Who's your "Diva"? →[More:]I can believe that the opera singer in the film was based on Jessye Norman - as I seem to recall reading once. Even though I had no idea who she was back when this became one of the seminal films of my adolescence, today her singing subjects me to the same enthrallment experienced by the hero.

So as a more creative choice, let me proclaim as my Diva the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida. In reviewing her cycle of Mozart's works for solo keyboard, the Third Ear guide to classical music said, "For some, she is the ultimate in this music." I'm one of them.

I had the great fortune to attend a concert of hers at Lincoln Center. She played one of the Beethoven concertos. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I no longer remember which one. I was too enchanted by the Presence - as I sought it through my binoculars - to pay the proper attention to the music.

Maybe it will make sense to you if you watch her performance of the exquisite slow movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C major, K.545.

So who's your Diva? (Or Divo, as the case may be.) That living artist of whom you might say - as someone once said of Van Morrison - "If they spoke my name aloud twice, I would follow them to the ends of the earth."