Countermelody

1:25:40

Episode 377. Joan Caplan Memorial Tribute

Countermelody ·

2025/07/18

This past April, my former voice teacher and treasured friend Joan Caplan died at the age of 92. A few weeks ago, family and friends organized a memorial gathering for which I produced a short audio tribute, which is heard at the beginning of this episode. Before the event, we heard a number of recordings of Joan in her prime that absolutely knocked me on my ear. I was kindly given copies of these recordings from which I have fashioned an expanded episode in her honor. Most of these recordings have

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1:46:16

Episode 376. Bacquier en Récital (Bastille Day 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/07/14

Today in honor of Bastille Day, I present an episode featuring the late Gabriel Bacquier, who considered himself an “acting singer” rather than a “singing actor.” He made his first mark as a sublime Mozart singer, from there moving into Verdi baritone parts, and finally as a supremely skilled basso buffo. What is less well-known is that he was also a superb recitalist, and in today’s bonus episode, I present him in recordings primarily from the early 1960s, but ranging into the late 1970s, which

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1:34:50

Episode 375. Gilda Cruz-Romo In Memoriam

Countermelody ·

2025/07/11

Back in December I published my first episode honoring the superb soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo, as part of my series honoring Mexican opera singers. In my research, I amassed a large number of live recordings from which I intended to cobble together a second episode in honor of her upcoming birthday. I was distracted by some family issues and, her February birthday came and went, and now, alas, Gilda is no longer with us. But to pay tribute to this exceptional artists, I have assembled a brand new

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1:51:35

Episode 374. Maureen Lehane Sings Bach

Countermelody ·

2025/07/07

Today’s episode offers music of consolation, divinely sung. On a Sunday morning back in December, freshly arrived back in New York from a challenging trip to my home state of Wisconsin, I sat down to a cup of coffee and began playing a setlist that I had created in the aftermath of my “Great Contraltos Sing Bach” episode a few weeks before. This setlist was comprised of arias from Bach cantatas sung by the British contralto Maureen Lehane (18 September 1932 – 27 December 2010) which I had discovered

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1:40:24

Episode 373. Carol Neblett: Girl of the Golden West

Countermelody ·

2025/07/04

Today is the day that the United States formerly celebrated its independence. But the events of recent months have not made me feel much like celebrating. As I racked my brain to think of an “American” (read: US-American) of whom we could be truly proud, my mind flew to Carol Neblett, one of the great (if relatively unsung) voices of the 1970s and beyond. Carol died prematurely and unexpectedly in November 2017, and from the earliest days of the podcast, it has been my intention to bring increased

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1:44:49

Episode 372. Pears Sings Not-Britten (Pride 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/30

Today may be my final episode for Pride Month 2025, but it is most certainly not my final episode celebrating and affirming Pride and all our glorious forebears who preceded us! Today’s episode is a belated birthday tribute to British tenor Peter Pears (22 June 1910 – 03 April 1986), most celebrated for his long-standing romantic and musical partnership with Benjamin Britten. However, as with my recent episode celebrating the artistry of Pierre Bernac apart from his performances of the music of

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1:40:06

Episode 371. Margherita Roberti @ 100 (with August...

Countermelody ·

2025/06/27

One hundred years ago today, Margaret Jean Roberts was born at the edge of a field before her parents could reach the hospital. The story of how she became Margherita Roberti, one of the leading dramatic sopranos in Italy, and a specialist in the music of Verdi, is a fascinating tale, indeed. My guest today on Countermelody is the author, scholar, and lecturer August Ventura, who a number of years ago unearthed a 1963 documentary entitled "In the Mouth of the Wolf" which features Roberti and her

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1:18:18

Episode 370. Lesbian Concentrate and Beyond (Pride 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/23

Continuing the Countermelody show of Pride for this month’s LGBTQ+ celebrations, I take a look back at the Women’s Music Movement of the mid-1970s as reflected in the 1977 Olivia Records release Lesbian Concetrate: A Lesbianthology of Songs and Poems. I present the album in its entirety, as well as providing some historical context for the release: on the history of Olivia Records as an offshoot of some earlier lesbian separatist groups; as well as the cruel and hateful legacy of Anita Bryant, who,

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1:27:36

Episode 369. Joséphine Baker Revisited (Live Edition)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/20

Yesterday was a crucial celebration for all US-Americans: Juneteenth. In honor of that event and in continuing observation of Pride 2025, I offer today an episode in honor of the great Joséphine Baker (1906 – 1975). I have been an avid (not to say rabid) Baker fan for more than thirty years, so when she was inducted by the French government into the Panthéon in the fall of 2021, I took the opportunity to devote a pair of Countermelody episodes to her. This refurbished episode includes personal

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1:46:09

Episode 368. Gay Eccentrics (Pride 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/17

Somewhere along the line in planning my Pride 2025 episodes, I hit upon the idea of paying tribute to Gay Eccentrics. (Maybe because I am one of them myself?) There are many mad queer geniuses in the history of music, and I have chosen today to focus on three twentieth-century case studies. First, the husband and husband team of Norman Notley (1890 – 1980) and David Brynley (1902 – 1981), musical and artistic polymaths who settled in the small Dorset village of Corfe Castle. They were both members

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1:37:37

Episode 367. Bernac Sings Not-Poulenc (Pride 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/13

Continuing our exploration of queer pride in classical music, I bring you the great baryton-martin Pierre Bernac (1899 – 1979), known first and foremost as a creator of some of the most exquisite mélodies of his friend and musical partner Francis Poulenc. Later Bernac became renowned as the exemplar of style and taste in the interpretation of French art song. In this episode, however, I wanted to explore his contribution as a singer of the music of composers other than Poulenc. I had already found

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1:32:09

Episode 366. Donald Gramm Revisited (Pride 2025)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/08

I’m going all out (literally) for this year’s Pride celebrations, especially because the haters are out there in such force. Today I pay tribute to my fellow Milwaukeean, the marvelous bass-baritone Donald Gramm (1927-1983), one of the central house singers at both the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera from the 1960s through his premature death at the age of 56. Gifted with an intrinsically beautiful voice, an impeccable technique and an expansive range, he also was a crackerjack musician

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1:33:23

Episode 365. Flying Down to Rio (Latin American Song II)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/06

Today is the second part of my Latin American orchestral song tribute. Last week we explored Villa-Lobos and Revueltas; today we devote ourselves to Argentina, and primarily two composers: Alberto Ginastera, and Osvaldo Golijov, in settings by writers as varied as Emily Dickinson, Rosalía de Castro, Manuel Mujica Lainez, David Grossman, Mercedes de Toro, Alejandro Casona, and Franz Kafka; performed by Hina Spani, Phyllis Curtin, Dawn Upshaw, Nadine Sierra, Virginia Tola, Mónica Ferracani, and Miriam

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1:27:01

Episode 364. Grace Bumbry: Proud Soprano (Live Edition)

Countermelody ·

2025/06/02

It’s Pride Month, and what better time to focus on queer musical culture in all its various manifestations! As far back as I can remember, I have been an Opera Queen, and today I kick off our queer celebrations with the a tribute to one of our favorite divas, the late Grace Bumbry. The chutzpah that she demonstrated throughout her career found particularly thrilling manifestation when she began transitioning to soprano roles in the early 1970s. Always an intrepid singer, Bumbry had a confidence, a

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1:23:24

Episode 363. Orchestral Song of Latin America, Part 1

Countermelody ·

2025/05/31

A few weeks ago I had the idea of doing a program devoted to American orchestral song. It did not take me long to realize that once again “American [that is to say, US] Exceptionalism” was distorting my viewpoint, because there is a rich legacy of orchestral song not only in the United States, but also in both Canada and Latin America. Therefore I will concern myself separately with each of these diverse Americas. Today’s episode is the first of two that plunges into a repertoire that, with a few

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1:13:31

Episode 362. No More Slavery Chains

Countermelody ·

2025/05/26

Five years ago, I awoke to the horrifying news of the murder of George Floyd by a member of the Minneapolis Police Department. I had been working on cobbling together an episode on French Glamour, which quickly gave way instead to an impromptu episode of protest music through the ages which remains one of the Countermelody episodes of which I am most proud. Yesterday was the five-year commemoration of that horrific event, which sparked worldwide protests and which, for a while, seemed as if it might

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1:29:30

Episode 361. Russell Oberlin Revisited

Countermelody ·

2025/05/23

I’ve been so lucky this week to cross paths with several beloved friends and colleagues, in some cases for the first time in ages. One of those friends of many years’ standing is the legendary countertenor Drew Minter, with whom I made my very first appearances on the New York concert stage… well, a few years back now! Seeing Drew made me think not only to his influence on me in my early years of singing, but also of the influence of the earliest (and still to my mind the greatest) of all American

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1:48:01

Episode 360. Ben Luxon: King of Crossover

Countermelody ·

2025/05/20

Benjamin Luxon, the esteemed Cornish baritone who died at the age of 87 last July, had one of the most wide-ranging repertoires of any singer of the past century, from the classical repertoire (including opera, oratorio, art song over the course of at least four centuries and in a host of languages, including work written expressly for him) through Victorian parlor song, to traditional folk. Additionally, in the early 1980s he recorded a trilogy of crossover albums for British RCA, all three of

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1:31:33

Episode 359. Get to Know Hugo Hasslo

Countermelody ·

2025/05/17

The earliest selection on last week’s Elisabeth Söderström episode featured the soprano at 24 singing the title role of Madama Butterfly. In that live recording, we also heard as Sharpless her compatriot the baritone Hugo Hasslo, to whom I introduced my listeners last fall. Today I dive a little bit deeper into Hasslo’s extant recordings. Considering what a great singer he was, and how his reputation has merely grown with the passage of time, it’s shocking how rarely Hasslo recorded in the studio

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1:40:58

Episode 358. Elisabeth Söderström Revisited

Countermelody ·

2025/05/13

There are very few singers that mean more to me than does Elisabeth Söderström. I was first made aware of her at the tender age of ten, when I became obsessed with Pelléas et Mélisande after hearing the (at the time) brand new recording of the opera conducted by Pierre Boulez which featured Söderström and George Shirley in the title roles. Further explorations yielded further delights: the complete Rachmaninov songs with Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Janáček heroines under Charles Mackerras. I began

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