested by literary specialists, a computer program called Stylometrics matched the translation to the characteristic vocabulary of Coleridge's works. A new edition of the Coleridge translation will be published in September. [The Literary Saloon]
  
• Jessica Duchen should probably stop reviewing Juan Diego Flórez, now starring with Natalie Dessay in La Fille du Régiment at Covent Garden, since she WANTS TO MARRY HIM. [Jessica Duchen]
  
• The reviews of and comments on Robert Ashley's new opera, Concrete, have been fascinating. Not least because they come from corners not normally concerned with music. [James Wagner]
  
• Matthew Guerrieri takes a look at what the American government funded during the Federal Music Project. You don't have to tell me: the United States needs a Department of Culture. We just have to stop spending so much money on the military. [Soho the Dog]
  
• Stephen Frears made an excellent movie in The Queen. He will be President of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in May. [Le Figaro]