New programmes on john count mccormack on acr

Athlone Community Radio 88.4fm, with thanks to Community Radio Youghal and  Jim Ryan from Dungarvan, will broadcast four-hour long programmes on Athlone’s most famous son, John McCormack commencing this Saturday, April 11 at 4.30pm and on the three succeeding Saturdays at the same time.

The great tenor, John Count McCormack, was one of the greatest singers of the recorded era. He drew audiences of Madonna-like proportions – in 1913, in a six month period, he gave 12 concerts in New York; 58,000 people attended these concerts with every single one a sell-out.

At one concert, 7,000 were in the audience while 500 were turned away. All of this long before the era of the mass media. John was the last of the great stars of opera and classical music who was also a pop star of his time. It was on the concert platform, however, that he became a superstar.

With Caruso’s death in 1921, McCormack was the world’s greatest singing star. At 23, he was the youngest tenor ever to sing a male lead at London’s famed Covent Garden; in 1913.

From 1904 he made recordings over a period of nearly 40 years – some of these recordings have never been bettered in the hundred years since; a number of them are still hailed as benchmarks by which great singing is judged.

It’s believed that his record sales have amounted to around 200 million – astronomical sales for somebody whose heyday was a century ago. In 1929 he was paid the colossal sum of $500,000 to act and sing in a film ‘Song o’ My Heart’. His concerts were so often a sell-out.
His singing partner in so many operas, the legendary Luisa Tetrazzini, described him as “The tenor with the God-given voice”.

Irish ballads and folk-songs, German Lieder, English and Italian art songs, Mozart, Handel, Verdi, Puccini, Hugo Wolf, Schubert, Brahms – these and much more he sang like few others have done. ‘I Hear You Calling Me’ became his ‘signature tune – not many pub-singers or street-singers ever attempt to sing it such is the memory of McCormack’s masterful recordings of the song.

Hear some of McCormack’s many wonderful recordings along with information about his singing career and his life. There will also be, with reference to some of the acknowledged authorities on singing, an attempt to put his singing career and recorded legacy into some perspective.