Robert Alfred Simon was an American writer, translator, and music critic for The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

 from its first issue in 1925 until 1948. A graduate of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, in addition to his original fiction he wrote opera and musical comedy libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

s for several composers. In 1927 he penned a widely-praised English translation of Gounod's Faust for Vladimir Rosing

Vladimir Rosing

Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing , aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States...

's American Opera Company

American Opera Company

The American Opera Company was the name of four different opera companies active in the United States. The first company was a short-lived opera company founded in New York City in February, 1886 that lasted only one season...

.

His writing varied in subject from social criticism (Our Little Girl) to detective fiction (The Weekend Mystery) to the satire of artists and musicians (Sweet & Low).

Books

• Our Little Girl (1923)
• The Week-end Mystery (1926)
• Sweet & Low: A Smashing Indictment of the Younger Generation (1926)
• Bronx Ballads (1927) [Editor]
• The Pamphlet Poets: The New York Wits" (1927) [Editor]

Translations

• Fräulein Else (1926) by Arthur Schnitzler
  Arthur Schnitzler
  Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
  
  
• Faust (1927) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
  
  

Librettos

• The Swordsman (1927) musical play based on The Three Musketeers
  The Three Musketeers
  The Three Musketeers is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized in March–July 1844. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard...
  
   by Alexandre Dumas, père
  Alexandre Dumas, père
  Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
  
   composed by Louis E. Gensler
• Maria Malibran (1935) opera composed by Robert Russell Bennett
  Robert Russell Bennett
  Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...
  
  
• Garick (1937) opera composed by Albert Stoessel
  Albert Stoessel
  Albert Frederic Stoessel was an American composer, violinist and conductor.He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1894. He studied music at the Berlin Hochschule as a pupil of Emanuel Wirth and Willy Hess...
  
  
• Beauty and the Beast (1937) opera composed by Vittorio Giannini
  Vittorio Giannini
  Vittorio Giannini was a neoromantic American composer of operas, songs, symphonies, and band works.-Life and work:...
  
  
• Rehearsal Call (1962) opera composed by Vittorio Giannini
• Count Ory: a comic opera in two acts (1963) composed by Vittorio Giannini

Sources

• New York Times, Obituary: Robert Simon, Writer, Librettist And New Yorker Music Critic, 84, 28 April 1981