Mirella Freni, OMRI was an Italian operatic soprano who had a career of 50 years and appeared at major international opera houses. She received international attention at the Glyndebourne Festival, where she appeared as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and as Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.
Lucia Popp was a Slovak operatic soprano. She began her career as a soubrette, and later moved into the light-lyric and lyric coloratura soprano repertoire and then the lighter Richard Strauss and Wagner operas. Her career included performances at Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, and La Scala. Popp was also a highly regarded recitalist and lieder singer.
Inese Galante is a Latvian soprano opera singer. Galante is known for a great beauty of tone, nuanced pianissimos and sensitive command of dynamics and colour. Her performance of Vavilov's Ave Maria, from her "Debut" album 1995 started spreading worldwide interest in the piece.
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.
Barbara Frittoli is an Italian operatic soprano, specializing in operas by Verdi and Mozart. She has sung leading roles in opera houses throughout Europe and in the United States, such as La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Her signature roles include Mimì in La bohème, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Desdemona in Otello.
Hong Hei-Kyung, often known in the west as Hei-Kyung Hong, is a South Korean operatic lyric soprano.
A lyric soprano is a type of operatic soprano voice that has a warm quality with a bright, full timbre that can be heard over an orchestra. The lyric soprano voice generally has a higher tessitura than a soubrette and usually plays ingenues and other sympathetic characters in opera. Lyric sopranos have a range from approximately middle C (C4) to "high D" (D6). This is the most common female singing voice. There is a tendency to divide lyric sopranos into two groups: light and full.
Antoinette Halloran is an Australian operatic soprano.
Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz is a Norwegian-Italian operatic soprano.
Lívia Ághová is a Slovak opera singer. She has been a principal soprano at the National Theatre in Prague since 1988. Her career has also taken her to many of the best opera houses and concert halls in North America and Europe. She has sung in numerous opera and concert recordings with such labels as Chandos, ORFEO, and Supraphon.
Rebecca Sjöwall is an American opera singer and recording artist.
Pavla Vykopalová is a Czech soprano.
Geraldine McMillian is an American soprano who has had an active career in concerts and operas since the mid-1980s.
Amelia Sierra is a soprano and mezzo-soprano opera singer from Mexico. Sierra was born in Mexico City and completed her musical studies with the Escuela Superior de Música of the INBA. She has studied under Maritza Alemán, James Demster, Mario Alberto Hernández and Ricardo Sánchez as well as Magda Olivero, Montserrat Caballé, Ramón Vargas, Francisco Araiza, Carmo Barbosa, Dalton Baldwin, Dolores Aldea, Lara Pasquinelli, Joan Dornemann, Tito Capobianco and Susan Young. While in training, she received recognition with Best Performance at the FONCA-OCJM in 1995, third place in the Carlo Morelli National Singing Contest and first place the OSUG Competition, both in 1996. She also received recognition by the National Coordination of Music and Opera in 1996. She has received various grants for performing from the Education for Art Program at the University of Guanajuato and SIVAM. She continues to study informally in various workshops in New York City.
Ricardo Bernal is a Mexican lyric tenor.
Ana María González is a Spanish lyric soprano trained in Argentina, known for performing at the Teatro Colón from 1973 to 1994. Although associated with the Italian lyric repertoire, she also excelled in lyric soprano roles of the French repertoire such as Manon, Marguerite, and Juliette, which brought her international fame.
Irma Beilke was a German operatic soprano, concert singer and academic voice teacher. A member of the Städtische Oper Berlin for decades, and also a member of the Vienna State Opera, she appeared in leading roles of the coloratura soprano and lyric soprano repertoire at major opera houses and festivals internationally, such as Mozart's Blonde and Verdi's La traviata. She took part in world premieres, including Capriccio by Richard Strauss. In 1945, she appeared in the first opera performance in Berlin after World War II, as Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio.
Golda Schultz is a South African operatic soprano.
Agnieszka Sławińska is a Polish operatic soprano.
Elena Guseva is a Russian operatic soprano who has performed at major opera houses in Europe. Besides standard repertoire such as Verdi's Aida and Puccini's Mimi, she has focused on roles by Russian composers, such as Tchaikovsky's Lisa and Prokofiev's Polina, a role she performed when Der Spieler was first performed at the Vienna State Opera.
