In a series of three shows, Nora celebrates what the voice can do with a fabulously diverse playlist of tracks from around the world and across the centuries.

She listens to raw and passionate Bulgarian and Scandinavian singing alongside the profound warmth of Russian basses. She compares the ethereal angst of the voice of the last castrato to the effect of the longest high tenor C in classical music. And she sets the twisting ornamental lines of an 18th-century Handel opera aria next to the runs perfected by Whitney Houston and Beyoncé.

In the final episode of her series, Nora Fischer finds out how a vocalist can tell a tale - not just in the words they’re singing, but in the very character of their voice. She showcases the unique styles of Lotte Lenya, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra - artists who seem to embody the very meaning of each song they perform. And she finds composers like Gesualdo, Handel and Schoenberg creating emotion and tension through their manipulation of vocal lines as stories unfold before our ears.

A Tandem Production for BBC Radio 3
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