Summer mornings in Bangladesh’s Hill Tracts provide a respite from the cacophony of honking cars and construction in the capital Dhaka. It was a welcome change to hear the chickens and… wait, was it Julie Andrews’ voice echoing over the hills?
While visiting my home country, I heard a group of school children playing the traditional string instrument ektara and singing “Do-Re-Mi” for their morning assembly.
I used my phone to show them a picture of Andrews. “Do you know him?” They suddenly jumped with excitement. They did not know composer Richard Rodgers or lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. But they knew Andrews; Even though 60 years have passed since “The Sound of Music” and these children live in a remote village in Bangladesh. Recognition is evidence of something extraordinary.
Andrews turns 91 on Thursday and there are calls online for him to wrap himself in bubble wrap, just in case. It is truly a global treasure and has been garnering acclaim and admiration for eighty years.
Andrews was trained in the Italian bel canto tradition and from a young age sang challenging coloratura arias with precision, clarity and range. The bright, happy tone is perhaps a subconscious decision rather than an anatomical one, II. It helped him escape the smear bombs that fell during his childhood in England during World War II. British critics called her “the youngest prima donna”; it was a title usually given to opera greats, and it was undeserved. At just 12 years old, high F’s were routinely floating above the treble staff during live performances.
But before opera could take over, Broadway stepped in. From “The Boy Friend” to “My Fair Lady” and then “Camelot,” he won the hearts of theatergoers and creators alike. Songwriter Alan Lerner described him as someone who “works incredibly quickly in the musical field… meets every challenge with a never-diminishing eyelid that leaves you wondering how Britain ever lost the empire.”
His voice was so clear that the late conductor André Previn, who conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, said: “No one’s diction comes close to this in any area of singing. … You understand every syllable from the second balcony – I don’t know how you do it.”
It is wrong to romanticize his legacy in 2026 as merely nostalgic. This would miss the depth and progressive nature of his characters. She was the first female superhero on the big screen, like Mary Poppins, who could fly and create alternate realities with the flick of her heels, but whose most striking superpower at the height of the Cold War was to portray capitalism as endearingly dangerous.
In “Victor,” she gave a gender-bending performance that challenged social norms; She portrayed a woman impersonating a man pretending to be a woman, when talking about any layer of it was taboo. His most overlooked and perhaps best dramatic role was in the 1986 film “Duet for One,” about a musician suffering from multiple sclerosis. Tragically, this became a moment when his life imitated art, foreshadowing his fateful loss of his instrument after throat surgery in 1997.
Instead of retreating, Andrews branched out into voice acting with characters like the dominant Queen Lillian in the “Shrek” movies, Gru’s hilariously malevolent mother in “Despicable Me” and the mysterious Lady Whistledown in “Bridgerton,” for which she won a two-time Emmy..
In real life, the flying super governess fought to adopt two babies from Vietnam just after the fall of Saigon, helping raise awareness of the need for adoptive parents. She later co-founded the disaster relief charity Operation USA and opened the Japan wing of the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Whether it was supporting UNICEF after the devastating Bhola cyclone that hit modern-day Bangladesh in 1970 or traveling to Jordan and Senegal to support activities for women and children, she was a silent advocate for the underserved. In his most famous role, “The Sound of Music,” he was the savior of children displaced by war.
Although Andrews is mostly out of the public eye, his singing is timeless and accessible. YouTube is home to a treasure trove of Andrews’ performances, including “Kismet” to “This Is My Beloved,” the full-voiced “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from pianissimos to fortes to high B-flats and more; his classical flair shines through. These recordings remind us that, beyond the formulaic legato phrasing and clear resonance pursued by singers of the Italian tradition, his work set a gold standard for musical storytelling that few have since surpassed.
Julie Andrews is no longer frolicking in the Alps or reprising her role as the queen of Genoa in a “Princess Diaries” movie, but her voice and what she represents have endured for more than 80 years. It continues to resonate not just in films and recordings, but in the minds of children and adults alike, from his hometown of Walton-on-Thames to the Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. In an age of disaster (and singing standards alarmingly low), his expansive career offers rare resonance and an ongoing masterclass.
Shams-il Arefin Islam, a lecturer at Yale-Berkeley University who studies climate change mitigation and adaptation, is a classically trained tenor.