The Magnificent Seven

[Schigolch]

Which are our favourites singers for each fach?.

Here we can select seven of them, the Magnificent Seven. Remember, we are asking for our favourites, not trying to select the best ones... if this would be indeed a feasible task.

Those are mine:

Sopranos: Rosa Ponselle, Claudia Muzio, Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Magda Olivero, Kirsten Flagstad

Mezzo/Altos: Kathleen Ferrier, Giulietta Simionato, Waltraud Meier, Marilyn Horne, Ebe Stignani, Shirley Verrett, Lucia Valentini Terrani

Tenors: Enrico Caruso, Jussi Björling, Sergei Lemeshev, Beniamino Gigli, Alfredo Kraus, Lauritz Melchior, Luciano Pavarotti

Baritones: Riccardo Stracciari, Mattia Battistini, Pavel Lisitsian, Leonard Warren, Giuseppe de Luca, Heinrich Schlusnus, Giuseppe Taddei

Bass: Alexander Kipnis, Ezio Pinza, Nazzareno de Angelis, Mark Reizen, Tancredi Pasero, Samuel Ramey, Cesare Siepi

Countertenors: Philippe Jaroussky, David Daniels, Alfred Deller, Bejun Mehta, Iestyn Davies, Russel Oberlin, Brian Asawa

[Soave_Fanciulla]

Sopranos: Emma Kirkby, Ileana Cotrubas, Kathleen Battle, Lucia Popp, Maria Bayo, Natalie Dessay, Nancy Argenta


Mezzos: Joyce DiDonato, Sarah Connolly, Frederica von Stade, Cecilia Bartoli, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Tatiana Troyanos, Agnes Baltsa


Contraltos: Ewa Podleś, Mariana Mijanovic, Marie Nicole Lemieux, Sara Mingardo


Tenors: Plácido Domingo, Jonas Kaufmann, Ian Bostridge, Philip Langridge, Klaus Florian Vogt, Joseph Calleja, Tom Randle


Baritones: Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Peter Mattei, Thomas Allen, Mariusz Kwiecień, Nicolas Rivenq


Basses/bass baritones: Luca Pisaroni, Sam Ramey, Matti Salminen, Ruggero Raimondi, René Pape, José van Dam, Ferrucio Furlanetto


Countertenors: Andreas Scholl, Iestyn Davis, Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Bejun Mehta, Tim Mead, Christophe Dumaux

[MAuer]

Sopranos: Sena Jurinac, Camilla Nylund, Anja Harteros, Anna Netrebko, Katia Ricciarelli, Ileana Cotrubas, Diana Damrau

Mezzos: Agnes Baltsa, Joyce di Donato, Waltraud Meier, Teresa Berganza, Susan Graham, Shirley Verrett, Fiorenza Cossotto

Tenors: Jonas Kaufmann, Fritz Wunderlich, Siegfried Jerusalem, José Carreras, Placido Domingo, Werner Krenn, Leopold Simoneau

Baritones: Sherrill Milnes, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich Henschel, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Anthony Michaels-Moore, Simon Keenlyside, Leo Nucci

Basses/Bass-Baritones: Kurt Moll, Bryn Terfel, Sam Ramey, Franz Crass, Stephen Milling, Karl Ridderbusch, Gwynne Howell

Countertenors: See Tenors ()

[desiree]

Sopranos: Kirsten Flagstad, Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles, Wilma Lipp, Joan Sutherland, Ghena Dimitrova, Diana Damrau

Mezzo/Altos: Marilyn Horne, Fiorenza Cossotto, Frederica von Stade, Cecilia Bartoli, Joyce DiDonato, Kathleen Ferrier, Ewa Podles

Tenors: Lauritz Melchior, Jussi Björling, Mario Del Monaco, Franco Corelli, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Luciano Pavarotti, Juan Diego Flórez

Baritones: Tito Gobbi, Robert Merrill, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Piero Cappuccilli, Sherrill Milnes, Simon Keenlyside, Bryn Terfel

Bass: Boris Christoff, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Nicola Ghiuselev, Ruggero Raimondi, Samuel Ramey, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Paata Burchuladze

Countertenors: Andreas Scholl, Philippe Jaroussky, Brian Asawa

[Almaviva]

Sopranos: Anna Netrebko, Anna Netrebko, Anna Netrebko, Anna Netrebko, Anna Netrebko, Anna Netrebko and Kristine Opolais.

No, seriously, I'll think about it and reply for real at some other time.

[Dark_Angel]

Favorite 7 Sopranos

1) Callas
2) Tebaldi
3) Elena Suliotis
4) Anna Moffo
5) Leyla Gencer
6) Anna Netrebko
7) AC Antonacci

Only Callas and Tebaldi get the honor of single name designation
If there can be only one favorite of course it is Callas.....

[Couchie]

That's OK. It's all these Callas and Netrebko fans you need to be concerned about.

[StLukesGuildOhio]

One name I'm noticing as conspicuously absent from all the soprano lists is Angela Gheorghiu. Regardless of her personal life/soap opera and the reputation of her personality ("Draculette"?) she must be one of the best sopranos of our time. Having said this, I recognize that I left her off my list as well... in spite of padding out the number of sopranos. The only excuse I can give is that unlike so many other singers I love, she has rarely produced a recital disc that I found all that interesting. Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Cecilia Bartoli, Magdalena Kozena, Veronique Gens, Dawn Upshaw, Natalie Dessay, Elina Garanca, Anna Netrebko... as well as male singers such as Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky have all recorded discs of interesting repertoire... Russian operas and romances, French melodies, Baroque arias, Modern and Contemporary composers etc... Gheorghiu... with the exception of her disc, Mysterium, seems stuck churning out the usual recitals of Verdi and Puccini. Having said that... I do find her recordings of Il Trittico, La Boheme, Tosca, and La Rondine to be especially fine... and she does have an excellent Manon and Romeo and Juliette (Gounod) as well.

Thoughts?

[StLukesGuildOhio]

By the way... Alma, is there some reason the site keeps printing random words in red?

[Schigolch]

I do agree Ms. Gheorghiu is one of the best sopranos of our time. However, there are no restrictions about a particular period in this thread, we can select singers from all times. Also, rather than looking for the 'best' we are just asking members to provide their favourites.

About the red links, this is part of the efforts from monetizing the site, by using Skimlinks, to identify mentions to dvd, cd and other material and underline the Amazon link. SkimWords, that is one of the components of the Skimlinks suite, is selecting Mr. Scholl because his surname is identical to the Scholl company. Perhaps we can change the way Skimlinks is implemented in our site, but I'm not familiar with the details.

[MAuer]

Although she wasn't one of my top seven, I do enjoy Gheorghiu's singing. She is a wonderful Adriana in this video from the Royal Opera:



I also like her Violetta, but my favorite in this role is her countrywoman, Cotrubas (likewise an engaging Manon).

[Almaviva]

By the way... Alma, is there some reason the site keeps printing random words in red?

Sorry, StLukes, I only now noticed this question. Yes, the reason is Skimlinks, which is one way to monetize the site (although we've earned not more than $10 from them - if members were to cooperate more, we'd be earning more. So, if you want to buy a CD or DVD and you post about it and put a link to the Amazon.com page, Skimlinks will change the link to a sponsored link, and then when you click on it to buy the CD, you pay the same price you'd have paid anyway, but the site gets a small percentage of the sale.

[Almaviva]

One name I'm noticing as conspicuously absent from all the soprano lists is Angela Gheorghiu. Regardless of her personal life/soap opera and the reputation of her personality ("Draculette"?) she must be one of the best sopranos of our time. Having said this, I recognize that I left her off my list as well... in spite of padding out the number of sopranos. The only excuse I can give is that unlike so many other singers I love, she has rarely produced a recital disc that I found all that interesting. Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Cecilia Bartoli, Magdalena Kozena, Veronique Gens, Dawn Upshaw, Natalie Dessay, Elina Garanca, Anna Netrebko... as well as male singers such as Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky have all recorded discs of interesting repertoire... Russian operas and romances, French melodies, Baroque arias, Modern and Contemporary composers etc... Gheorghiu... with the exception of her disc, Mysterium, seems stuck churning out the usual recitals of Verdi and Puccini. Having said that... I do find her recordings of Il Trittico, La Boheme, Tosca, and La Rondine to be especially fine... and she does have an excellent Manon and Romeo and Juliette (Gounod) as well.

Thoughts?

Very belated, but since nobody responded to this, I will. Given that I learned that Angela Gheorghiu is the top earner in the recital circuit, I guess she is very worried about the commercial side of her career, and will record what she believes will sell, so this likely is what explains the dull pickings in her albums. She is certainly capable of much better, and I do agree that she is one of the most gifted singers of her generation, even though her career has been marred by off-stage issues.

[Schigolch]

Well, I do agree that Ms. Gheorghiu is indeed one of the best sopranos of our time. However, there is no date range in this exercise, so any soprano since the invention of the phonograph can be selected. Belonging in that list is much more difficult than just being one of the best sopranos now active.

About her discography, I think her recital from La Scala is interesting, and not exactly mainstream, including quite a few Romanian songs.

[Tardis]

I wonder if Ms. Gheorghiu will sing at the Met again, especially after she (perhaps rightly) decided to cancel her appearance in Faust. Perhaps the Met is quietly transitioning her out.
A shame, I would have liked to hear her live at some point.