Right after the disastrous US election of November 2024, I published an episode entitled Mezzos on the Verge, which featured some of my favorite mezzos in rafter-shaking performances of on the edge

Its been a tough week all around, not just nationally and internationally, but also personally for me and my family. Because I did not have the time or energy to put out a brand-new episode today, I

Today, Martin Luther King Day and the day of the reinauguration of King Ubu of the Divided States of America, is an appropriate time to revisit the life and legacy of the great Paul Robeson. Both grea

Today I present to you the extraordinarily versatile, even chameleon-like singer and actor Marni Nixon (22 February 1930 - 24 July 2016), who is no doubt best-known today as the so-called Ghostess wi

These days I find myself in a pensive, troubled state, very much in need of the kind of consolation that only music can provide. A number of years ago, I published a pair of episodes featuring the sub

The New Year is off to a predictably challenging start. Everywhere we look (California, Canada, New Orleans, and beyond) dreadful things are happening. I am offering in the spirit of solace and condol

Yesterday was the birthday of Countermelody favorite, the ravishing Scottish soprano Margaret Marshall. What better way to kick off Season Six of the podcast than with this tribute to Margaret. The mo

Todays episode, Anna Moffo und die leichte Muse, continues the delicious theme of opera singers letting down their hair begun with Hadley in Wien, and it also forms a complement and a supplemen

I can think of no more appropriate way to end this difficult year than with another episode lauding my late friend, the sublime American lyric tenor Jerry Hadley. I am of the firm belief that Jerry wa

Leslie Uggams long-standing place in American pop culture matches that of any pop diva of similar longevity, going back all the way to her days as a child star on 1950s television variety and game sh