8 May—Today is Mother’s Day. It has very special significance for me, since I am a mother. At least, that’s what my few friends have been telling me since even before I became a single father over three decades ago. I’m a mother, they’ve insisted, adding that in my case it’s half a word. I guess they’re reluctant to tell me I’m a super-mother for fear of inflating my ego. It’s comforting to have friends like that.

Mother’s Day as we know it was first celebrated by Anna Maria Jarvis in 1907 as a liturgical tribute to her mother who had died two years earlier. Sort of religious, believe it or not. But by the mid-twenties Anna Maria came to resent the holiday because it had become so commercialized. Commercialized? In America? She must have been delusional. Even today we don’t start to see advertising for Mother’s Day crap until January.

Anyway, to celebrate Mother’s Day non-commercially, here are musical tributes to mammas from an Italian tenor, a Spanish tenor/baritone, and a Welsh baritone/tenor . . .