The eMusic Dozen: Operatic Sopranos

A star of the Berlin and Vienna operas during World War Two, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was whisked from the ruins of post-war Austria by the entrepreneurial record producer Walter Legge (who she would marry in 1953), who set about launching her internationally. This worked pretty well, since Schwarzkopf, beauteous both in musical tone and physical appearance, became renowned for singing the lieder of Schubert, Strauss and Wolf, while becoming indelibly linked with a cluster of favorite operatic roles, almost exclusively by Mozart and Richard Strauss. This 1954 recording of Strauss's Ariadne Auf Naxos has become somewhat legendary, with conductor Herbert von Karajan expertly sculpting a rapt, poetic sound-world from Strauss's opulent score and teasing out superb performances from a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Though Schwarzkopf never sang the role of Ariadne on stage, her voice is in its silvery prime here, and her vocal prowess is matched by her shrewd appreciation of dramatic context.

The star-crossed Maria Callas defined the term "diva" (tiresomely over-used nowadays) with her combination of glamour, tempestuousness, tortured love life and, of course, devastating singing. Though not the most technically perfect of performers, Callas had a rare gift for leaving audiences drained and ravaged by the emotional commitment she brought to her roles, winning her a loyalty fanatical even in the super-competitive opera world. If a single role could be said to define her, it was that of Floria Tosca. A singer herself, Tosca is one of the more rounded and credible female roles in opera and one of Puccini's finest creations &mdash hence its timeless allure for history's great sopranos. The aria "Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore" ("I lived for art, I lived for love") seems to express timeless truths about the singer's art and about Callas herself. As an added bonus, on this recording she is joined by her musical soulmate, the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano.

The Mad Scene in Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor was often seen as merely an opportunity for the soprano to show off her arsenal of sirens, bells and whistles but latterly, it has become admired for its technical intricacy and its psychological insights into the character of Lucia, as well as for its weird harmonic allure. Few sopranos ever made a finer job of it than Renata Scotto, one of Italy's greatest gifts to the operatic stage and sometime rival to Maria Callas. In this performance, with the orchestra of La Scala, Milan, she movingly explores the eeriness and anguish of the piece. Something of a renaissance woman, in her later years Scotto moved beyond the Italianate world of Donizetti, Bellini and Puccini into Strauss, Wagner, and even Schoenberg. She also displayed considerable expertise as a chef (her linguine with pesto sauce enjoyed particular renown).

Though never courting the notoriety that surrounded some of her fellow divas, Modena-born Freni is rated as one of the finest of 20th century sopranos, thanks to the intelligence, precision and expressive qualities of her singing. She made her debut in Modena in 1955, at the age of 19, singing Micaela in Carmen, and the role became one of her definitive calling-cards. The so-called Micaela's Aria &mdash "Je dis que rien ne m'epouvante" &mdash gives Freni scope to show off both her gorgeous lyrical qualities as well as her toughness of character, in a piece in which Micaela is beseeching God to give her strength for trials which lie ahead. The conductor on this recording is Herbert von Karajan, who adored Freni and was a powerful ally in advancing her international career. At one Carmen performance in Salzburg, Karajan stopped conducting when Freni sang Micaela's Aria, and merely gestured at the orchestra to follow her singing.

In the early 1950s, Sydney-born Joan Sutherland was a company soprano at the Royal Opera House in London, where she was being groomed as a Wagnerian soprano in the vein of the formidable Norwegian, Kirsten Flagstad. However, after she met and married conductor Richard Bonynge, he persuaded her that her true forte was the coloratura and bel canto repertoire from composers such as Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini and Verdi. His hunch proved correct, and Sutherland's seemingly infinite resources of technical accuracy and resplendent musical tone enabled her to storm the ramparts of international opera, earning herself the nickname of La Stupenda. The operas of Handel were also an integral part of the Sutherland mix, particularly Alcina and Rodelinda. This recording of Rodelinda dates from 1959, when Sutherland was discovering the full extent of her powers, and we can hear her flexing them in arias such as "Ho perduto il caro sposo" and "Mio caro bene".

Mention the name Kirsten Flagstad, and the word "Wagner" usually springs to mind. From the mid '30s to the early '50s, Flagstad was the epitome of the Wagnerian soprano, a huge stage presence renowned for the power and beauty of her voice. Her debut as Sieglinde (in Die Walkure) at the Met in New York in 1935 triggered nationwide pandemonium, and earned her the sobriquet of The Voice of the Century. She returned to her husband in Nazi-occupied Norway in 1941, earning some undeserved hostility as a suspected collaborator, but the enforced break from full-time singing during the war helped extend her career. This collection presents Flagstad singing Beethoven and Weber, but mostly focuses on her Wagnerian roles. The pieces date from the late '30s, when Flagstad was in her scintillating pomp (even if contemporary microphones had trouble capturing the full scope of her voice). Among many gripping performances, the extracts from Die Walkure and Tristan und Isolde are stand-outs.

Georgia-born soprano Jessye Norman began mesmerizing audiences from the moment she made her operatic debut in Wagner's Tannhauser in Berlin in 1969. Her career set benchmarks for its breadth of repertoire, as she applied her sumptuous tones to composers as disparate as Mahler, Schubert, Ravel, Schoenberg, Purcell and Richard Rodgers. Aida became part of her repertoire in her earliest years, and it's the young star we hear in this performance. Even though she wasn't yet a fully-fledged global diva, to hear her tackling the aria "O patria mia" is to experience the majesty of Norman in full spate. An Ethiopian slave in the ancient Egyptian court, and secretly in love with the Captain of the Guards, Aida was in a ticklish predicament. In this aria she yearns movingly for her long-lost homeland, and the piece's plangent harmonies and powerful melody evoke both lost happiness and the inevitable onrush of a tragic fate.

The knotty question of whether operas in exotic languages should be translated into English has long divided listeners. The hardcore brigade insist on the original at all costs, while others argue that if it helps more people understand and appreciate the art, then that's good, right? Whatever, this English translation of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece is a resounding musical success, and non-Russian speakers will surely appreciate being able to follow the action in real time. A fine cast includes Thomas Hampson and veteran Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, but above all you get the exquisitely honeyed soprano of Dame Kiri te Kanawa singing the role of Tatyana. Revered as the owner of one of the most beautiful voices ever heard in opera, Kanawa has rarely sung more movingly than in the celebrated Letter Scene, where she pours out her heart to Onegin, unaware that he will greet her declaration of love with baffling indifference.

There wasn't a lot in the soprano repertoire that Montserrat Caballe couldn't handle. She made her debut in Basel, Switzerland in 1956 in La Boheme. She became renowned for her vocal brilliance in such bel canto fare as Rossini's Barber Of Seville or Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, but stretched out confidently into the deeper waters of Wagner and Richard Strauss, with the latter's scandalous Salome becoming one of her favorite roles. She even made an album with flamboyant rock prima donna Freddie Mercury. Perhaps the fact that she was born in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and had to fight tooth and nail to gain a thorough musical training equipped her to handle any challenge. This collection captures the Italian side of Caballe, with a selection of pieces from Bellini's Il Pirata, highlights from three Verdi operas, and the heartrending Un bel di vedremo from Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Controversy erupted in 2007, when the BBC Music Magazine published a Top 20 list of sopranos, including among them Emma Kirkby. Some observers apparently felt that because Kirkby specializes in Renaissance and baroque music and has never sung Verdi or Wagner, she shouldn't have been eligible. But since it has been Kirkby's career mission to shed light on superb but hitherto underexposed repertoire, the listing made her feel entirely vindicated. On this splendid disc of cantatas written by Handel during the years he spent in Italy, Kirkby's supple, brilliantly meticulous phrasing is accompanied by fellow early music specialists London Baroque. The composer plays his part by giving her a feast of brilliant melodies and vocal challenges to get her teeth into. And why not treat this as an introduction to eMusic's juicy menu of Kirkby recordings, which range from the lute songs of John Dowland to works by Couperin, Schutz and Vivaldi.

The famously hard-to-please conductor Arturo Toscanini said that Renata Tebaldi had "the voice of an angel", and when she died in 2004, experts decreed that she had possessed one of the finest lirico-spinto ("combining lighter and weightier qualities") soprano voices of the last century. Certainly, Tebaldi will be long remembered for expressively, beautifully-toned performances in the core Italian repertoire of Verdi, Puccini, Giordano and Ponchielli. She also survived a very public rivalry with Maria Callas which began when they toured South America together in 1951, though perhaps the resulting publicity benefited both singers. This collection is a fine introduction for beginners, and will surely please seasoned Tebaldi-spotters too. There's "Libiamo" (the Traviata drinking song), the diva's theme tune "Vissi d'arte" itself, and the sublime "Ebben? Ne andro lontano" from Catalani's La Wally, alongside further glittering extracts from Giordano, Boito and Puccini.

If any artist could be described as being "born to sing," it was Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles. She began her musical studies at the Barcelona Conservatory in 1940, made her opera debut in Boheme aged 17, and began a fully-fledged opera career at 21. Blessed with perfect technique and an unusually beautiful lyric soprano voice, she shone in Puccini, Massenet and Rossini, but almost to the end of her life (she was still in fine voice when she died aged 81) continued to perform a repertoire broad enough to encompass Strauss, Stravinsky and Monteverdi. Thus, she was more than equal to the musical and dramatic demands of Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, as we can hear in this noteworthy 1958 recording. Desdemona's famous set-pieces The Willow Song and Ave Maria are unbearably poignant, while Mario del Monaco, one of the all-time great Otellos, shoulders the demanding title role.