Earl Wild

Earl Wild

LISTEN  (Running time: 4:59. 4.5 MB)

BOYCE LANCASTER TALKS WITH EARL WILD

“There was this horrible blizzard….” So begins Earl Wild’s tale about the night he performed at President Kennedy’s Inaugural Concert. When he finally arrived, his reward was a chance to talk to the President and his wife backstage for twenty minutes before the show. “I found Mrs. Kennedy to be most charming…”

This interview is part of Return to Camelot, a retrospective of the Kennedy years in the White House.

Clara O’Dette

Clara O’Dette

LISTEN  (Running time: 1:52. 1.7 MB)

BOYCE LANCASTER TALKS WITH CLARA O’DETTE

Former opera singer and loyal, longtime volunteer at WOSU FM, Clara O’Dette shares with us her personal stories about her performance at the White House. O’Dette, like Earl Wild, performed for the President under adverse weather conditions.

When she and her husband lived in Washington, D.C., Clara was an eight-year member of the chorus of the Washington Opera Society and performed for several luminaries. In addition to the Kennedys, Clara sang under Igor Stravinsky’s direction in “Chant du Rossignol,” and on another occasion met Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti backstage when the two friends attended rehearsals of Barber’s Vanessa.

This interview is part of Return to Camelot, a retrospective of the Kennedy years in the White House.