Part mem­oir, part biog­ra­phy, That Voice tells the sto­ry of the Scot­tish con­tral­to Ann Drum­mond-Grant, who died in the prime of her career — and whose record­ed voice became a life­line for an Amer­i­can Jew­ish girl who longed to fol­low in her foot­steps. 

Mar­cia Menter’s sopra­no voice was not excep­tion­al. But as a music and dra­ma stu­dent in the 1970s, she encoun­tered many gift­ed teach­ers from the Jew­ish dias­po­ra. Grad­u­al­ly she became aware of how the Holo­caust, from which she had been shel­tered, was a liv­ing part of her life.

Ann Drum­mond-Grant sang with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Com­pa­ny, a deeply British insti­tu­tion. But she, too, was touched by the dias­po­ra: Her hus­band, the con­duc­tor Isidore God­frey, was born to par­ents who came from the same part of Poland as Menter’s pater­nal grand­par­ents. This is a book about Gilbert & Sul­li­van and the study of singing, but a strong Jew­ish thread runs through it.