This year, Swiss tenor Hugues Cuenod was 95. In this special edition, he talks to pianist Graham Johnson , recalling pre-war Vienna and Paris, where he frequented aristocratic salons and worked with Nadia Boulanger. After the war, the new early-music boom relied heavily on his light, unmannered, natural sound, and Cuenod made several pioneering LPs - his 1950 recording of Couperin's Lamentations prompted Stravinsky to ask him to sing in the premiere of The Rake's
Progress. Opera has been a constant thread, including a debut at New
York's Met in the mid-eighties and a final appearance on stage at 92.
Britain remembers him best for his
14 different roles at Glyndebourne, especially in Mozart and Cavalli.
But at the heart of Cuenod's wide-ranging repertoire is French song - he knew and worked with Honegger, Auric, Roussel, Poulenc, Debussy's prima donna Mary Garden, and many others.
Producer Nick Morgan Discs