Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Soprano Melody Moore has been a fixture of American operatic stages and has also been heard in Europe. Her repertory ranges from Mozart to music of the present day, but her powerful voice is especially well suited to operas of the late 19th century.

Moore was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, in the early 1970s. Her father was an Assemblies of God minister. Moore grew up in a Pentecostal church, where she participated in choral music but had no exposure to classical music. The family moved to Houston, Texas, and Moore auditioned for the Kingwood High School Choir. The choir director recognized her talent and gave her music to learn for a Texas all-state choral competition; she eventually reached the rank of second chair in the Texas All-State Choir. After graduating in 1990, Moore earned a scholarship to Louisiana State University, where she would check out opera videos nightly from the music library. She joined the Baton Rouge Opera as a lighting assistant and then had the chance to perform in a production of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. Warming to the idea of an operatic career, she transferred to Loyola University in New Orleans, but her development was interrupted for four years after her father's suicide. She returned to voice studies at Kent State University in Ohio, where she studied with James Mismas and graduated summa cum laude and then attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for further study. In 2005, Moore joined the San Francisco Opera's Merola Program and then became an Adler Fellow with the company. She took up residence in San Francisco and has performed several times with the company in major roles. Moore is one of the few openly gay singers at the highest levels of opera.

Moore scored a major breakthrough in 2012 when she substituted mid-performance for an ailing Angela Gheorghiu at the San Francisco Opera. She has appeared with many of the top American opera companies, including the Houston Grand Opera (several times, including in a production of Jerome Kern's Show Boat), the Los Angeles Opera, and the Washington National Opera. She has sung at the Naples Opera in Italy and has also appeared in Romania, Portugal, and South Korea. Moore has a large repertory of concert works, including the Sea Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams, which she was slated to sing with the Oregon Symphony in 2020. Moore records for the PentaTone label, where she has several operatic credits, and where she released her solo debut, An American Song Album, in 2019. In 2021, Moore was heard as Minnie on a PentaTone recording of Puccini's La fanciulla del West. ~ James Manheim

Baritone Lester Lynch made an impact in major European opera houses, and later, in his native U.S. He has a wide repertory but has specialized in the operas of Verdi and Puccini.

Lynch was born in Elyria, Ohio, near Cleveland, in the late 1960s, and grew up on the city's east side. He sang in a church choir, and a teacher picked him out of a rehearsal when he was in fourth grade and told him he had a great voice. At first, he hoped to become a pianist or a flutist, but further work with teachers as the student president of the Elyria High School Choir led him in the direction of singing. Lynch attended Baldwin Wallace University for two years and went on for further study at the New England Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School. After that, though, he had difficulties in taking his career to the next level. "I got to a certain point in my career, and people started pointing out to me that I was Black," he told Cleveland's Ideastream Radio on February 28, 2020. "They kept pointing it out over and over again, and so I hit kind of a ceiling." Deciding to try his luck in Europe, Lynch had more success, landing major baritone roles such as Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, Count di Luna in Verdi's Il trovatore, and the title role in Verdi's Rigoletto. Lynch appeared at La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden in London, and in concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, among other organizations. These triumphs attracted the attention of North American operatic bookers, and Lynch has appeared at the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and many symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Houston Symphony. Lynch has returned to Europe for numerous performances, including a production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in Germany, under the direction of Simon Rattle. He has continued to sing Verdi and Puccini roles frequently but has a large repertory extending from Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder to Crown in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess to African American spirituals.

Lynch records for the PentaTone label. In 2017, he issued the solo album On My Journey Now: Spirituals and Hymns. He has also appeared on various operatic recordings, including, in 2020, a production of Puccini's Il tabarro recorded at the Kulturpalast in Dresden, Germany, the previous year. ~ James Manheim

TRACKLIST

1. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Alma Mater, amnis pratum…
2. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Chips was the soul of Brookfield.
3. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Chips, my good fellow…
4. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: …there was Kathie
5. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Kathie, Kathie…
6. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Chips, darling, it's started.
7. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Somehow I walked the three miles back to campus…
8. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: I suppose I was the first…
9. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Call-over: Wayne, Weaver, Webb…
10. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Sometimes the mood was somber…
11. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: There had been talk…
12. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Poor Ralston!
13. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 1: Kathie, you won't remember…
14. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Intermezzo
15. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Ralston soon went on to better things.
16. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Sir, my father was… (Dream sequence)
17. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Chips caught bronchitis…
18. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Chips had retired from teaching…
19. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: When the Armistice came in nineteen-eighteen…
20. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Mrs. Wickett also told me…
21. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Thank you, Miss Bridges.
22. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Well, you old ruffian…
23. Nathan Granner, Melody Moore, Lester Lynch, Kevin Short, San Francisco Boys Chorus, Barbary Coast Orchestra & Dennis Doubin - Getty: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Act 2: Alma mater - I thought I heard you…



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