What follows is one critic`s honor roll of 20 great singers of the 20th Century. This is the first article in an occasional series profiling artists who decisively shaped the course of classical music in the present century.
Twenty may be a somewhat arbitrary number, but none of my choices was arbitrarily or thoughtlessly made. Each singer has, in his or her way, defined a style of singing, made a major imprint on his or her time or exerted wide influence. Of course, not every important vocal artist could be included, which is why a supplemental list of ”other” Greats (though not necessarily lesser greats) is included at the end.
Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) was, quite simply, the supreme Italian tenor of his time, perhaps of all time. Some have surpassed him in artistic subtlety and finesse, others in sheer volume; but no one had his glorious natural talent, the beautifully controlled sound that with the years grew as mellow as a French horn. That his ascendancy coincided with the development of the phonograph was a godsend for both: He made hundreds of records that took his voice to millions of people. More than 70 years after his early death, his name remains a byword for vocal excellence.
Caruso was not the only influential singer active in the early years of the century. The Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938) was by all accounts as much a histrionic genius as a master vocalist. He was the first to move the bass voice to center stage and made the leading Russian opera roles, especially Boris Godunov, indelibly his own. Recordings preserve a voice completely identifiable in its fusion of spontaneity and intensity.
Though Prussian by birth, Lotte Lehmann (1888-1976) represented to the world the traditional Viennese qualities of charm, breeding and
warmheartedness. Perhaps no other singer before Maria Callas so totally identified with the characters she portrayed or the songs she sang. Lehmann`s American career began in Chicago as Wagner`s Sieglinde (1930) and effectively ended with a sentimental New York farewell in 1951. Equally at home in the song repertory and German and Italian opera (for years she owned the role of the Marschallin in Strauss` ”Der Rosenkavalier”), she combined great spontaneity, vibrant expressiveness and silvery timbre. Few singers on record convey so potent a musical personality.
Widely admired, too, was Claudia Muzio (1889-1936), the Italian soprano one critic dubbed ”the Duse of song.” Her voice may have lacked size, brilliance and the refinements of an earlier generation of singers, but few projected intense drama and pathos with as much compelling sincerity. Her style, representing verismo at its height, was a complete expression of the taste of her times. Her longest American opera residencies were in Chicago, where she made her debut as Aida in 1922, returning for nine seasons.
A shoemaker`s son who became Caruso`s operatic heir, the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957) parlayed a uniquely honeyed, fluent voice and appealingly spontaneous manner into a hugely popular career that lasted more than 40 years and made him one of the highest paid musicians up to that time: At his career peak he was making nearly $100,000 annually, a fortune in those days. If his singing was guilty of lapses of taste, especially late in his career, he was without doubt a great singer.
Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) said that the voice of Lauritz Melchior
(1890-1973) was ”the greatest God ever gave man,” a high compliment indeed coming from one of the century`s legendary dramatic sopranos-and, not incidentally, Melchior`s best-known Isolde. The Danish tenor and Norwegian soprano made an almost superhuman Wagnerian team the likes of which the world may never hear again. His strength and stamina were as legendary as her tonal purity and stately nobility of expression. He was the only tenor able to realize with incredible ease Wagner`s vocal demands; that feat alone would qualify him as the great Heldentenor of the century.
Much the same ability to establish immediate contact with the listener characterized the singing of Spanish mezzo Conchita Supervia (1895-1936). She had the blazing temperament and delightful stage presence to turn her great vocal gifts to the advantage of everything she sang, though particularly to Rossini and the French roles with which she favored the major theaters, including Chicago (1915-16). Her voice was not conventionally beautiful: One critic likened it to the rattle of thrown dice. But few singers have so keenly conveyed the sheer pleasure of the act of singing, and that feeling comes through vividly on records made more than 60 years ago.
Lehmann once asked Geraldine Farrar how one gets a voice like Rosa Ponselle`s (1897-1981). ”By special arrangement with God,” replied Farrar. Her voice surely was one of the most beautiful of the century, golden and opulent of tone, warmly expressive throughout its wide, seamless range, remarkably flexible despite its size and weight. One of the greatest dramatic sopranos of the century, Ponselle built her career entirely in America, singing 22 roles over 19 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera. That she remains among the most famous of all singers owes mostly to recordings.
What Flagstad was to the Wagner soprano roles, Zinka Milanov (1906-1989)
was to the Verdi repertory in the 1940s and `50s. There was simply no singer who could touch her for combined translucent tonal beauty, smooth legato, power and dramatic conviction.
Who today can float the high pianissimi in ”Pace, pace, mio Dio” (from Verdi`s ”La Forza del Destino”) with the shimmering beauty of Milanov? The singer knew her worth. Asked late in her career if she had ever sung Butterfly on stage, Milanov replied, with her thick Croatian accent, ”No, but if I had, I would have been the greatest!”
During the 1950s and `60s Hans Hotter (1909- ) was recognized as the world`s leading Wagner bass-baritone, famous especially for his Hans Sachs and Wotan; for many his imposing figure and noble, authoritative voice embodied the grandeur of Wagner`s ”Ring” conception.
Hotter was one of the few singers of heavy roles who distinguished himself as a lieder singer as well as an operatic artist. A measure of his careful husbanding of vocal resources was the fact that he was still appearing in concert at 80.
Never mind that his stage presence was more a matter of dignified deportment than involved acting: Jussi Bjoerling (1911-1960) won his place as one of the most popular of postwar tenors with his voice, a true tenor of velvety smoothness, perfectly placed and evenly produced, capable of sending ringing high notes to the farthest corners of a theater. His repertory was relatively small (Verdi and Puccini for the Italians, Romeo and Faust for French roles), but his beautiful voice quality and impeccable musicianship made him a Met mainstay for 30 years.
Like her German compatriot Hans Hotter, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-
) was celebrated for the authority with which she crossed from the opera house to the recital and concert stages. Her voice has been likened to a finely tuned violin, and this ravishment of tone and inflection, combined with her exceptional attention to verbal nuance and her striking physical beauty, made her one of the most intelligent and sought-after singers from 1938 to 1971, when she retired from the stage to devote more attention to recitals.
Which brings us to the third member of the century`s triumvirate of great Wagner sopranos, along with Flagstad and Frida Leider: Birgit Nilsson (1918-
). The steely grandeur of the Swedish soprano`s instrument alone would guarantee her a place in Valhalla; in its prime, the voice carried easily over the largest Wagner or Strauss orchestra and her stamina and lung power were equal to the fearsome tasks those composers asked of their heroines. Critic Irving Kolodin described her performances as ”the kind of singing from which legends are born.”
Of all the sopranos who dominated the opera world in the postwar period, Maria Callas (1923-1977) stood alone. None of her contemporaries had her musical instincts or dramatic intensity; none could command the stage the way she did; none took greater artistic risks; none had her household popularity; none was able to sustain so phenomenal a career despite so flawed a voice and technique.
Her time on the stage has been likened to a white-hot meteor that quickly burns itself out: Callas` career lasted barely more than a decade. Yet in that time she helped redefine the art of opera. After her, the theatrical expression of opera could never be the same.
If one were to choose a single mezzo from the postwar period as a standout, she would have to be Marilyn Horne (1929- ). With her amazing three- octave range, flexibility and brilliance she seems a throwback to the versatile vocal giants of the Golden Age. Together with her colleague Joan Sutherland she has brought many bel canto operas back into the repertory, notably long-neglected stage works of Rossini.
Sutherland (1926- ) was born with a world-class instrument-a big, agile soprano with the ease and brilliance of tone to conquer the most demanding scores, from Handel to Puccini`s Turandot, with success. The ”loony dames”
of bel canto (as she called them) were her specialty, and if she did not inhabit these parts as hauntingly as Callas, she brought purely vocal qualities to them that were not in her rival`s arsenal. To this day Dame Joan towers as a natural phenomenon.
Perhaps the most versatile and cultivated German singer of his generation, with a lieder repertory alone encompassing more than 1,000 songs, is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925- ). His fine intellect, resonant voice and deep feeling for words and how they relate to musical expression have made him the lieder singer by whom all others must be judged, and his omnivorous expansion into the opera and concert literature has been hardly less notable. Alfredo Kraus (1927- ) is, quite simply, the finest lyric tenor of this age, a grand seigneur of singing whose aristocratic interpretations of such roles as Alfredo, the Duke of Mantua, Massenet`s Des Grieux and Werther stand unrivalled for elegance and stylishness.
Although she has sung an amazingly wide range of music, Austrian mezzo Christa Ludwig (1928- ) is probably best known for her German-language work on the stage and in the concert/recital hall.
As Octavian, the Composer, Fricka and Brangaene (to cite just a few from her gallery of roles), and in the symphonic songs of Mahler, she has distinguished herself among the leading mezzo-sopranos of the day. Her voice is a regal gift of nature mated with a formidable technique, an elemental force that speaks directly, yet profoundly, in the most human way possible.
Plenty of other candidates for this list could be advanced, of course, but space is short. The very fact that the following singers didn`t make the main list is no reflection on their vocal and artistic worth.
Consider: Mary Garden, Maggie Teyte, Elisabeth Rethberg, Eva Turner, Renata Tebaldi, Eleanor Steber, Regine Crespin, Leontyne Price, Leonie Rysanek, Montserrat Caballe, Mirella Freni, Jessye Norman, Ernestine Schumann- Heink, Teresa Berganza and Janet Baker.
Or, consider further Tito Schipa, Wolfgang Windgassen, John McCormack, Georges Thill, Nicolai Gedda, Giuseppe di Stefano, Carlo Bergonzi, Jon Vickers, Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Tita Ruffo, Lawrence Tibbett, Tito Gobbi, Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill, Vanni Marcoux, Ezio Pinza, Friedrich Schorr, Cesare Siepi, Boris Christoff and many more.
Unless you are among those who have turned off their ears to any or all voices that flourished A. C. (after Caruso) you will have to concede that, all things considered, it hasn`t been a bad century for singers.
A final note. I make no apologies for omissions. It`s a cruel game, but somebody`s got to play it. Let me hear your candidates.
