AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1965 Welsh baritone Terfel studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and in 1989 won the Lieder prize in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. He made his debut in 1990 as Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) for Welsh National Opera. He has performed Figaro worldwide. He sang Verdi’s Falstaff at the reopening of Covent Garden ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

b. 1965, Welsh One of the most exciting bass-baritones currently performing, Terfel became a sensation after winning the Cardiff Singer of the World Lieder prize in 1989. In 1990 he made his operatic debut as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte at Welsh National Opera, before bursting onto the London scene as Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro with ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1944 New Zealand soprano Having come to England to study at the London Opera Centre, Te Kanawa made her Covent Garden debut as the Countess (Mozart’s Figaro) in 1971. Appearances quickly followed at Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the Salzburg Festival. She became increasingly associated with the music of Richard Strauss, especially the roles ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

b. 1944 Welsh composer Jenkins played for more than a decade in the progressive rock band Soft Machine before attracting wider attention as a composer of music for advertising. A movement composed for De Beers diamond merchants, and scored for strings in Baroque concerto grosso style, became the Allegretto of his suite Palladio, while his best-known single track ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1922–2004, Italian Tebaldi studied at the Conservatory of Milan before auditioning for Arturo Toscanini in 1946. Impressed with her exceptional voice, Toscanini offered Tebaldi a concert engagement at La Scala, where she remained on the roster for the next five years. By the mid-1950s, both Tebaldi and Maria Callas were performing regularly at the Met and, ...

• The Voice
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

Baritones Baritones, it is said, sing and act, while tenors merely sing. That may tell us more about the roles they take than about the singers themselves, but certainly the finest baritones excel in both skills, none more than Tito Gobbi, whose most noted roles were Falstaff in Verdi’s eponymous opera, and Scarpia in ...