Even as a child I loved to ‘belt out’ Victor Herbert’s Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life. I sang it first with orchestra in 1948 on the CBS radio programme ‘We the People’, then again a year or two later—in the days of early television—on ‘The Paul Whiteman Show’ which came from WFIL-TV in Philadelphia. The Dublin-born Herbert, another immigrant to America, wrote the piece for his 1910 operetta Naughty Manetta. I have always been moved by the song’s unabashed ardour and though I have performed it hundreds of times over the years, it still has the power to inspire me when I sing it today.

from notes by Robert White © 1997