In the late 1990s, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli was one of the world's most popular singers, for several years eclipsed in album sales only by Luciano Pavarotti, and she remains a beloved figure. Her repertory runs from the Baroque through Mozart, and the bel canto roles of the first third of the 19th century.

Bartoli was born in Rome on June 4, 1966. Her parents were both professional singers, and she made her stage debut at nine as a shepherd boy in Puccini's Tosca. Bartoli attended the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, studying trombone and flirting with a career as a flamenco dancer; her only long-term voice teacher had been her mother. She made her Zurich Opera House debut in 1989 as Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, under conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a frequent collaborator. Her star rose rapidly in the early 1990s; her debut in New York, where she remains extraordinarily popular, came at a 1990 Mostly Mozart Festival concert. In 1992, she would return to that festival for three sold-out shows. Charismatic, musically intelligent, and vocally agile (singing both mezzo-soprano and soprano roles), she made her debut on the coveted stage at Milan, Italy's La Scala in 1991. Bartoli has called herself a child of the 18th century and has been able to combine vocally spectacular Baroque roles, several times in Vivaldi's comparatively underexposed operas, with limpid Mozart melodies, and bel canto through much of her career. Bartoli's Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1996 as Despina in Mozart's Così fan tutte, returning in 1997 in the lead role in Rossini's La Cenerentola, and once again in 1998 as Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. In the mid-2000s, she devoted herself mostly to Baroque opera, appearing as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare, and then to bel canto toward the end of the decade issuing the album Maria, which investigated the career of famed soprano Maria Malibran. The pace of Bartoli's stage appearances and recordings slowed somewhat in the 2010s, but remained vigorous. Bartoli became the artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2012; her appearances there as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare (2012), and in the title roles of Bellini's Norma (2013) and La Cenerentola (2014), as well as her programming decisions, resulted in record ticket sales for the formerly academically oriented festival.

On recordings, Bartoli has been associated mostly with the London and Decca labels; crossover albums have been notably absent from her large catalog. Bartoli's 2011 album Sacrificium won a Grammy award for Best Classical Vocal Performance; it was her fifth Grammy. Some of her albums have included music by lesser-known composers such as Antonio Salieri and Agostino Steffani; her concept album Mission (2012) covered the music and career of the latter. On Decca, she released Antonio Vivaldi, a collection of arias, in 2018.

She was inducted into the French Order of Arts and Letters in 1995. She has lived with her husband, baritone Oliver Widmer, in Switzerland on Lake Zurich, in Rome, and in Monaco. ~ James Manheim

Roberto Alagna rose to stardom in the operatic world in a less than traditional way. Mostly self-taught through listening and studying recordings, Alagna's arrival on the scene as a lyric tenor prompted some to call him the "Fourth Tenor." After winning a major competition in 1988, Alagna began a career performing on-stage throughout the world, and his recordings have earned acclaim.

Alagna was born to Sicilian parents in Clichy-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, just outside of Paris, on June 7, 1963. He learned the art of singing almost exclusively from studying the recordings of tenor greats, as well as the films of Mario Lanza. He usually mentions two of his predecessors when asked whose recordings were most influential, Beniamino Gigli and Nicolai Gedda. Alagna's voice is a very fine lyric tenor with a bright and ringing upper register, but when it is put under pressure, it can turn harsh. He was initially discovered singing for tips around Paris. He gained notoriety by winning first prize in the 1988 Luciano Pavarotti Competition and soon made his stage debut as Alfredo in La Traviata with the Glyndebourne Touring Opera Company, soon followed by debuts in Montpellier, Monte Carlo, and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (also in La Traviata). His Teatro alla Scala debut came at the invitation of Riccardo Muti in a fabled production with Tiziana Fabbricini, which was telecast.

In 1990, Alagna sang Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème -- a role that has become one of his most popular; it was also the role of his debut at Covent Garden Opera in 1992 and the Metropolitan Opera in 1996. Another role that was very important during the early part of his career was the title role in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, which he has sung with great success in Paris, London, and New York. This role proved to be even more important for his personal life, as he met his second wife, Angela Gheorghiu, while performing the opera together. His first wife had died after a lengthy illness, and this new romance brought a renewed warmth and passion to his performances. Their performances of L'elisir d'amore, La Bohème, and Werther are greatly admired, and together, the two became one of opera's few genuine double attractions. The couple separated for a period beginning in 2009 and eventually divorced in 2013. He then began a relationship with soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, marrying her in 2015, again becoming part of a coupled attraction on-stage and in recordings.

Alagna is known to introduce acrobatic tricks into productions of L'elisir d'amore, which few other tenors would attempt. His appearances in 1996 at the Theatre-Chatelet Paris and Covent Garden Opera, London, as Don Carlo in the original French version of Verdi's opera, helped to bring the French edition back to the fore. Other operas that have proved successful for Alagna are Rigoletto, Macbeth, Lucia di Lammermoor, Roberto Devereux, L'amico Fritz, Carmen, and La Rondine. Alagna's willingness to step beyond the standard score is displayed in the use of an alternative version of "Una furtiva lágrima" in his London recording of L'elisir d'amore, using the new critical edition of La Bohème in the Decca recording with Chailly, as well as singing the original French version of Don Carlo on EMI. In the 2000s, Alagna moved easily around the heart of the operatic repertory on-stage and in recordings. He has also recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics, and Sony Classical labels. On the latter, he issued the album Caruso 1873 in 2019. ~ Richard LeSueur & Keith Finke

Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak has enough vocal beauty and charisma on-stage to be called a superstar. Critics have praised not just the resplendence of her coloratura voice but her accuracy and dramatic skills. She commands a technique that allows her to negotiate the challenging tessitura of Mozart's "Come scoglio" and has the flexibility and delicacy to render Donizetti's "Regnava nel silenzio" with melting beauty. By her early thirties, she had appeared at most of the major opera houses, including the Met, Covent Garden, Vienna State, La Scala, and many others. Kurzak has sung a variety of roles, mostly in standard operas, but she has delved into more modern fare as well, as with her portrayal of the Maid in Adès' Powder Her Face. She also appears regularly in recital and concert, and has made several recordings.

Kurzak was born to a musical family in Brzeg Dolny, Poland, on August 7, 1977; her father is a French horn player, and her mother is soprano Jolanta Zmurko. Aleksandra considers her mother her greatest teacher and credits Zmurko with developing her vocal technique, despite having many other teachers in her student years. At seven, Kurzak began music studies on both the violin and piano, but her main focus would turn to the violin. She also harbored hopes for a career as a ballet dancer. It was not until she was 19 that Kurzak began vocal studies. From 1996-2000, she studied at the Wroclaw Conservatory in Poland. During this time, she was also busy in competitions and on the operatic stage: in 1998, Kurzak won the Stanislaw Moniuszko International Vocal Competition, and the following year, she debuted at the Wroclaw State Opera as Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. Kurzak also won other competitions, including Barcelona's Viñas International Singing Competition in 2000.

From 2001-2007, she sang with the Hamburg State Opera, first as an apprentice in the company's Young Artist program, then, from 2003, as a member. While she initially sang less important roles there, such as Kate Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, she eventually took on meatier fare, including Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto and Mozart's Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute. During this time, Kurzak also studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. Meanwhile, invitations to the major opera houses came one after the other. Kurzak debuted at the Met in 2004 as Olympia in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann. In 2005, she debuted at Covent Garden as Aspasia in Mozart's Mitridate, rè di Ponto. Kurzak had several return engagements at the Met, including as Blonde in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio (2008), and as Gretel in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel (2011). Her La Scala debut in 2010 was also as Gilda.

Kurzak signed an exclusive recording contract with the Decca label in 2010, and her first recording, Gioia, containing arias by Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, and others, was issued in 2011. She has also been featured on releases from Warner Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, and Sony Classical. In 2017, Kurzak married tenor Roberto Alagna and was featured on Alagna's 2019 album Caruso 1873. In 2020, Kurzak released an album of opera arias on Sony Classical titled Desire. ~ Robert Cummings

Baritone Bryn Terfel has been one of the world's most beloved singers since the 1990s. In addition to opera, he has performed and recorded art song, popular music, and songs in the Welsh language with great success.

Terfel was born Bryn Terfel Jones in Pant Glas, Wales, on November 9, 1965. His father was a farmer, and he grew up speaking Welsh. Terfel gained stage experience as a child participating in singing contests, and by the time he entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he was already a seasoned performer. Terfel began using his middle name to avoid confusion with singer Delme Bryn-Jones. Winning two major prizes at Guildhall, Terfel scored a breakthrough at the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, which was widely broadcast and attracted the attention of star conductors such as Sir Georg Solti. He made his operatic debut at the Welsh National Opera the following year as Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte. Specializing in roles such as Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Terfel won the Young Singer of the Year award from Britain's Gramophone magazine. Terfel signed with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 1994 and released the Schubert song recital An die Musik. He quickly became a very prolific recording artist, issuing six albums in the year 2000 alone. In 2003, Terfel was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire; he had already been serving as the honorary monarch of the Welsh island of Bardsey.

Terfel has mostly remained with Deutsche Grammophon since then but has appeared on smaller labels, including Marquis, for several Welsh-language releases; he has spoken out in support of Welsh language and culture. His crossover albums, such as Homeward Bound, covering American hymnody and recorded with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, have been best-sellers. In 2018, Terfel released Dreams and Songs, which combined musical theater selections, Welsh songs, and other popular material. On stage, he has continued to perform opera, often taking on Wagnerian roles such as that of Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger as his voice darkened in middle age. In 2016, he sang the title role in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House. His operatic repertory includes about 30 works, with Wagner, Mozart, and Puccini the most frequently occurring composers among them. He has also been an enthusiastic performer of oratorio (Mendelssohn's Elijah is one of his specialties) and of classical art song. By the time he released the album Sea Songs on Deutsche Grammophon in 2024, his recording catalog comprised more than 50 items. In 2023, he performed a Welsh-language work by Paul Mealor at the coronation of King Charles III. ~ James Manheim

Sometimes promoted as the successor to Luciano Pavarotti, Peru's Juan Diego Flórez is actually a very different kind of tenor, and one of a sort that has not been seen much in recent years: his voice is light, extremely athletic, and suited above all to the bel canto tenor roles of the early nineteenth century. Among the accomplishments of his young career was the restoration to its proper place of a difficult passage, long considered unsingable, in the role of Almaviva in Rossini's Il barbière di Siviglia. His primary vocal model is not Pavarotti but Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus -- a performer less well known to the general public but equally well admired among opera cognoscenti.

Born in 1973 in Lima to a folk guitarist father, Flórez sang when he was young in a rock band that specialized in Beatles and Led Zeppelin covers. What set him on the road to an operatic career was a free voice course he took in conjunction with membership in his high school choir. He enrolled at the Lima Conservatory when he was 17, moving on from there to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute on a full scholarship. One mentor was Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio, who became Flórez's manager.

At the 1996 Pesaro Festival in Italy, Flórez was booked to sing a minor role in Rossini's Ricciardo e Zoraide but took over the lead role in a newly unearthed Rossini opera called Matilde di Shabran after the scheduled tenor had to cancel. Rhapsodic praise from hard-to-please Italian opera fans led to a debut at La Scala in Gluck's Armide and then to the rest of the world's major opera houses over the next several years. His Metropolitan Opera debut in New York came in 2002 as Almaviva in Il barbière -- a role that has emerged as one of his specialties.

Possessed of good looks and trademark curly hair that have elicited nearly universal comment among music writers, Flórez faced pressure to assume the mantle of opera megastardom. He has won praise from close observers of the operatic scene, however, for taking account of the unusual nature of his voice and sticking to the repertory to which he is best suited, avoiding for the most part the heavier roles of Verdi and reintroducing audiences to something of the full fire that might have been heard on an Italian stage of the early nineteenth century. "I think I know my limitations," Flórez told The Economist in 2002. "I have been offered Mozart's Mitridate. I looked at the part, but it's all just a little low, and he's just a bit too angry all the time. It's not for me." An accomplished singing actor with a gift for comedy, Flórez has excelled in roles such as Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment and the title role in Rossini 's Le Comte Ory.

Flórez has released three solo albums on the Decca label: one of Rossini arias, one (Una furtiva lagrima) including arias by Bellini and Donizetti, and 2004's Great Tenor Arias, which in the words of London's Observer newspaper "confirms his growing reputation as one of the most exciting vocal talents around." He has expressed an interest in exploring the repertory of Peruvian song and started a foundation to promote music education in Peru. Flórez signed with Sony in 2016, with his first release on the label scheduled for the following year.