The Essay

Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.If you're asked to think of a groundbreaking singer called McFerrin, it's likely that Bobby springs to mind. But this undisputed vocal genius is in fact following in the footsteps of his father, Robert McFerrin Snr: the first ever African American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.For Peter, Robert McFerrin's beautiful baritone voice, and his experiences singing on the global opera stage, resonate down generations of black men singing in opera. He both acts as a role model and offers insight into the cyclical nature of conversations about race and representation in classical music.

Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell. Tonight we take an unexpected turn, moving away from the world of opera and world-renowned singers into more modest, but no less impactful, territory. Eric Bentley was a renowned theatre critic and writer, but he also performed cabaret songs, especially those of his friends Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler. Peter explains why Bentley's untrained but completely committed voice has always captivated him, a fellow Lancastrian, and uncovers the profound effect Bentley's work has had on his own career.

Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell. Soprano Leontyne Price was the first African American opera singer who attained true superstar status, becoming one of the most celebrated voices of all time. Peter relives his discovery of her peerless spinto soprano voice through a pile of old library vinyls, and digs deep into what made her voice so exquisite and her artistry so compelling.

Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell. ‘A voice like yours is heard only once in a hundred years’: so said conductor Arturo Toscanini to Marian Anderson, the African American contralto whose concert on Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 became a defining moment in America's civil rights movement. Peter invites us to dive with him into Anderson’s extraordinary voice, exploring its sonic qualities as well as its cultural and historical importance, and why for him, a black opera singer in 2021, Marian Anderson’s voice still resonates so deeply.

Why are mountains linked with uplifting feelings? Noreen Masud's Essay conjures the vast skies of Norfolk and the fantasy of hope felt by Kazuo Ishiguro's characters in his novel Never Let Me Go, the idea of openness described by Graham Swift in his fenland novel Waterland and the feeling of freedom felt by poet Stevie Smith who declared: "I like … flatness. It lifts the weight from the nerves and the mind."Producer: Luke Mulhall Dr Noreen Masud teaches literature at Durham University. You can hear her exploring aphorisms in this Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rtxb and debating Dada in this Free Thinking discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k9ws She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.

Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting. Producer: Emma WallaceDr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc and her thoughts on dance and stillness https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k33s She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.

Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the 18th-century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the centuries, tell us about ourselves and society. Producer: Ruth Watts Dr Darragh McGee teaches in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear him talking about gambling in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khhq

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Présence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Sembène tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les enfants vont bien. And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers and identity documents. Producer: Emma Wallace Alexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aimé Césaire https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf She also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehindre Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn And in last week's Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Condé https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v86y She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.

Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War I battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home. Producer: Torquil MacLeod Dr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as "disappointing." He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being "secretive". But could withholding your emotions be a deliberate tactic rather than a crass stereotype of inscrutability? Xine Yao has been reading short stories from the collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912 by Sui Sin Far and her Essay looks at what links the Asian American Exclusion Act of 1882, the first American federal law to exclude people on the basis of national or ethnic origin, to writings by the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant. Producer: Caitlin Benedict.Xine Yao researches early and nineteenth-century American literature and teaches at University College London. She hosts a podcast PhDivas and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Darwin's Descent of Man, Mould-breaking Writing and in a programme with Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam where she talks about science fiction. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio programmes.