My Twenty Favorite Sopranos: A Half-List

Taking a break from the story of my journey to a life in singing. Instead, today I am desperately trying to come up with a list of my Twenty Favorite Sopranos. I always say that I am not entirely convinced of the validity of music criticism, which only means that I should be doubly suspicious of this compiling of lists. However, it has been fun to pore through my CD collection and my memory to come up with a list of singers who have evoked extreme emotions in me.

The first ten are pretty easy. It’s limiting my choices to only ten more that is going to prove impossible.

So today it’ll be just the first ten. Interestingly, only one of them appeared on BBC Music Magazine’s definitive list (I just can’t get that out of my craw!)

Here they are; I’ll elaborate on them later.

1. Claudia Muzio

2. Lotte Lehmann

3. Maria Callas

4. Renata Scotto

5. Eide Noréna

6. Anita Cerquetti

7. Elisabeth Rethberg

8. Ileana Cotrubas

9. Hilde Güden

10. Florence Quartararo

I’m not sure these are in any particular order, or that this list will not change tomorrow. In fact, Noréna and Quartararo are fairly recent additions. And I could easily replace Rethberg with Delia Reinhardt. That’s the nice thing about a personal list like this; it’s fluid, and not at all definitive.

More later on these gals.

Ileana Cotrubas

THOSE YOUTUBE FUCKERS KEEP REMOVING ALL MY FAVORITE VIDEOS! ANYWAY, HERE IS COTRUBAS' VIOLETTA AGAIN, ALTHOUGH I'M SURE THE MET WILL MAKE THEM TAKE THIS ONE DOWN AS WELL...

Speaking of Cotrubas, as I did in my previous post, dig her in these two Traviata excerpts. Surely one of the most scrupulously musical singers ever and one of the most emotionally and dramatically committed and, though she has not been properly acknowleged for this, one of the most technically adept singers of her time. Maybe I should just let her speak for herself, since she does it so much more eloquently than I could. Enjoy!