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Aida is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. At New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, Aida has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera.
Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa,, is a New Zealand opera singer. She had a full lyric soprano voice, which has been described as "mellow yet vibrant, warm, ample and unforced". On 1 December 1971 she was recognised internationally when she appeared as the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London.
Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
Jessye Mae Norman was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert and recital stages, Norman was associated with roles including Beethoven's Leonore, Wagner's Sieglinde and Kundry, Berlioz's Cassandre and Didon, and Bartók's Judith. The New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein described her voice as a "grand mansion of sound", and wrote that "it has enormous dimensions, reaching backward and upward. It opens onto unexpected vistas. It contains sunlit rooms, narrow passageways, cavernous halls."
Helen Jeanette Donath is an American soprano with a career spanning fifty years.
Ibolyka Astrid Maria Varnay was a Swedish-born American dramatic soprano of Hungarian descent. She spent most of her career in the United States and Germany. She was one of the leading Wagnerian heroic sopranos of her generation.
Eleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.
Johanna Emilia Agnes Gadski was a German dramatic soprano. She had a secure, powerful, ringing voice, fine musicianship and an excellent technique. These attributes enabled her to enjoy a highly successful career in New York City and London, performing heavy dramatic roles in the German and Italian repertoires.
René Pape is a German operatic bass. Pape has received two Grammys, was named "Vocalist of the Year" by Musical America in 2002, "Artist of the Year" by the German opera critics in 2006, and won an ECHO award in 2009.
José Francisco Araiza Andrade is a Mexican operatic tenor and lied singer who has sung as soloist in leading concert halls and in leading tenor operatic roles in the major opera houses of Europe and North America during the course of a lengthy career. Born in Mexico City, he studied singing at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música de México and later in Germany, with Mozartian tenor Richard Holm, and lieder interpretation with Erik Werba. He made his operatic debut in 1970 in Mexico City as First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio. Araiza initially came to international prominence singing in Mozart and Rossini operas, but in the 1980s broadened his repertoire to include Italian and French lyric tenor roles and Wagnerian roles such as Lohengrin and Walther von Stolzing. He was made a Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera in 1988. Now retired from the opera stage, he teaches singing and serves on the juries of several international singing competitions.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.
Anja Harteros is a German soprano. Since winning the 1999 Cardiff Singer of the World competition she has been particularly associated with the Bavarian State Opera and enjoyed an international career.
Arianna Zukerman is an American lyric soprano who has performed with some of the world's finest orchestras and opera companies. Her voice was described in The Washington Post as "remarkable" combining the "range, warmth and facility of a Rossini mezzo with shimmering, round high notes and exquisite pianissimos."
Jonas Kaufmann is a German-Austrian tenor opera singer. He is best known for the versatility of his repertoire, performing a variety of opera roles in multiple languages in recital and concert each season. Some of his standout roles include Don José in Carmen, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur, Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, Siegmund in Die Walküre, and the title roles in Parsifal, Werther, Don Carlos, and Lohengrin. In 2014 The New York Times described Kaufmann as "a box-office draw, and... the most important, versatile tenor of his generation."
Hans Hopf was a German operatic tenor, one of the leading heldentenors of the immediate postwar period. He sang Walther von Stolzing in the Bayreuth Festival's Die Meistersinger, in 1951 and again in 1952. He would also sing Siegfried at Bayreuth from 1960–1963.
Anthony Dean Griffey is an American opera tenor. He is a regular presence on the stages of opera houses and concert halls around the world. Griffey has also been noted for his acting talent in addition to his voice.
Betty Allen was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who had an active international singing career during the 1950s through the 1970s. In the latter part of her career her voice acquired a contralto-like darkening, which can be heard on her recording of Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. She was known for her collaborations with American composers, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, and Virgil Thomson among others.
Richard Lee Versalle was an American operatic tenor.
George Irving Shirley is an American operatic tenor, and was the first African-American tenor to perform a leading role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
William Leonard Blankenship was an American operatic tenor, music pedagogue at the collegiate level, stage and television actor, and stage director.