Countermelody
284 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsCountermelody devoted to the glories of the human voice raised in song.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Episode 259. Lawrence Winters Revisited
April 27, 2024 04:40 - 1 hour - 107 MBDuring the first season of Countermelody I presented the great African American baritone Lawrence Winters in an episode which paired him with his contemporary Robert McFerrin. Today Winters (born Lawrence Whisonant in South Carolina on 12 November 1915 and died of cancer in Hamburg at age 49 on 24 September 1965) returns center stage to Countermelody in a program which focuses on his prowess in standard operatic repertoire and art song. After vocal study with Todd Duncan at Howard University,...
Episode 258. (Frank) Lopardopalooza
April 18, 2024 17:35 - 1 hour - 107 MBToday I present to you the American lyric tenor Frank Lopardo, who from 1984 through 2014 appeared in all the major opera houses of the world, celebrated particularly for his Mozart and Rossini roles. Too often today these superb singers even from the recent past are forgotten by today’s audiences, and my listeners know that it is always a mission of mine to celebrate great artists who, for whatever reason, are not in the forefront of the public’s awareness. In Frank’s case, I suggest it has ...
Episode 257. The Marvelous Marvis Martin
April 09, 2024 22:56 - 1 hour - 85.6 MBI have been juggling a number of brand new episode ideas for the coming weeks, but when I discovered that Sunday April 7 was the birthday of Marvis Martin, one of my favorite sopranos, I put all those ideas on the back burner and eagerly put together this birthday tribute to a singer who not only is celebrated as possessing one of the most beautiful voices of her generation, but who has also had a long, successful, and unconventional career. For whatever arbitrary reason, Marvis Martin made o...
Episode 256. Mari Lyn’s Golden Treasury of Chutzpah (Alternate Universe Bel Canto III)
April 01, 2024 23:11 - 1 hour - 85.9 MBMany of my listeners look forward with eager anticipation to my annual April Fool’s episodes, and today’s packs a particularly powerful punch! A few months back my friend Thomas Bagwell, a perpetual friend of the podcast, told me he had a dub of a rare recording on Philips Records [sic] by the New York-based soprano Mari Lyn, well known as the Singing Hostess of the 1980s public access cable television program The Golden Treasury of Song. On the spurious LP she sings Verdi and Puccini arias a...
Episode 255. Art Songs for Holy Week
March 28, 2024 19:18 - 1 hour - 84.4 MBI return to you with one final episode for the month of March, again focusing on Holy Week. In this case, I present to you art songs on contemplative, Biblical, even Lenten themes. Composers represented include Dvorák, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, as well as Wolf and Brahms. The final works of both of these composers are song cycles, Wolf’s Michelangelo-Lieder and Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge. Both works are heard in their entirety in performances both celebrated and virtually unknown. ...
Episode 254. Holy Week with the Romantics
March 27, 2024 22:26 - 1 hour - 102 MBOnce again we have reached the climax of the penitential season of Lent, the most theologically significant week in the Christian calendar, namely Holy Week. Even for those who are not observant Christians, this period, standing as it does on the threshold of spring, the season of rebirth, can be a time of meditation and remembrance. To help support this contemplative moment I have compiled selections from some of the larger oratorios and liturgical works composed during the Romantic era perf...
Episode 253. Randall Scarlata Introduces Gérard Souzay (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 25, 2024 08:34 - 1 hour - 102 MBThe French baritone Gérard Souzay was born Gérard Tisserand on 8 December 1918 and died in Antibes on 17 August 2004. This episode was one of my first episodes, originally posted in honor of his then 101st birthday. It has been chosen by my friend Randall Scarlata as his Listeners’ Favorite episode in the last of this month’s Great Baritones series, and this is particularly appropriate and moving, because from the age of 19 until Souzay’s death, Randall had a close association with Souzay as ...
Episode 252 – Zsolt Bognár Introduces A Baritonal Schubertiade (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 20, 2024 20:48 - 1 hour - 124 MBI was thrilled to discover a while back that the pianist, interviewer, and journalist Zsolt Bognár, who produces the video series Living the Classical Life, is a devoted fan of Countermelody. We recently met up in person in NYC, where we discussed, among many other things, the supremacy of Franz Schubert and how his humanity finds perfect expression in his compositions. Zsolt has graciously provided the introduction to this episode, one of my favorites in the history of the podcast, which I o...
Episode 252. Zsolt Bognár Introduces A Baritonal Schubertiade (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 20, 2024 20:48 - 1 hour - 124 MBI was thrilled to discover a while back that the pianist, interviewer, and journalist Zsolt Bognár, who produces the video series Living the Classical Life, is a devoted fan of Countermelody. We recently met up in person in NYC, where we discussed, among many other things, the supremacy of Franz Schubert and how his humanity finds perfect expression in his compositions. Zsolt has graciously provided the introduction to this episode, one of my favorites in the history of the podcast, which I o...
Episode 251. Jeremy Osborne Introduces Igor Gorin (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 18, 2024 08:07 - 1 hour - 82.6 MBToday’s segment in the Great Baritones division of my Listeners’ Favorites series is introduced by my friend, baritone Jeremy Osborne, like me an American expat in Berlin. In the nearly ten years that I have known him, Jeremy has developed into a fine singer of both opera and art song. Through talent, determination, and hard work, Jeremy is forging a well-deserved place for himself in the music world. The singer he has chosen to introduce on this episode is the the great Ukranian-American bar...
Episode 250. Julian Long Introduces Jorma Hynninen (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 13, 2024 11:42 - 1 hour - 119 MB(Leavin’ on a jet plane this afternoon, so posting a day or so early!) It is a wonderful thing when friends share a favorite singer. Such is the case with my friend of long-standing, Julian Long (once one reaches a certain age, one no longer uses the term “old friend”). As part of this month’s series of Listeners’ Favorites episodes, Julian has been kind enough to record a new intro for a Countermelody episode that I posted three years ago as a birthday tribute to the marvelous Finnish barit...
Episode 249. Gavin Carr Introduces Heinrich Rehkemper (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 11, 2024 18:02 - 1 hour - 106 MBThis month’s series of Listeners’ Favorites continues with the baritone Heinrich Rehkemper (1894-1949), presented to you today by my dear friend, the esteemed conductor Gavin Carr, who is the very person that first introduced him to me many years ago now. Rehkemper is one of a number of exceptional German baritones of that era who represent a very different kind of singing than we are accustomed to today: full-throated voices with an even scale from top to bottom managed with no technical gim...
Episode 248. Thomas Bagwell Introduces Bernard Kruysen
March 08, 2024 17:03 - 1 hour - 116 MBOne of my best and truest friends in the business is the phenomenal pianist, coach, and conductor Thomas Bagwell. Our friendship really developed back in the days when we curated a series of recitals for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, which Thomas also (brilliantly) accompanied. Since then we are both carving out different lives for ourselves on the other side of the pond, me as your intrepid Berlin-based podcaster, and Thomas as a valued coach and conductor on the music staff of the Royal Dan...
Episode 248. Thomas Bagwell Introduces Bernard Kruysen (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 08, 2024 17:03 - 1 hour - 116 MBOne of my best and truest friends in the business is the phenomenal pianist, coach, and conductor Thomas Bagwell. Our friendship really developed back in the days when we curated a series of recitals for the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, which Thomas also (brilliantly) accompanied. Since then we are both carving out different lives for ourselves on the other side of the pond, me as your intrepid Berlin-based podcaster, and Thomas as a valued coach and conductor on the music staff of the Royal Dan...
Episode 247. Sarah Pillow Introduces Eileen Farrell (Listeners’ Favorites)
March 05, 2024 13:04 - 1 hour - 105 MBMy dear friend and colleague soprano Sarah Pillow introduces one of her favorite Countermelody programs, which I repost as the first of this month’s Listeners’ Favorites episodes. Since Sarah is herself an enormously eclectic singer, it’s entirely fitting that she should choose to foreground Eileen Farrell. The American dramatic soprano Eileen Farrell (1920–2002) was one of the finest and most versatile singers the United States has ever produced. Her singing career lasted more than fifty yea...
Episode 247. Sarah Pillow Introduces Eileen Farrell
March 05, 2024 13:04 - 1 hour - 105 MBMy dear friend and colleague soprano Sarah Pillow introduces one of her favorite Countermelody programs, which I repost as the first of this month’s Listeners’ Favorites episodes. Since Sarah is herself an enormously eclectic singer, it’s entirely fitting that she should choose to foreground Eileen Farrell. The American dramatic soprano Eileen Farrell (1920–2002) was one of the finest and most versatile singers the United States has ever produced. Her singing career lasted more than fifty yea...
Episode 246. Previn Moore Introduces Camilla Williams and Janet Williams (Listeners’ Favorites)
February 28, 2024 07:31 - 1 hour - 106 MBAs the final entry in this year’s Black History Month episodes, my dear friend Previn Moore introduces his Listeners' Favorites choice, an episode I published in the early months of Countermelody back in the fall of 2019. It features two phenomenal Black sopranos whose friendship and mentorship Previn outlines in detail in an introductory interview I did with him at his home in Vienna this past week. This episode features the phenomenal, the legendary, the pathbreaking soprano Camilla William...
Episode 246. Previn Moore Introduces Camilla Williams and Janet Williams
February 28, 2024 07:31 - 1 hour - 106 MBAs the final entry in this year’s Black History Month episodes, my dear friend Previn Moore introduces his Listeners' Favorites choice, an episode I published in the early months of Countermelody back in the fall of 2019. It features two phenomenal Black sopranos whose friendship and mentorship Previn outlines in detail in an introductory interview I did with him at his home in Vienna this past week. This episode features the phenomenal, the legendary, the pathbreaking soprano Camilla William...
Episode 245. Tell It to the World – Germany
February 27, 2024 06:27 - 1 hour - 85.4 MBHere is the second of a two part series in celebration of David Savran’s new book, Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad, a monumental study on transnationalism and the Broadway-style musical. In the first part, David and I spoke about (and played examples from) the rich culture surrounding musicals in South Korea. Today’s episode focuses on Germany and the influx of Broadway musicals since World War II. Although the German-speaking world has a long tradition of popular music thea...
Episode 244. Veronica Tyler (BHM 2024)
February 23, 2024 09:08 - 59 minutes - 63.5 MBThis Countermelody episode is the last in my miniseries featuring artists from Baltimore. It is also the last in my new episodes for Black History Month 2024 featuring “Forgotten Divas.” Today I offer to you the absolutely divine soprano of Veronica Tyler (1939-2020), who fits all three categories. In the 1960s, Veronica Tyler was a name on everyone’s lips: she appeared on three different episodes of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, she was the second prize winner of the Internati...
Episode 243. Ethel Ennis (BHM 2024)
February 21, 2024 20:52 - 1 hour - 80.8 MBToday’s “Forgotten Diva” takes us outside of the realm of opera and into the rich musical field of jazz. I have been in musical heaven the past few days as I’ve been savoring the output of the great Ethel Ennis (28 November 1932 - 17 February 2019). In her native Baltimore she was known as the “First Lady of Jazz,” and while this might cause some persons to look askance at such a claim, I can only say that they have not yet sampled the vocal, musical and interpretive majesty that is Ethel Enn...
Episode 242. Damon Evans Introduces George Shirley (Listeners’ Favorites IX)
February 19, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour - 112 MBThis week I present a Countermelody mini-series paying tribute to three great African American artists who were born in Baltimore. First up is the eclectic, versatile, and prodigiously talented Damon Evans, who introduces the latest Listeners’ Favorites episode, a tribute to an idol we both treasure, the phenomenal and pathbreaking George Shirley, who on April 18 will celebrate his 90th birthday. Damon chose to do his introduction as an interview, so as a prelude to the main episode, my liste...
Episode 241. Tell It to the World: Korea
February 16, 2024 08:55 - 1 hour - 71.9 MBLast month Oxford University Press published my dear friend David Savran’s Tell It to the World, a monumental study on transnationalism and the Broadway-style musical. The book focuses on two specific markets: South Korea and Germany. To help David get the word out about his book, over the next few weeks I am featuring two different episodes of Countermelody in which David and I discuss the themes and concerns of the book, as well as playing short musical examples to illustrate those points. ...
Episode 240. Annabelle Bernard (BHM 2024)
February 15, 2024 11:14 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBLast week we celebrated the 97th birthday of our Ur-Diva, Leontyne Price. And today, continuing my Black History Month 2024 theme of “Forgotten Divas,” I present to you a Verdi soprano of similar repertoire and voice to Miss Price, Annabelle Bernard (1935-2005), whose career, unlike Price’s, was centered primarily in Europe, specifically at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, where she was a member of the company for nearly forty years. Born in New Orleans, she received her early musical training fr...
Episode 239. Gwendolyn Killebrew (BHM 2024)
February 08, 2024 21:23 - 1 hour - 89.1 MBThis week’s “Forgotten Diva” is the mezzo-soprano / contralto Gwendolyn Killebrew (26 August 1941 – 24 December 2021), who made an indelible contribution to opera in particular during the active years of her career (1965 – 2009). Though the majority of her career was centered at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, she sang the world over with some of the most important opera companies (including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, the Salzburg Festival, Bayreuth, Washington Ope...
Episode 238. Delcina Stevenson (BHM2024)
February 02, 2024 17:15 - 1 hour - 82.5 MBI am so grateful to all the listeners who did introductions to their favorite episodes last month. It provided me with a little bit of needed breathing space and now I am back raring to go with my first new episode for 2024, just in time for Black History Month 2024! There is a secondary theme for this month which is “Forgotten Divas,” a favorite topic of mine at any time of year. The term “forgotten” needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because these women are anything but forgotten among...
Episode 237. Paul Kirby Introduces Charles Ives (Listeners’ Favorites VIII)
January 27, 2024 11:36 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBMy friend Paul Kirby is a musical polymath: a tenor of excellence who performs throughout the world as both a soloist and as a valued member in small vocal ensembles; he is also a killer banjo player and bluegrass singer, and a member of the Norwegian group Stemmespesialisten that combines voice lessons, voice massage and coaching. In addition he has worked as a musical administrator and is a Timani teacher in training: an education that focuses on in-depth anatomical knowledge in order to en...
Episode 236. Howard Hart Introduces Christa Ludwig (Listeners’ Favorites VII)
January 23, 2024 05:44 - 1 hour - 110 MBMy friend and fellow opera podcaster Howard Hart introduces the first of this week’s Listeners’ Favorites episodes, my 2021 tribute to the superb zwischenfach singer Christa Ludwig, who died nearly three years ago. Ludwig was a singer whose repertoire centered around the great German composers but who also sang Verdi and French repertoire with stunning results; a mezzo-soprano who was unparalleled in Wagner, Mahler, and Brahms, but who also sang the great soprano heroines of Richard Strauss; ...
Episode 235. Anna Tonna Introduces Teresa Berganza (Listeners’ Favorites VI)
January 17, 2024 08:46 - 1 hour - 83.6 MBToday’s Listeners’ Favorites episode of Countermelody is introduced by my good friend (and Countermelody fan) the marvelous mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna. In her introduction Anna tells about her first exposure to the podcast and introduces us to one of her favorite episodes: the one I published in May 2022 a week after the beloved singer died at the age of 89. The episode pays tribute to her artistry through the exploration of her operatic roles, from Neris in Medea opposite Maria Callas, through...
Episode 234. David Savran Introduces Carol Brice (Listeners’ Favorites V)
January 14, 2024 08:27 - 1 hour - 90.4 MBThis Listeners’ Favorites episode serves a dual purpose: first it is a celebration the publication this week of my partner David Savran’s new book, Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad, by Oxford University Press. (I’ll be doing two episodes with David on this book in March in conjunction with the book launch.) Second, David introduces us to one of his favorite Countermelody episodes, a 2021 Black History Month celebration of the life, voice, and career of the great African Ameri...
Episode 233 – Dusty Pörn Introduces Eleanor Steber (Listeners’ Favorites IV)
January 10, 2024 22:54 - 1 hour - 75.8 MBToday’s subject is Eleanor Steber, certainly one of the greatest and most versatile of American sopranos. She is introduced by one of the most recent (and most colorful) of all of my listeners, the San Francisco-based drag artiste (and vocalist extraordinaire) Dusty Pörn. In this very special episode, which I first posted in the summer of 2022 in honor of Steber’s 108th birthday, musical selections from across the duration of Steber’s long career, are supplemented by the generous and loving c...
Episode 232. Janet Williams and Paul Padillo Introduce Maria Ewing (Listeners’ Favorites III)
January 07, 2024 22:07 - 1 hour - 129 MBJanuary 9 is already the second anniversary of the death of the iconoclastic (and iconic) Maria Ewing, who died of cancer in her home outside of her native Detroit on January 9, 2022. She was an artist both admired and derided during her lifetime, whose importance since her death has only become more apparent. It so happens that two of my most faithful listeners, Janet Williams and Paul Padillo, chose the episode that I published in her honor as their favorite episode. Paul is a passionate op...
Episode 231. Elliot Levine Introduces Margaret Marshall (Listeners’ Favorites II)
January 03, 2024 22:18 - 1 hour - 115 MBThe second of my Listeners’ Favorites episodes for January is introduced by my dear friend Elliot Levine, a founding member of the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, with whom he sang bass for 47 years. He is also an exceptional composer (who among his many other works has composed material expressly for me which I have sung with great pleasure and joy), He is also a valued choral singer and clinician. He has been a devoted listener to, and supporter of, Countermelody since its inception and among ...
Episode 230. Brian Castles-Onion Introduces Ira Siff: La Gran Scena and Beyond (Listeners’ Favorites I)
January 01, 2024 07:25 - 1 hour - 118 MBWelcome to Season Five of Countermelody! While I indulge in a much-needed break for the month of January (my first in four years!), I have asked a number of Countermelody fans and listeners to provide spoken introductions to some of their favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the podcast. Today conductor Brian Castles-Onion introduces an episode from June 2020, as we neared the height of the pandemic and the panic surrounding it. It is an interview with Ira Siff, artistic director...
Episode 229. Happy Birthday, John Wustman
December 25, 2023 23:16 - 1 hour - 130 MBToday, Christmas Day 2023, is also the 93rd birthday of my teacher, the great John Wustman. I can think of no better way to conclude Season Four of Countermelody than with a tribute to the man who had the greatest influence on my development as a musician. He’s probably best-known for his work with Luciano Pavarotti and as the accompanist in more than thirty Music Minus One LPs from the early 1960s, as well as for his pioneering teaching of scores of accompanists. He has been called “the dean...
Episode 228. Song Cycles for Christmas
December 18, 2023 11:30 - 1 hour - 93.7 MBFor my second holiday episode this year, I turn to the music of my “other” country, Germany, the land of my forebears, where I have lived for the last decade. Christmas is celebrated in a different way here than anywhere else in the world in my experience. I have chosen to play music by German composers who in effect created a subgenre, the Christmas song cycle. The most famous of these is no doubt the Weihnachtslieder cycle by the 19th century German composer Peter Cornelius, who set a stand...
Episode 227. A Golden Age Christmas
December 09, 2023 12:58 - 1 hour - 79.8 MBIn the midst of our recent move, I came across a stash of old “mixtapes” (actually CDs and much other archival material. One such item which particularly moved me was one entitled “A Golden Age Christmas 2003” which I handed out to my colleagues and friends twenty years ago. Looking over the tracklist, I realized that this was a sort of early iteration of Countermelody: me sharing music that I particularly loved with people that I cared about. Today’s podcast uses as its basis that same CD (s...
Episode 226. Maria Callas: Singer of the Century
December 03, 2023 03:46 - 1 hour - 113 MBWhat is there to say about today’s featured artist, Maria Callas, who was born 100 years ago today? So many of my esteemed colleagues are weighing in with their Callas tributes today (both encyclopedic and deeply perceptive and knowledgeable) and there are all varieties of reconstituted Callas material also suddenly appearing, from newly-colorized films of Callas in action to virtual concerts with Maria as hologram, to some new biopic (goddess forbid!), to audio remasterings both laudable and...
Episode 225. Joya Sherrill
November 29, 2023 05:04 - 1 hour - 91.3 MBThis week’s episode is the first in what I hope will be a series featuring vocalists who performed with Duke Ellington, Today’s artist is the playful and sophisticated Joya Sherrill (20 August 1924 – 28 June 2010) who, by a series of happy “accidents,” became one of the best-remembered and most enduring of Ellington’s songsters while still a teenager. For she was not only a musically- and vocally-gifted singer, she was also a lyricist and composer. She herself composed the lyrics to the Billy...
Episode 224. Handel’s Deutsche Arien
November 22, 2023 16:11 - 1 hour - 90.2 MBThis year for Thanksgiving I bring you Handel’s glorious Neun deutsche Arien composed in the year 1725 to meditative texts by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, who ten years previous had provided Handel with the text to his Der für due Sünden der Welt gemartete und sterbende Jesus (AKA simply the Brockes-Passion). The texts, Handel’s last settings of his native German language, are from a large collection of religious poems by Brockes, many of them referencing nature. The recordings I use, made betw...
Episode 223. Chouxbert vs. Shubertsky (Schubert in French and Russian)
November 14, 2023 23:34 - 1 hour - 90.6 MBA few weeks ago I finally found a copy of a rare recording by one of my favorite singers, the baryton martin Camille Maurane (1911 – 2010) in which he sings Schubert songs in French. Inspired and fascinated by this record, I began exploring recordings of other native French-language singers (including Ninon Vallin, Charles Panzéra, Georges Thill, Vanni-Marcoux, and Germaine Martinelli) singing the melodies of my favorite composers. Further on, I stumbled across a similarly wide variety of Rus...
Episode 222. Shirley Verrett, Falcon Sfogatissima
November 09, 2023 16:45 - 1 hour - 105 MBIt is hard to believe that it’s already been 13 years since the death of Shirley Verrett on November 5, 2010. It has also already been four years since I did a pair of episodes on this extraordinary and beloved artist, and this anniversary gives me the perfect excuse to revisit the work of this mezzo-soprano turned soprano who more than any other singer in my experiences (even soon-to-be birthday girl Maria Callas) was capable of singing nearly anything. This type of singer is sometimes refer...
Episode 221. Robert Massard
November 01, 2023 13:09 - 1 hour - 99.2 MBThis is an episode I have been planning for years now! This past August 15, the great French baritone Robert Massard turned 98 years old. As many of my listeners know, I have a thing for baritones in general, and I have devoted episodes to artists of the baritone persuasion from world-renowned to virtually unknown to somewhere in-between. Just think of it: Gérard Souzay, Jorma Hynninen, Eugene Holmes, Andrzej Hiolski, Gabriel Bacquier, Will Parker, Gilbert Price: these and many more have alre...
Episode 220. La Fiamma (The Haunted Opera House II)
October 25, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 96.9 MBA year ago, I posted an episode entitled “The Haunted Opera House” that featured a wide range of spooky, witchy, Halloween-appropriate 20th century operas from Prokofiev to Penderecki. This year I focus in on one of the works from that episode, Ottorino Respighi’s 1934 masterpiece La Fiamma, based on a 1908 play on witch hunts and witchcraft in 16th century Norway by the novelist and playwright Hans Wiers-Jenssen entitled Anna Pedersdotter, the Witch. This work also formed the basis for the C...
Episode 219. Chants d’Auvergne
October 18, 2023 14:11 - 1 hour - 100 MBAnother episode featuring orchestral songs, these arrangements by the French composer Joseph Canteloube AKA Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret (1879 – 1957), of elaborately orchestrated folk songs from the Auvergne region of France. From the 1960s an beyond these songs have become favorites of sopranos seeking engaging works for voice and orchestra. Canteloube made orchestral arrangements of five different series (or books) of songs published between 1924 and 1955. The songs themselves are, i...
Episode 218. Edith Piaf, storyteller
October 10, 2023 09:42 - 1 hour - 69.4 MBToday is the 60th anniversary of the death of Edith Piaf, the greatest singer in the history of French popular music. She died on the eve of my third birthday, and since I have always allowed myself to indulge in a favorite singer or topic for my birthday episodes, I am focusing on La Môme Piaf, whose uniquely powerful voice and interpretations have been of central importance to me since the first time I heard her. When I take on such an iconic figure for a podcast episode, I try to examine t...
Episode 217. Patricia Neway Revisited
October 04, 2023 12:36 - 56 minutes - 71.2 MBToday I revisit the artistry of the great Patricia Neway (1919-2012), a singer of extraordinary versatility, dramatic power, and musical sensibility. She is no doubt most famous for two of her Broadway creations: the role of the beleaguered Magda Sorel in Gian Carlo Menotti’s tragic opera The Consul, first produced on Broadway in 1950, and of the Mother Abbess in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final musical, 1959’s The Sound of Music. But the genesis for this episode was my recent discovery of her...
Episode 216. The Lieder of Joseph Marx
September 28, 2023 23:27 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBThis week (inspired by an 10-inch LP in my collection of his songs performed by Anton Dermota and Wilma Lipp, both stalwarts of the Wiener Staatsoper in the 1950s) I present an introduction to the Lieder of Austrian composer Joseph Marx (1882 – 1964). His songs are most frequently compared to Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf and are distinctly post-Romantic in style and harmony, but they also exhibit traits unique to their composer. As with so many figures from this period in European history, h...
Episode 215. Trauer und Trost
September 19, 2023 17:19 - 49 minutes - 46.3 MBThis week’s episode offers music of both mourning and consolation performed by treasured artists, many of whom celebrate significant anniversaries this fall, and all of whom died before their time. Thus we hear singers Maria Callas, Jessye Norman, Fritz Wunderlich, Kathleen Ferrier, Judith Raskin, Arleen Augér, and Lucia Popp, and pianist Dinu Lipatti performing music of Bach, Schubert, Fauré, Bellini, and others. This episode may conform to my new streamlined format, but it packs an emotiona...
Episode 214. Ellabelle Davis
September 12, 2023 19:17 - 46 minutes - 48.9 MBToday I begin a series of interim episodes which will lead up to the debut of Season Five of the podcast in January 2024. These episodes will be shorter, but will still be chock full of interesting singers and subject matter. Today I present the African American soprano Ellabelle Davis (1907-1960) who during the late 1940s and early 1950s was greatly celebrated as a concert singer and who appeared around the world, the “Toast of Three Continents” as an early Musical America ad featuring the s...