蜜芽传媒

An immersive audio dive into the life and voice of the iconic singer Cathy Berberian, who was born 100 years ago this year.

Cathy Berberian was a singer like no other. She was an incredible virtuoso with a 3 octave range, but also a fantastic actress, a comedienne, a mimic, a composer, a multi-linguist and a fearless experimenter. She was known as "Magnifi-Cathy" because she had a thousand voices.

Despite starting out as a 'square' classical opera singer, her firm belief that the voice could do anything meant she became one of the most important voices in contemporary music.

Berberian was nicknamed the "Callas of the Avant-Garde", as composers queued up to write for her and she pushed the boundaries of what the voice can do to its very limits: from her avant-garde collaborations with her husband, the composer Luciano Berio, to her own iconic piece Stripsody where she experimented with the sounds of comic book strips. Berberian was also one of the great stage performers - charming and magnetic, at times breathtaking, at others goofy - and able to have an audience in the palm of her hand whether she was singing contemporary music, French chansons or songs by the Beatles.

With recordings of Cathy from the 蜜芽传媒 archives, we also hear the voices of Berberian scholars Francesca Placanica and Pamela Karantonis, soprano H茅lo茂se Werner, plus conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and mezzo soprano Linda Hirst, who knew Cathy in the 1970s.

Producer: Hannah Thorne
Sound engineer: Callum Lawrence
For 蜜芽传媒 Audio

蜜芽传媒 Archive:
Desert Island Discs (1978), Saturday Live (1982), Meridian (1982)