others have greatness thrust upon them
As you may recall, last year the BBC Music Magazine published a list of “The 20 Greatest Sopranos of All Time,” and one or two of you didn’t quite see eye to eye with their selection.
Well, this year they’ve turned their attention to the top 20 among tenors, who are (in ascending order of greatliness):Â
20. Sergey Lemeshev
19. Wolfgang Windgassen
18. Alfredo Kraus
17. Anthony Rolfe Johnson
16. John McCormack
15. Franco Corelli
14. Peter Schreier
13. Juan Diego Florez
12. Carlo Bergonzi
11. Tito Schipa
10. Peter Pears
9. Nicolai Gedda
8. Jon Vickers
7. Beniamino Gigli
6. Lauritz Melchior
5. Jussi Bjoerling
4. Fritz Wunderlich
3. Luciano Pavarotti
2. Enrico Caruso
1. Placido Domingo
Flagstad is dead
I tuned in very skeptical of Voigt being able to handle this role at this point in her career, and (again, with the exception of a couple strange highnotes) thought she was great. She’s not Flagstad or Nilsson or Varnay or any other dead diva, but I thought it was a wonderful performance and was pleasantly surprised by it. She was fabulous. Good for her. Flame away.
I know that most of the posters here love to talk about “trainwrecks” and “disasters”…and that Dessay isn’t as good as Sutherland, Mattila isn’t as good as Scotto, Netrebko isn’t as good as Moffo,
Fleming isn’t as good as Callas abd Voigt isn’t Nilsson or, god help us, Flagstad…but Voigt had a huge success tonight. I have not been a fan of the way her voice has “transitioned” post-surgery but she was really tremendous tonight…
TENORNMD
You may try Francois Nouvion’s site http://www.francoisnouvion.net. You need an ID and password, but it’s free and easy to get. He has a couple de Reszke fragments on there. The Faust High-C recording is fabled and is not even de Reszke’s voice, as the recording is in Italian. He has an interesting link that tells about de Reszke’s history with the recording industry and why few recordings exist. I myself was lucky enough to hear a surviving record at the home of a well-known collector. I think it was a transfer from a Mapleson cylinder, but still very interesting to hear!!
Talking about the top tenors of all time, how come Boccelli was not included? Just kidding!
“no one since Nilsson has sung the role the way it should sound”. No one could hope to match Nilsson in purely vocal terms, but we have not been without good Isoldes since. Gwyneth on a good night, more questionable, early Behrens, and recently, Christine Brewer. There could be more.
The only thing that was right about the tenors list was NOT having Lanza on it.
As for the nasty TKLogan crit of Domingo – you really are a nasty old fart TK. There has never been a harder working, more committed and genuinely “nice guy”- with a repertoire of roles second to none, than Placido. He has given years of service to the art- way more than most- and his assistance to young artists has been selfless. The man deserves gratitude and accolades- not a dose of your deluded, acidic, nonsensical tripe.
Marcia quipped:
“I haven’t heard a great Isolde since Nilsson.”
What about Mary Lloyd-Davies?
The tenors list thread seems to have morphed into best Isoldes since Nilsson (Johanna Meier anyone?) but it’s interesting that the usual big-voice bias seems to discount singers of more modest physical endowments regardless of their artistry. It seems to me that a case can me made for almost any of the tenors in the list – and there remains a school of thought that Corelli and Del Monaco may have had first rate voices, but that they were unmusical, certainly compared to Bergonzi, Pavarotti or Domingo. Domingo may have less of a distinctive voice than most of the singers on the list, but in terms of musicianship and artistry he belongs at or near the top of the list. Who has sung Otello better than him since he stopped singing the role? And did Vinay, Vickers or Atlantov sing Otello more beautifully? Debatable, I would say. Of course some people don’t respond to Pears’s nasal timbre, but he is an important singer by any reckoning in the concert and recital repertoire, which doesn’t seem to interest many people on this site. Schreier may not have had a great voice, but he was the finest Mozart stylist of his generation and a consummate lieder singer. For some music lovers, that counts for a lot more than being able to belt out Andrea Chenier at the Met.
People are forgetting about the tireless voice of the late Rita Hunter in Tristan. She could also fearlessly sing the pants off the 3 Brunnhildes, Electra, Lady Macbeth and Norma.
Since I was in the house for the TRISTAN, I’m utterly fascinated by the comments above. It was a disastrous night in the theater (the visuals beyond description), and Master got the most booing I’ve ever heard during more than three decades of Met-going.
As it is morphing into an Isolde thread no one has mentioned Nina Stemme, vocally and dramatically in command of this part as both cds, DVD and live performances show. Some exciting young contenders as well- Theorin and Anja Kampe. None of them has sung at the MET and don’t even figure in the Futures.
The MET needs some frsh voices in its Wagner.
In many cases, accolades should be given for what abiliies a singer had (has) and how they untilised that voice to its fullest widest potential and vesatility over the span of a career. On that level Domingo would win ..no dispute! Gedda would come in there as well. Remember Domingo started hitting the ‘big time’ as early as 1965 (same time for Pavarotti). That’s 42 years ago. While Domingo was still doing Otellos’, Pavarotti was off doing silly ‘cross-over things’ and a never ending farewell concert tour to outstrip Melbas’. Pavarotti may have being given a voice. Domingo was also given a BRAIN. Sheer intelligence knowing how to use the voice they were given, is the true mark of judgement whether an artist was truly great. If as reputed, Caruso had an attendant in the wings , a cigarette already lit, for him….the total lack of husbandry for a voice leaves Caruso at rock bottom. (I admit though, I smoke myself – but I am not a singer). What shocks might we encounter if Caruso was ressurrected and recorded ‘naked’ in full digital sound….all the ’shielding veils of noise from the old shellacs’ gone? When considered retrospectively: those artists that had a fine progression and ‘longevity of career ‘ must be considered the winners.
If an artist is but a ‘James Dean 3 picture -immortal’, then we are just playing with our ‘candle’. Yet we are seeing suspicions of such, with the current crop of singers. We are hearing of too much vocal trouble. What is wrong? Is their technique poor? Are they accepting too many engagements too soon in too many varied operas? If a singer is so stupid and ambitious that they do not know how to preserve vocally what they have, how could they be considered as ‘worthy of other insights …like simply intrepreting a role’?
I contend the true golden age time period of opera was the years 1960-70. Just have a think about the total number and calibre of singers famous and those on the cusp of becoming famous, who were singing at that time. It is mind boggling. Now have a look at today’s recruits. By making such comparision: we are looking at a cultural wilderness. Best secure the hatches, and just keep listening to our recordings.
One of the posters on the tenor thread…remember that one?…mentioned that Domingo “…may have less of a distinctive voice…” — I think of it as more of an ability to color the voice. Within two notes of his, yes, beautiful voice, you ALWAYS know it’s Pavarotti, but not so with Domingo. For that, and other reasons, his is the desert island voice for me. Does anyone out there, besides me, have his “Cien Anos de Mariachi”? Listen to the sob in the voice, and tell me you knew instantly it was Domingo. Just a random thought…
I’ve decided to add Leo Slezak to my list of favorite tenors, although I’ve never heard him sing. I must say, though, that without him, we would never have had Viki Buchanan. I adore Erika Slezak. I have been watching her since the days when the Woleks were still on, and Judith Light had not yet testified about being a hooker. And I watched right through the stuped hidden city filled with gold, and all of the Niki/Viki episodes. So there… Leo wins. Oh, and his son (her father) Walter was a fine actor. That may be the most talented family since the Zimbalists.
I’m amending my last post. I just listened to some of the tenors included on “44 great Tenors” on iTunes. Leop SLezak was terrific as was Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. There are a lot of men I’ve never heard of (obviously they weren’t in the Navy – see other posts about my doing my patriotic duty).
i was wondering if we all voted on it, whether it woudl be that different a list.
Sanford you hit the nail on the head- no list of great tenors would be complete without Volpe- who was sensational.
I think lists like this are worse than odious because they can never be “right.”
To this day (some 60 years later), Hitzi Koike is my favorite Butterfly, and Coe Glade, my Carmen for all time. Not serious, but thank God for Fortuno Gallo’s San Carlo artists. When I finally heard Gladys Swarthart, I believed she couldn’t hold a candle to Coe.
No Bea Arthur?!
I like eddiepensier’s list far better than the original, though leaving Domingo off entirely doesn’t seem quite right.
The BBC Music list derives from polls of British critics. This probably explains why Pears is in the list.
enough with all this yowling about this or that tenor – there are so many different types of opera that to say one singer in a certain style is better than another is just meaningless. Far more fun – and more revealing would be for y’all to leave lists of 10 favourite (note I say favourite – and not greatest) operas – how about it, dears?
Meremarie
You’ve got it! I suspect the BBC Music Magazine asked its critics to list their favourite tenors – not necessarily the greatest (which is debatable anyway on all sorts of criteria). I still maintain that Windgassen is the hardest to justify. He wouldn’t be in my top 10 Wagner tenors. He was a stalwart, Ersatz-heldentenor at a time when they were thin on the ground. The fact that he replaced Ernst Kozub as the Siegfried on the Solti Ring says it all. He was the only tolerable choice at the time. Mind you, if he were around today……
Greatest tenor I have heard? I do not know, but I know what I like: the singing of Count John McCormack, the legendary Irish tenor, who sang well in every musical genre, not just and not primarily in opera.
His rendition of Mozart’s Don Giovanni aria “Il mio Tesoro” is still considered the most technically finished ever.
Favorite opera composer:
Verdi
Fave operas, in no particular order:
Traviata
Trovatore
Nozze di Figaro
Macbeth
Christopher Columbus (pastiche of Offenbach put together in 1976 for the Bicentennial)
La Cenerentola
I give up. The biggest problem making this list for me is that I like scenes and arias from far more operas than I do complete operas, and I like certain singers in certain roles. For me, Lucia, Luisa Miller, Violetta, and Gilda are, and maybe always will be, Anna Moffo.
And my list of greatest operas would include composers I don’t actually listen to, but can acknowledge the greatness of, such as Wagner and Beethoven.
No Svanholm or Jan Peerce on the list? Erika Slezak is below the Divina Kim Zimmer. And, if I remember from my youth in the 60s Corelli was something of a punchingbag for critics. And before I have to go to the Met Archives, who was the most frequent Tristan for Fremstad when she and Gadski were doing Isoldes? Just some thoughts I have while reading these comments.
Ah, Kim Zimmer doesn’t have Erika’s lineage. And what little I’ve seen of Zimmer impressed me, but I am strictly an ABC soap fan; I got hooked early on AMC, OLTL, and GH and never got hooked on anything else. By the way, Renee on OLTL? She starred in the original production of “A Little Night Music”.
Is that Victoria Clark? My big faves are the goddess Deidre Hall and the whacked out Robin Strasser as the increasingly bizarre Dorian.
Lucretius – surely Bea Arthur is a baritone?
That would be waaaay before Victoria clark’s time. It was Patricia Elliot. And the Gilmore Girls matriarch was in the original production of “A Chorus Line”.
I have been unemployed since January 3rd and it shows. I really have waaaay too much time on my hands.
I am glad that they at LEAST recognized the Maestro Kraus. But I find his placement on the official list too low for his technical and musical accomplishments. I also find exception to the omission of Richard Tucker.