Elementary, my dear Isolde

My wife and I are hooked on the new CBS show Elementary, the latest in the genre of "this guy is half nuts but he can solve crimes like Sherlock Holmes!" And in this case, it's true, because the show puts a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, a recovering drug addict, in New York City, where he helps the NYPD get the bad guys, assisted by Dr. Joan Watson. Holmes is played by Jonny Lee Miller and Watson by Lucy Liu.

In the pilot, there's a scene in which Dr. Watson has gone to the opera, but Holmes needs to talk to her about the current case, so he shows up mid-performance, finds her and climbs over several patrons to discuss it, occasionally being shushed by others in the audience. I wouldn't have been so polite.

But what grabbed my attention was the music -- the opera he interrupts is Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. It's part of the enchanting second-act duet, and the two singers are shown briefly although the music continues throughout the scene with Holmes and Watson.

The producers chose two up-and-coming young opera singers for this short scene -- soprano Melissa Zapin and baritone Randal Turner. That's right, a baritone, even though Tristan is a tenor, or more specifically a heldentenor. Turns out the real opera singers playing the scene were lip-synching the Tristan duet.

Turner told his home-town newspaper: "People wondered why they couldn't just get an actor to do it. ... It's because it would be difficult for an actor to memorize and sing in German and to breathe where an opera singer would without actually being trained on how to do it."

So, like everybody on TV, these singers were apparently chosen for their looks -- Ms. Zapin is a former Miss Hawaii, and the buff Mr. Turner has been featured on a website called Barihunks. Who knew?

Anyway, in the second episode of the show, Holmes and Watson are walking in Manhattan and pass a sidewalk cafe, where he makes a point to his assistant using a patron's drink. As they're walking away, we see a sign in the background that says "Cafe Isolde."

I was hooked. Not only is it a good show, but it looked like the Tristan references, or maybe similar ones, were going to be a regular occurrence.

Alas, it has turned out not to be. I have yet to see one since. Oh, well. I still like the show.