Add to that list a more obscure musical marriage: composer Luciano Berio and mezzo soprano Cathy Berberian. They met in 1950 in Milan, where Berberian, a young American, was studying voice on a Fulbright scholarship, and Berio, an aspiring composer, was working as an accompanist. They married within months but never settled down, physically or emotionally. Composer and singer kept collaborating with remarkable results, even after Berio moved on to the second of his three wives.

Tonight, Lancaster Symphony will perform Berio’s “Folk Songs,” a 1964 collection of traditional tunes from around the world, with music written and arranged by Berio and lyrics collected by himself and Berberian. The concert also will include Rachmaninoff’s lush, cinematic Symphony No. 2 and Shostakovich’s lively Festive Overture. The program repeats Saturday and Sunday at Fulton Opera House.

To find a woman capable of the vocal acrobatics that “Folk Songs” requires, music director Stephen Gunzenhauser invited six of the singers who applied to come perform a few songs from the cycle. Gunzenhauser and two additional judges from Pennsylvania Academy of Music sat behind a screen and listened.

The unanimous winner was soprano Karen Rogers Blanchard, a Gap resident who is married to Tom Blanchard, the orchestra’s personnel director and principal percussionist.

No nepotism here.

“It was a blind audition,” explained M. Scott Robinson, the orchestra’s executive director. “She was the best.”

The singers each were given a number and not allowed to talk before or after performing. Blanchard delivered a raw but well rehearsed performance.

“I had the voice that he wanted to hear, for this piece, on that day,” the soprano said. She had been hoping to sing for Gunzenhauzer for some time, but didn’t want to take advantage of her husband’s connections.

In that professional sense, the Blanchards do bear some similarities to Berio and Berberian, but their marriage is better compared to talented working couples like Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick or Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Tom and Karen met in the early 1990s while studying music at Temple University. They now have two children, Justin and Amelia, who are ten and seven.

Blanchard’s early career accolades include collaborating with GianCarlo Menotti, the legendary opera composer who wrote “The Telephone” and “Ahmal and the Night Visitors.” She has sung several supporting roles with Opera Company of Philadelphia but said, at this point in her life, singing ranks as a distant second priority behind raising her kids. So while Tom tours the world playing timpani with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Karen seeks opportunities to sing closer to home.

“We can’t both be out all week and out on weekends,” she said. “I’m very picky about what I take, because it has to be worth leaving my kids behind.”

Most recently, she’s enjoyed singing with The Crossing, a choral ensemble that David Patrick Stearns, the Philadelphia’ Inquirer’s music critic, has called “an answered prayer” for the city’s music scene. The group specializes in both Renaissance music and new choral works.

“I love modern music,” Blanchard said. “That’s why I wanted to sing ‘Folk Songs.’ ”

Berberian, like Blanchard, specialized in early music and works written by herself, her ex-husband and John Cage. Of her own compositions, the most notorious is “Stripsody,” a pastiche of comic strip bubbles like “Zap,” “Zip” and other onomatopoeia sounds. Berberian became known for what’s now called extended vocal technique — stretching the definition of singing to include all possible utterances.

“Folk Songs” is tame by Berio’s standards, but Blanchard still will have a chance to demonstrate what made Berio and Berberian’s work so revolutionary. Each of the 11 songs represents the music of a different culture. The aural tour begins in Appalachia, with the traditional “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and proceeds through Armenia, France, Italy, Russia and Azerbaijan.

“I like the challenge of being able to create a new character and a new style for each song,” Blanchard said. The most challenging character is a Sicilian fisherman’s wife who pleads with God for her husband’s safe return. “That’s the only one that I struggle with,” Blanchard said. “It’s ugly and nasally. To do it well, I think it’s not supposed to be pretty, but I don’t like like producing a sound that doesn’t have some beauty to it.”

Blanchard has listened to many recordings of “Folk Songs” while crafting her interpretations. One by soprano Dawn Upshaw was nominated for a Grammy in 2005, but Blanchard has been keenly aware that not everyone likes “Folk Songs” at first listen. She certainly didn’t, and therein lies her challenge for this weekend.

“It takes living with this piece to really love it,” Blanchard said. “Now I love ‘Folk Songs,” but I have to sell it in one performance.”


“The Romance of Rachmaninoff,” Lancaster Symphony Orchestra with acclaimed soprano, Karen Rogers Blanchard, Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sun. 7:30 p.m., Fulton Opera House, 12 N. Prince St., $21-$55, 397-7425.