— Herodotus, The Histories1 I was driving down the Coast to do some shopping, and the car radio was on. It was tuned to the CBC’s Richardson’s Roundup. Bill Richardson introduced a piece of music briefly, saying its performer was the American countertenor David Daniels. I’d heard of countertenors, I think, but had confused them with castrati. Certain pop singers used a falsetto voice and I wondered if that was similar. Anyway, nothing — knowledge or ignorance — could have prepared me for what came next. One minute I was driving on an empty highway and the next I was sitting in the car by Homesite Creek, crying into my hands, ravens assembled in the trees above me. Bill had chosen to play “Ombra mai fu” from David Daniels’s Handel Operatic Arias, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, an ensemble I have since grown to love for the clean pared-back austerity of their sound. But that day I only knew I was hearing a voice and an aria that pierced right to my heart.
