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• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1892–1957, Italian Pinza’s bass voice was notable for its beauty of tone. Following the First World War, he sang at La Scala under Toscanini. His debut at the Met in 1926 began a run of 22 consecutive seasons as a leading bass. He sang all the bass roles, Don Giovanni and Figaro being among his most memorable portrayals ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1864–1949, German Russian-born, yet once a popular German composer, Pfitzner has shrunk into the recesses of memory, not least because his esteemed position was promoted by a Third Reich that, like him, believed German culture was threatened by international Jewry. His works Von deutscher Seele (‘Of the German Soul’, 1921) and Das dunkle Reich (‘The ...

• The Voice
• Modern Era
• Opera

The advent of recordings certainly made opera accessible to many more people than ever before, and Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) was single-handedly responsible for the proliferation of his art via this medium. By the end of his life, he had made over 250 recordings. When the film world finally developed talkies, opera once again stepped to the fore, ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1685–1759, German Handel composed 42 operas between 1704 and 1740, but most of these were neglected and seldom performed after his lifetime. In the twentieth century, Handel’s music dramas and in particular his operas underwent a renaissance that has established him as the definitive theatre composer of the late Baroque period. Handel was a maverick composer who pursued ...