Episodes

The composer Joseph-Marie Canteloube is primarily known for his lush orchestral arrangements of folk songs from his native Auvergne region. However, he also composed other work, including arrangements of French folk songs (from regions other than the Auvergne!) as well as original works including the lush orchestral song cycle Triptyque and a fascinating and unique cycle for voice and piano entitled L’arada (The Tilled Earth), set to poems in the Languedoc dialect. This work has been studied, pr...

This is the second part of an episode begun last week featuring the cream of the crop of today’s young artists. As with the performers heard last week, they represent the finest opera and classical singers working today; it is my distinct pleasure (and honor) to present them to you. They include sopranos Francesca Pia Vitale and Ewa Płonka; mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor; countertenors John Holiday, Key’mon Murrah, and Reginald Mobley (pictured); tenors Laurence Kilsby and Zachary Wilder; baritones A...

I have been fascinated for years by operas performed in the vernacular, a phenomenon which was common in Germany until quite recently. Even more interesting in many ways is the performance of art song in the language of the audience. Some time ago I produced an episode featuring the Lieder of Franz Schubert performed in both French and Russian translation. As a supplement to that episode, I present here two of the featured artists from that episode, the French baryton martin Camille Maurane (191...

Today we celebrate 350 episodes of Countermelody since the inception of the podcast in the fall of 2019. Given that this is a momentous occasion (probably mostly to me, just for sticking with this thing!), I wanted to do something special today. For some time I have been promising an episode on Young Singers I Admire. This is different than the usual Countermelody fare because I almost always focus on great singers of the past. The world of the “opera singer” is very different today than when I ...

I’ve already done a Lententide episode devoted to contraltos singing the music of Bach, but it seemed to me that in the upheaval of today’s vengeful and war-hungry world, we could use another contemplative episode to provide us with meditative (and even tuneful!) music to calm our spirits. The tunefulness comes especially from recordings of favorite religious music by Gounod, Franck, and other 19th-century French composers sung by Camille Maurane, Marcel Journet, Richard Verreau, and Françoise P...

After I post a Countermelody episode on a cherished singer, my relationship with these artists continues: one of those manifestataions is that I never stop seeking out rare and unusual recordings featuring those singers. This results in a grab-bag of fascinating and often obscure material that is simply too good not to share with my listeners. Today I present you with the second episode of such genre, which I have collectively dubbed “Rescue Mission.” On this episode I feature singers you’ve hea...

Because there is no such thing as too much Eleanor Steber, today’s episode once again features the prodigiously gifted singer, in my opinion the greatest soprano the United States has ever produced, singing a dizzying range of material, most of it recorded live between the years 1958 and 1979. These recordings were nearly all private releases on Steber’s own record labels.. First, ST/AND Records, which she formed with her second husband Gordon Andrews, and which between 1960 and 1962 produced ap...

Hello, Campers! Once again it is April Fool’s Day, which means that here at Countermelody, we’re doing another in my “Alternate Universe Bel Canto” series. This year the featured diva is Olive Middleton, still remembered by a certain kind of opera lover who adores fearless singers who throw caution, technique, and discretion to the winds. In the case of Middleton, she became, late in life, the lead soprano of the La Puma Opera Company (officially titled the La Puma Opera Workshop), where she fea...

Over the course of the past year, I have done a number of episodes on contraltos singing a wide range of material. Toward the end of last year, I did a program on Bach contraltos, which featured just a few of the best (and my favorite) contraltos in this genre. At the time, I had an overflowing cornucopia of material and today I have reorganized and expanded that material to bring you a set of Bach arias particularly appropriate for the Lenten Season. And thus I present to you today, arias from ...

This past March 7 would have been the 94th birthday of the great French coloratura soprano Mady Mesplé. This episode begins a new series of episodes devoted to “Queens of the Night,” the surprisingly wide variety of sopranos who at one time or another sang this role. After a sampling of Mesplé singing this role (in French), we also hear back to back comparisons with Janine Micheau (Mesplé’s teacher) and Mado Robin (one of Mesplé’s most famous predecessors); a Gounod duet with Nicolai Gedda; a st...

As a follow-up to my Mezzos on the Verge series, which seemed to resonate with so many of you, today I present the first in a new ongoing series, Over-the-Top Sopranos. As I first began exploring this repertoire, my first thoughts were focused on Italian repertoire. But then I gave myself the challenge of focusing on the French style instead, thinking that I would not have as easy a time of it. Was I ever wrong! There is such a profusion French (and non-French) singers going to the brink with li...

The British bass-baritone Norman Bailey (23 March 1933 – 15 September 2021) was one of the premier Wagner singers of his generation, appearing in his signature roles (Hans Sachs, the Dutchman, and Wotan, among others) at the most prestigious festival and with the most distinguished opera companies around the world. He was also celebrated for his Verdi and Strauss portrayals and was an skillful, intuitive, and communicative recitalist. In this refurbished bonus episode, he is heard in operatic sc...

A year and a half ago, I posted an episode on Robert Massard, the finest French baritone of his era, and one of the finest French baritones of all time. Today, in honor of his upcoming hundredth birthday later this year, I present him in a different repertoire (and therefore a different light). As was very much the custom of the day in French opera houses, Massard sang many of his non-French roles in translation. This was also very much the standard in German-language opera houses in the 50s and...

Nothing brings me greater joy than when a deep exploration into the artistry of a favorite singer yields even more delights than I could have possibly imagined. And when I have a personal friendship with that singer, my cup truly runneth over. A week ago the music world once again celebrated the birthday of the treasurable soprano Roberta Alexander. Today, in a belated birthday tribute, I offer recordings of Roberta singing the music of composers of The Netherlands, where she has made her adopti...

Today I present the male lead creator of Gershwin’s towering masterpiece, Porgy and Bess, the magnificent Todd Duncan (12 February 1903 – 28 February 1998), whose other creations included work by Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, and a pop standard that might surprise you. Duncan also made extraordinarily important contributions as a teacher, a recitalist, and as a civil rights figure. All of these aspects of his life are explored in this episode, which features recordings from all corners of his artisti...

As a belated 92nd birthday tribute to our beloved Elly Ameling, I offer another episode of the Elly and Johann Show which features her in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. If you twisted my arm, I might opine that she is simply the ideal Bach soprano, and these recordings, made between 1961 and 1981, stem from her absolute prime. In this episode, the majority of the works featured (from various cantatas, oratorios, masses, and passions), are duets, with a few trios and even a quartet thrown in...

Today on Countermelody the first of two (for now) episodes celebrating the creators of George Gershwin’s legendary (and controversial) opera Porgy and Bess. Today we explore the fascinating life (and scant recorded legacy) of Anne Wiggins Brown, who was born in Baltimore on August 09, 1912, and died in Oslo on March 13, 2009. Like Muriel Smith, who a few years later created the title role of Carmen Jones on Broadway, Brown was still a student at the time she created the role of Bess. In Brown’s ...

Today would have been the 91st birthday of our beloved Renata Scotto. On an episode last year celebrating the 100th birthday of Maria Callas, I remarked that Renatina possessed in profusion two qualities that Maria lacked: cuteness and charm. Both of those qualities are heard in these performances of Rossini songs, which range from 1964 to 1984 and include Scotto in both live and studio recordings. For the last forty years of his life, Gioachino Rossini, who had written scores of operas by the t...

This week a light-hearted (and therefore much-needed!) tribute to the marvelous Felicia Weathers, who, in the midst of her burgeoning operatic career in the late 1960s, made two LPs of Schlagermusik, 1968’s Liebe Love L’amour (which also sports the best record cover in the history of the LP!) and, the following year, Wunderbar ist die Welt. Both of these were arranged and conducted by one Harold M. Kirschstein, referred to in the liner notes as an important conductor and arranger. Imagine my sur...

I’ve been wanting to revisit the legacy of the great African American soprano Gloria Davy (born in Brooklyn on 29 March 1931 and died in Genève on 28 November 2012) for some time now. In the first year of the podcast, I devoted one of my very first Black History Month episodes to exploring her career, recordings, and legacy. At that time, however, I had not yet acquired a commercial recording central to her recorded output: a 1957 LP on London Records entitled, simply, Concert Recital, which fea...

On February 10th, our beloved diva Leontyne Price celebrated her 98th birthday. Of course she is recognized for her performances of the operas of Verdi, but in my opinion, she was even more suited, uniquely so, to the music of Richard Strauss. Sadly, she only sang one operatic role by Strauss, but we can be grateful that she consistently programmed his Lieder over the course of her long career. I offer you as complete a selection of Leontyne Price (assisted by her able collaborative pianist Davi...

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 soprano proclaimed. She even appeared on the operatic stage, primarily as Aida, though her artistry was best suited to the concert platform. Additionally and unusually for the time, she made a number of recordings, including two 1...

Exactly two years ago I introduced my listeners to the magisterial African American dramatic baritone Eugene Holmes (1932 – 2007). Holmes first found world-wide recognition with he appeared in the first modern revival of Frederick Delius’s problematic opera Koanga. Following that earth-shattering success, however, Holmes did not become a world star, but rather for nearly thirty years found his artistic home at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, where he was the reigning Verdi baritone with the company....

What better way to start off this Black History Month 2025 celebration than with a birthday tribute to beloved African American diva Martina Arroyo, who turned 88 yesterday, February 2?! Though she is universally regarded as one of the premier Verdi spinto sopranos of the second half of the Twentieth Century, Arroyo was equally adept at a wide range of other composers as well. In this episode, which focuses on Martina in duet, many of those composers are represented as well, from Handel to Meyer...