Arthur Roger Crane was born in New York City in 1971 into a classical music-loving family with a Hungarian mother. He grew up in an international environment just outside of Washington D.C., where he developed a love of languages, opera, history and literature, and also played piano, flute and piccolo. After graduating with a liberal arts degree from Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College near Philadelphia, he moved to Budapest in 1999 to study at Corvinus University. Aside from handling the English-language surtitles for many of the Hungarian State Opera's productions, he is responsible for translating and editing much of the other English-language material published by its artistic and marketing departments and serves as an informal resource in various cultural, historical and linguistic matters.