for Il Postino at the Moores Opera Center at the University of Houston. At the time of his death, Catán was a member of the faculty at College of the Canyons and had been commissioned by the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin to write a new opera, Meet John Doe. Compositional style Catán composed his music in a neo-Romantic and lyrical style. Opera News stated that his music had "a distinctive lushness that seemed of a piece with the twentieth century's great movie music yet remained unquestionably operatic in scope." Accountable to constraints of their commissions, Catán's compositions stand clearly self-contained. Music critic David Patrick Stearns wrote, "Though Catán's style was often compared to that of Puccini and Debussy, it changed with every work, from the lush nature painting of Florencia en El Amazonas (1996) to the Cuban ethnic influences of Salsipuedes (2004), and the more integrated sonorities that portrayed the inner emotions of Il Postino (2010). Other critics noted the influences of Richard Strauss and Heitor Villa-Lobos with his orchestral structures. Of his own music Catán said, "I have inherited a very rich operatic tradition. In my work, I am proud to say, one can detect the enormous debt I owe to composers from Monteverdi to Alban Berg. But perhaps the greatest of my debts is having learnt that the originality of an opera need not involve the rejection of our tradition—which would be like blindly embracing the condition of an orphan—but rather the profound assimilation of it, so as to achieve the closest union between a text and its music." Catán also cited in many interviews Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold among those who had most influenced his music and compositional style. Personal life Catán was of Sephardic Jewish descent. He was married three times, the first two marriages ending with divorce. He and his first wife Liza had two children. He lived in South Pasadena, California at the time of his death. Works Ballet Ausencia de flores (Absence of Flowers) (1983) Chamber and instrumental Quintet (1972) Trío (1982) Cuando bailas, Leonor (1984) Adagio (tema del amor) (1994) Encantamiento, for flute and harp (2003) Sexteto (2003-2004) Concertino (2005) Divertimento (2005) Amaya (2009) Choral Cantata (1981) O, Pardon Me, Thou Bleeding Piece of Earth (2006) Film, theater and TV El medallón de Mantelillos (1982) Antonieta: A Musical