The wedding of Charles and Diana took place in 1981. I have some Diana talk in Impromptus today, because there is another royal wedding coming up — involving her elder son — and Paul Johnson was reminiscing to some of us about Diana (to whom he gave history lessons).

At the 1981 wedding, Kiri Te Kanawa sang — “Let the Bright Seraphim,” by Handel. Monday night, she was on the stage of Carnegie Hall, singing Strauss’s Four Last Songs. The orchestra was the NHK Symphony, from Japan, and the conductor was André Previn. Te Kanawa was famous in, oh, 1970. Previn was famous in the 1950s — and not the late 1950s either.

It was all very . . . autumnal. And this feeling was aided, of course, by the fact that the Four Last Songs is pretty much the most autumnal music ever composed. I tell you, it was amazing, hearing Te Kanawa accompanied by Previn, no matter the quality of the performance. (The soprano gave her official farewell recital in Carnegie Hall in 2007.) From my seat, Kiri still looked smashing. And Previn, no matter how hunched or infirm, is still the coolest kid on the block.

P.S. Previn, born in 1929, was originally called Andreas Ludwig Priwin. His parents named him after Beethoven — gave him a middle name after Beethoven, that is. The family got out in the nick of time: 1939. Went to Hollywood. And André Previn could not be stopped.