Countermelody

Last week the opera world joined in unanimous celebration as Leontyne Price celebrated her 99th birthday. Though I’m a trifle late to the party, I do have a Price episode today, and one with a twist, featuring the beloved diva in a repertoire she only occasionally performed: the operas of Richard Strauss. Today let’s imagine ourselves back in the 1960s and early 1970s in an alternate universe, one in which Leontyne Price was one of the leading interpreters of the operas of Richard Strauss. Fortunately, there are enough live and studio recordings for us to create such a universe: over the course of her career, Price performed and recorded Strauss repertoire ranging from Guntram, his first opera from 1893, through his penultimate opera, Die Liebe der Danae, completed in 1940, but first officially premiered posthumously in 1952. The excerpts heard range from an early British radio recording of Danae in 1959, through a remarkably viable performance of the final scene of Salome from as late as1986. She is also heard in an extended live excerpt from Ariadne auf Naxos, the one Strauss role she performed onstage. I have remarked repeatedly elsewhere that the music of Strauss seemed to bring out the very best in Leontyne Price, and that is certainly true of the performances heard here, tantalizing teasers of what might have been, had she chosen to explore more of these roles onstage.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

Today’s Black History Month episode serves also as a belated birthday tribute to the exceptional African American soprano Faye Robinson, who was born in Houston on 2 November 1943. Robinson has a voice that transcends genre, encompassing both lyric-coloratura roles at one end and pure dramatic soprano repertoire on the other. In addition, she has been created vocal works by some of the greatest twentieth-century composers, including Michael Tippett, two of whose major vocal works she premiered, and with whose compositions she is especially associated, and George Walker, whose Lilacs she premiered in 1996 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and which subsequently won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize by the judges’ unanimous decision. Robinson’s immediately recognizable voice presented in a wide-range of repertoire, including the works referenced above and also including arias by Handel, Gounod, Offenbach, Bellini, and Handel, as well as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges; as well as concert work by Schoenberg and Barber. All in all, Faye Robinson’s is a voice and artistic presence well worth getting to know better! Happy Belated Birthday, Diva!

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

Adelaide Hall (1901 – 1993), entertainer extraordinaire, really had it all: voice, talent, beauty, dancing chops, charisma, joie de vivre and sophistication. She was the first Black performer to attain international stardom, even before Joséphine Baker, with whom she shared a number of similarities (though Hall probably had the superior voice). She was the first singer to scat on record; she helped popularize both the Charleston and the Black Bottom and was considered the epitome of the Flapper; she introduced the world to a number of now-standard songs from the Great American Songbook; she appeared on a rare 1935 Vitaphone short that featured all Black performers; she and her husband owned and ran various night clubs in three different countries, as well as headlining at the legendary Cotton Club; and she headlined the sensational revue Blackbirds of 1928 and several other ground-breaking shows in the 1920s and 1930s. I got to know her work many years back when I happened to find a late-career LP of hers in the basement of an apartment building I was living in. I have been a fan ever since. The number of great musicians with whom she rubbed shoulders is almost mind-boggling (Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Fela Sowande, Joe Turner, and Art Tatum, for starters), and she continued to perform with gusto and sophistication into her late eighties, occasionally returning to her native US from London, where she settled in 1938 and lived until her death. Her range of influence is truly far-flung and her many recordings, made between 1927 and 1989, a generous sampling of which are offered on this episode, continue to bring consistent delight and surprise.

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

I first published this episode two and a half years ago in June 2023, in commemoration of the death of the great Tina Turner. As always when I take on such an iconic figure, I try to give a different perspective on the artist in question than one would normally encounter. For this reason, I chose to frame Tina within the context of the many other female pop artists of color who emigrated to Europe and the UK. I have devoted a lot of time, space, and research to the Black opera singers who came here, but there is an equally fascinating story to be told about the pop singers of many eras and genres, who also chose to make Europe their home. Though this episode focuses primarily on Tina and some of the less-explored material throughout her career, I seek to contextualize her by also discussing the many African American singers, from Joséphine Baker to Donna Summer to Nina Simone to Dee Dee Bridgewater, who either spent formative time in Europe or settled there permanently. Along with the aforementioned favorites, I also focus on lesser-known artists such as Beauty Milton, Vickie Henderson, and Betty Dorsey, including a brief introduction to each of four singers who will be featured in their own episodes during Black History Month: Adelaide Hall (coming on Monday!), Elisabeth Welch, Bertice Reading, and Salena Jones (who just recently celebrated her 82nd birthday). Count on Countermelody (and me!) to always bring you something a little different!

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.

To kick off Black History Month 2026 (which, contrary to the current US administration, is still a thing, and not just on Countermelody, either!), I present to you another Zwischenfach singer, the (mezzo-)soprano Inez Matthews. She was born in Ossining, NY on 23 August 1917 and died in the Bronx on 28 March 2004. She is probably most famous for singing the role of Serena on the legendary 1951 (nearly) complete recording of Porgy and Bess (as well as lending her voice to the 1959 Otto Preminger film) which was conducted by Lehman Engel and starred icons Lawrence Winters and Camilla Williams. She also created the role of Irina in Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars (opposite Todd Duncan, who created the role of Porgy in 1935). She also sang in the 1952 revival of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts, alongside her brother Edward, who created the role of Saint Ignatius in the work’s 1934 premiere. In spite of these impressive credentials, Inez Matthews today is not nearly as well-remembered as, say, either Winters or Williams. In addition to these accomplishments, Matthews also recorded in 1954 Schubert’s two major song cycles Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise as well as the posthumous Schwanengesang collection. That as early the mid-1950s Inez Matthews was the first Black artist (and only the second woman after Lotte Lehmann) to record those Schubert cycles, is extroardinary; that her performances are so exceptionally good, lends these recordings more than mere historical value. However, until the song cycles were recently reissued by Parnassus Records as part of their “Black Swans” series, these remained virtually inaccessible to listeners. Today’s episode includes selections from almost all the above-mentioned recordings, as well as an exceptional 1953 recording of spirituals accompanied by Jonathan Brice, brother of the esteemed contralto Carol Brice. And let us also tip our hats to Herr Schubert, who just celebrated his 229th birthday!

Countermelody is the podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel’s lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and author yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody’s core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody’s Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly or yearly support at whatever level you can afford.