Modern broadcasting began around 1920.
Radio Days
The history of sound
The album features iconic standards tracing back to the dawn of broadcasting: on Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden astonished sailors by sending the first human voice and a violin performance of O Holy Night over the air.
Four years later, Enrico Caruso’s voice carried from the Metropolitan Opera in one of radio’s earliest broadcasts.
Radio Days is Living Opera’s flagship 2026 album, created in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, exploring the rich history of opera and its enduring connection to the golden age of radio.
About the album
Radio Days: The Golden Age of American Song traces mass listening from radio’s birth to the age of AI through six songs: “O Holy Night,” linked to an early broadcast of voice and music; “O Lola,” from the first U.S. opera broadcast; and four American standards. Sung by Soula Parassidis and Norman Reinhardt, produced by Jeff Trott, and arranged by Patrick Warren, the album shows how each era changes the way songs are made, heard, and remembered.
Radio Days
On January 13, 1910, Enrico Caruso’s performance at the Metropolitan Opera was transmitted live by Lee de Forest’s experimental radio system, marking one of the first times a singer’s voice was broadcast to the public.
Frank Conrad broadcasting the results of the 1920 presidential election.
Radio Days
Music that shapes culture
Radio Days tells the story of how music became a shared cultural experience, from the first broadcasts of voice, song, and opera to the American standards that later filled homes through radio. In the age of AI, the album looks back at radio’s first disruption to ask how each new medium changes not only how music is heard, but how it enters memory, identity, and public life.