Some singers (Hermann Prey, for one) sing Schubert as if these songs were lived dramas.

I thought he was Tin Pan Alley - and I always sang Schubert and Schumann and Brahms.

He also added a soupçon of high culture to soften Alicia: she quotes French poetry from memory and sings Schubert.

"After 50 years of teaching, the question remains, 'How to explain those who sing Schubert in the evening and torture in the morning?' "

I sang Brahms and Schubert and Massenet and even 'The Man I Love.'

"When I stand onstage and sing Schubert," she said in a recent conversation, "I don't sing it as a black woman, I just sing it."

The fact that I can sing Schubert or Poulenc or Ravel shows that I'm trying to change it.

Does one sing Schubert with a voice like this?

Bass-baritone Hanno Muller-Brachmann sings Schubert, Brahms and Schumann at Wigmore Hall.

He sang Schubert for Mottl, who was deeply impressed, and started planning to get him to Munich.