Episodes

A year ago I published an episode entitled “Gay Eccentrics,” which featured a number of the most delightfully peculiar personalities sprinkled across queer music history. The third of those characters, theatrical and record producer Ben Bagley, reappears on today’s episode. This time I feature selections from his record albums featuring two more gay eccenctrics, Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter! Bagley’s recordings uncovered and/or resuscitated trunk songs and other material by some of the most impor...

Today we visit the rare recorded output my beloved teacher, Joan Caplan (15 October 1932 – 19 April 2025), live performances made during her active years as a song recitalist and as an opera and oratorio singer. We hear her complete performances of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Peggy Glanville-Hicks, the Cinco canciones negras by Xavier Montsalvatge, and the Zigeunerlieder of Johannes Brahms, as well as songs by Gustav Mahler from the German folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderh...

A year ago, I published as my final Pride 2025 episode, Pears Sings Not-Britten, which explored the voice and artistry of British tenor Peter Pears in repertoire other than that written for him by his partner Benjamin Britten. Today’s episode, a refurbished bonus episode originally published nearly a year ago has a new, catchy title that carries that theme even further, in that Britten is entirely absent, either as composer or as Pears’s usual accompanist. Today, I feature collections of songs b...

The 1950s recorded collaboration between two iconic artists: African American musical star Muriel Smith and Angela Morley: composer, conductor, arranger, and trans pioneer.

Today’s lengthy episode (I probably should’ve divided it in half!) is another devoted to orchestral song, in this case Deutsche Orchesterlieder. But, in a twist, you will not be hearing any music by either Mahler or Strauss today. (Their orchestral songs have already been amply represented on Countermelody. No, today I am featuring songs ranging from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Some of the composers presented – Alban Berg, Max Reger, Hugo Wolf, Arnold Schoenber...

Today I revisit one of my favorite singers of all time, the extraordinary Norwegian lyric-coloratura soprano Eidé Noréna (1884-1968), whose voice and artistry hit me like a bolt out of the blue when I first discovered her recordings several decades ago. Born Karoline Hansen, she made her concert debut at the age of 19 and in 1907 began her operatic career as Amor in Orfeo ed Euridice. In 1909 she married the actor Egil Eide, through whose coaching she became celebrated for her dramatic portrayal...

Today’s episode features baritones of all stripes (with the occasional bass-baritone) in a program focusing primarily on song in its various manifestations. Whether that be Broadway and pop tunes (sung by Alfred Drake, Allan Evans, and Harve Presnell); Schubert (performed by Doda Conrad, Bernard Diamant, Max van Egmond, Robert Holl, and Siegfried Lorenz); other German Lieder (with Victor Braun and Heinrich Schlusnus); Russian and Nordic song (sung by Matti Lehtinen, Yuri Mazurok, Erik Sædén, Mar...

Here is an episode I have been dreaming of putting together since the very early days of the podcast: Black Bach, an historical survey of the solo vocal music of Johann Sebastian Bach as performed by African American singers. In nearly the entire first half of the Twentieth Century, the performance of Black singers was restricted primarily to the concert platform. Even young singers of color who were first making their mark in the 1950s barely dared to aspire to a career in opera. In such a cont...

Today’s episode goes back three and a half years to two artists whom I had recently featured on back-to-back Countermelody episodes: Anna Moffo and Nicolai Gedda. In the case of each of these singers, I entered the ring with a not-altogether-positive impression: in the case of Gedda, it was because of an apparent desire by either him or his record company to sing nearly everything, with sometimes uneven results. In the case of Moffo, it was the more serious issue of the vocal difficulties she en...

I’ve decided to make it Tenor Week here on Countermelody. Earlier this week, we heard Charles Kullman in a smattering of live and studio recordings. Back in November, as I was collating material for the arie antiche episode, which featured more than a century’s worth of great singers, I noticed one singer who frequently programmed such (restyled) Italian baroque songs in his concerts and recordings, the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli, considered by many to be the greatest tenor, Italian or otherw...

I’ve had a real urge lately to revisit the voices and careers of some of my favorite tenors. So today I bring you the exceptional American artist Charles Kullman (1903 – 1983). The early years of his career were spent primarily in Berlin and Vienna, but for twenty-five years beginning in 1935, he was also a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera, where he sang a total of 33 different roles. The sheen and spin on his lyric voice, allied to a firm technique, allowed him sing everything from Rinuccio a...

I recently obtained a copy of the rare pirate recording entitled “Bubbles on the Nile (and Other Rare Phenomena): Familiar Divas in Unfamiliar Repertoire.” It foregrounds 13 favorite twentieth-century divas singing roles with which they were not commonly associated. Prominently featured, of course, is the artist featured in a lovingly caricatured drawing on the cover of the LP, Beverly Sills (AKA Bubbles) singing, as the title implies, the title role of Verdi’s Aida, a role which she seldom sang...

One of my favorite kinds of Countermelody episode is a potpourri of singers, music, and recordings that charm and enchant to me at that given moment. Today’s episode, which began as a compiled setlist about six months ago, is a particularly enchanting bouquet of musical delights, or, to coin a favorite word from my childhood, a “nosegay.” Today’s bevy of mostly mezzos and contraltos includes such old favorites of mine as Helen Watts, Ninon Vallin, Lisa Kirk, Mitsuko Shirai, Tatiana Troyanos, Ele...

There was only one way to follow up my interview with the iconic, the unique Steven Blier published earlier this week, and that is with an episode dedicated to his dazzling at the keyboard and his accomplishments as the co-founder and artistic director of NYFOS, the New York Festival of Song, which is just concluding its 38th season. Going all the way back to Steve’s first recordings in the late 1980s, I have compiled a setlist that is a testament to his love of song, and his ever-expanding inte...

Today a new segment of Countermelody Conversations that has been months in the offing! One of the ineffable delights of hosting Countermelody over the years is the connection it has brought me with my listeners, fans, and subjects, including some extraordinary (and sometimes famous) musicians and people. One of the podcast’s most devoted fans is a man that I have held in adulation for years: pianist and educator Steven Blier, co-founder of the New York Festival of Song, now concluding its 38th s...

Today’s episode serves two purposes: First, I introduce my listeners to a wonderful series first released on Eterna, the East German state record label, entitled “Ein Opernabend mit…” which featured singers, some but not all of them German, active in East Germany between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. Some of these singers are well-known to lovers of great singers, with others much less-so. The quality of the singing varies from release to release, but the very best of these represents sing...

I had hoped not to be bringing this episode to my listeners until many years hence. Alas, my dear teacher and mentor John Wustman, one of the most influential, pathbreaking, and inspired of all accompanists (a term he far preferred to “collaborative pianist”) died this past Thursday at the age of 95. I have already featured his magnificent artistry on countless episodes, including two devoted expressly to his superb artistry and musicianship. Rather than simply reissuing one of those episodes (o...

Greetings to all from your recently Venetianized podcaster, now (as the title of today’s episode indicates) once again back in the saddle and bringing you the fourth and final of my vacation (or holiday, if you prefer) episodes featuring great sopranos and tenors of the 1960s and 1970s, as compiled by the late great collector and vocal aficionado Ed Rosen. Today is the second of the tenor LPs from that collection and once again features a range of the brightest and best of that era in thrilling ...

David and I are still on holiday in the magical city of Venice; it’s my first vist here in nearly forty years and it has been beguiling and enchanting (as well as exhausting)! Before we left, I put together yet another episode of great sopranos of the 1960s and 1970s in stunning live performances as compiled on a 1970s pirate release by Historical Recording Enterprises which I present to you here. Many of my favorites (Callas, Olivero, Scotto, Cruz-Romo, Freni), capped by an unforgettable “Casta...

Next up in my series of Countermelody “vacation episodes,” here’s the tenor counterpart of the soprano episode I published at the beginning of the week. This is the Historical Recording Enterprises mid-1970s release of the first of two issues of “Ten Top Tenors in Ten Live Performances.” Included in the mix are Carlo Bergonzi, Jussi Björling, José Carreras, Franco Corelli, Giuseppe di Stefano, and others singing favorite tenor arias from Manon Lescaut, La forza del destino, L’elisir d’amore, Tos...

Hello, fans and listeners! I am “Óut of the Office” for the next two weeks, hence the tongue-in-cheek title of this episode, the first of four recycled potpourri episodes bringing you four records issued on the pirate label Historical Recordings Enterprises in the 1970s. Two of them (including today’s) feature great sopranos of that era, and two of them celebrate “ten top tenors” each. A few years ago, David was preparing to downsize to a new apartment in NYC and one of my tasks was to go throug...

I have twice featured the great British bass-baritone Norman Bailey (who also sang both regular baritone and, later in his career, regular bass roles) on my podcast. The first time was on the occasion of his death in the fall of 2021 at the age of 88. The second time was a 2025 episode entitled “Norman Bailey Revisited” in which he was heard singing everything from Peter Warlock to Sigmund Romberg to the great Heldenbariton roles of Wagner and Strauss for which he was particularly celebrated. To...

There was only one way to follow up my interview with the iconic, the unique Steven Blier published earlier this week: with an episode dedicated to recordings of his exceptional pianism, necessarily highlighting his accomplishments as the co-founder and artistic director of NYFOS, the New York Festival of Song, which is just concluding its 38th season. Going all the way back to Steve’s first recordings in the late 1980s, I have compiled a setlist that is a testament to his love of song and his e...

Onelia Fineschi (1921 – 2004) was one of the finest Italian lyric sopranos of her era. Probably most famous today for having provided the singing voice of Gina Lollobrigida in a 1948 filmed version of Pagliacci, she had a wide-ranging repertoire and an up-and-down career trajectory that lasted, however, nearly 25 years. Initially I became interested in Fineschi because one of my listeners gifted me with a visually arresting Cetra LP of her 1947 recordings of various opera arias, which, upon list...