When Felice Coral drove back and forth between her family’s house in Eastham and her place in Boston, she would tune in to WOMR, Provincetown’s community radio station, as soon as the signal popped up on Route 3. Often, she called in to chat with Howard Weiner, who was the longtime host of the classical music and opera shows.
“We’d have conversations about the quality of the singers, if somebody was having vocal problems,” says Coral. Those phone calls were casual, not strategic, says Coral. “I did not have the faintest idea of joining the station.”
At the time, Coral was working in consulting and oncological research. When she retired in 2014, she moved to Eastham full-time. A year later, Weiner died. Coral called WOMR, concerned about the future of the shows he had established. Although she had never planned on becoming a DJ, she asked about the possibility of hosting. “One thing led to another,” says Coral.
Now she’s been a DJ for nearly 10 years for two shows: every other Monday from 1 to 4 p.m. she hosts Café Classicale, and she alternates hosting Opera House on Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. Her co-hosts are Reed Boland on Café Classicale and Mary Jane Byrne on Opera House.
Opera House offers opera year-round: Mozart and Wagner and Bellini; American and European; canonical and lesser-known. On Café Classicale, Coral spins everything from Baroque to Romantic to modern music — symphonies, sonatas, and sarabandes. “Everything but atonal,” she says. “Atonal is hard to listen to.” Her approach to hosting is entirely ad-libbed — in her comments between pieces, she says, “I’m responding to the music, as I hope the listeners are.”
Coral’s love of music started with her parents. “I grew up surrounded by it,” she says.
“I’m not a musician,” says Coral, but she dabbled in learning a few instruments. “I had the requisite piano lessons. I enjoyed them, and I didn’t mind practicing. But I did not like recitals.” At Simmons University, where Coral was a student, “there was only a beat-up upright piano in the gym,” she says. “I let the piano go.” In the late ’80s she took flute lessons — an instrument of convenience — to maintain her ability to read music.
Every week, she spends about 8 to 10 hours curating her program by studying and listening to music. “Let’s say it’s the first day of spring,” she says — a hypothetical theme to shape a program. “I might choose Printemps by Debussy.” That symphonic suite was composed in 1887, when Debussy was living in Rome. In a letter home to Paris, the composer wrote of the piece, “I should like to express the slow and labored birth of beings and things in nature, their gradual blossoming, and finally the joy of being born into some new life.”
“What fascinates me is that music is a reflection of the politics and culture of the time in which the composer lived,” says Coral. Baroque music is generally agreeable and rule-following, although a particularly complicated fugue might set the listener on edge. “More contemporary composers like Shostakovich, Prokofiev — that music is disruptive,” says Coral. “I wouldn’t necessarily put on Shostakovich on a Sunday afternoon.”
More than anything, she finds music emotional. “It sparks a range of feelings, from extreme happiness and fulfillment to frustration or anger,” she says.
It also sparks nostalgia. Listeners often call in during her show. “They’ve usually either been musicians or they were opera fanatics when they lived in New York,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘I remember this!’ or ‘I saw him when he was a kid performing at Carnegie Hall.’ ”
Jay Stinson of East Sandwich is one of those engaged listeners. He turned 95 on Dec. 16 — the same date that Beethoven was born and the Boston Tea Party occurred, he notes. At age 12, he took a music appreciation class. The teacher played Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite. “I was swept away with the music,” says Stinson. “I’ve been in love with classical music ever since.” Like Coral, Stinson finds music emotional. “I still get chills listening to something I’ve heard 100 times,” he says.
Through calling in to WOMR, Stinson became friends with Weiner when he was host, and when Coral took over, the two also became friendly. They met in person for the first time at a matinee simulcast of a Met opera at the Cape Cinema in Dennis and became “fast friends,” says Stinson.
Stinson listens to WOMR’s classical and opera shows “religiously” and speaks to Coral every other week when she’s on air. “She has a great musicality about her,” he says. “She plays the regular war horses,” he says, but also “obscure things that I haven’t heard for years and years. I really appreciate that.”
Like Stinson, most of Coral’s callers are members of an older generation. Coral recognizes that classical music is considered by some an antiquated art form, but she’s optimistic about its continued relevance. On her show, she promotes concerts, especially at the local schools. “The community should go out and hear their kids perform and see what music can offer young people,” she says.
“In the time I’ve been here,” she says, “I’ve seen an increase in year-round musical activities related to classical music performance. While it certainly doesn’t attract the same kinds of crowds that pop and jazz do, it’s alive and well.”
As a DJ, says Coral, “I want to broaden people’s horizons.” Some might not choose to listen to classical music because they’ve never been exposed to it, she says. It has a snooty reputation, she adds. “Many people feel that they are held to a standard as listeners that they cannot achieve.” And some simply prefer other genres. “They’ll say, ‘I like jazz, but I can’t stand Chopin.’ ”
“Well,” says Coral, “jazz and classical music are very much interrelated.” She gives an example: the renowned American jazz and pop musician Quincy Jones was trained in Paris by the French music teacher, conductor, composer, pianist, and organist Nadia Boulanger. When asked what he learned from Boulanger, Jones said, “Counterpoint, structure, science, left brain.”
“Classical music is part of a continuum,” says Coral. “These different types of music are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Listeners can broaden their thinking and open their hearts and ears to different cultures through classical music.”
At the end of her allotted hours each week, Coral has one goal in mind: “I want them to feel the music,” she says.
