Of the many singers who bridged the musical worlds of the Victorian era and the twentieth century, John McCormack was the most versatile, the most adventurous and the most modern. The excerpts from Aida, Rigoletto and La Traviata demonstrate that McCormack, with his clear, clarion delivery, was an exceptional Verdi tenor. In the selections from Victorian operas by Balfe, Benedict and Wallace, McCormack is the master of florid vocalism and the seamless line. The popular Irish and Irish-American songs are sung with a level of artistry and musical imagination that transcends their humble origins. With Luigi Denza’s Funiculì, funiculà we are returned to the threshold moment in McCormack’s career when the Italian composer adjudicated the 1903 Dublin Feis Ceoil music competition and awarded McCormack the gold medal – the beginning of one of the great musical careers of the twentieth century.