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Sylvia McNair is a globe-trotting American soprano with an unusually clear and brilliant sound on the lighter side of the vocal spectrum. She sings a wide range of operatic and concert music, including Mozart (her specialty), Baroque operas of Handel and Monteverdi, modern works by Stravinsky and Britten, and songs of Gershwin and Jerome Kern. Although her operatic career has centered mostly on European houses, she has made selected appearances at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and, particularly since winning the Marian Anderson award in 1992, she has been a dedicated recitalist both in America and abroad. Her many recordings for the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon labels are consistently excellent, and they have been the cornerstone of her success with American audiences.

McNair was born in Mansfield, OH, the daughter of an amateur choral conductor and a piano teacher. She took lessons on both the piano and violin as a child, and continued intensive studies on the violin into her early twenties. McNair credits this early and thorough introduction to music as contributing to her success as a singer. After a bachelor's degree at Wheaton College, she entered the master's program at Indiana University, where she got her first taste of operatic singing in the university's renowned training program. After completing the young artist's program at the San Francisco Opera, she made a swift entry into the professional world, performing at the 1982 Mostly Mozart Festival, singing a range of roles with the St. Louis Opera (1983-1989), and making debuts in Santa Fe, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

From the beginning, McNair has been associated with Mozart's Pamina (The Magic Flute) and Ilia (Idomeneo), and Monteverdi's Poppea (L'incoronazione di Poppea), but it was her Anne Trulove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, at Glyndebourne in 1989, that launched her into the international spotlight. Since that time she has enjoyed an unbroken chain of critical and musical successes around the world, steadily praised for the beauty, intelligence, and uncommon exactness of her performances. Her work with conductor John Eliot Gardiner has established her as a fine singer of Baroque music, able to negotiate the intricacies of period ornamentation without sacrificing vocal color. Likewise, her concerts and recordings with Robert Shaw, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, and Neville Marriner show her at ease in everything from Mozart's sacred choral works to Mahler's Symphony No. 2

Among the leading Dutch mezzo-sopranos from the latter-twentieth century, Jard van Nes fashioned a career largely in the realm of concert music and recitals. She also sang on the operatic stage and with a fairly broad repertory, too, embracing works by Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Richard Strauss, and even contemporary composers such as György Ligeti (Le Grand Macabre). Van Nes was perhaps best known for her Mahler concert work and recitals: she has appeared numerous times as soloist in the symphonies (Nos. 2, 3 & 8), Das Lied von der Erde and performed many of the songs. But she can hardly be viewed as a Mahler specialist, inasmuch as her concert and solo repertory takes in works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorák, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, and countless others. She has been inactive as a performer since 2000, but has devoted herself to teaching, frequently giving master classes, and conducting lessons privately with promising young singers. Van Nes had made numerous recordings during her busy career, many of which are still available on DG, Philips, Decca, Erato, Teldec, Sony, Globe, EMI, Chandos, Brilliant Classics, and other labels.

Jard van Nes was born in Zwolle, Holland, on June 15, 1948. She studied piano early on, but turned to vocal studies when she enrolled at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where her most important teacher was Herman Woltman. She had later studies with Christa Ludwig.

Van Nes' concert career began with an auspicious debut at the 1975 Holland Festival. But she continued to pursue international recognition via prestigious competitions, as well: she was a prizewinner at the 1978 International Vocalist Concourse at 's-Hertogenbosch, Holland, and three years later won a medal at the International Opera and Bel canto Competition in Belgium.

In 1983 she made her stage debut at the Netherlands Opera as Bertarido in Handel's Rodelinda. Thereafter, her career became a mixture of concerts, recitals, operatic appearances, and recordings.

Her performance schedule was booked with engagements across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Van Nes appeared to great acclaim in 1991 in Tel Aviv as soloist in Mendelssohn's Elijah with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Van Nes gave her last concert on December 26, 2000, and has since turned to teaching. Her final recording was a 1999 critically acclaimed Telarc CD that featured her as soloist in the Karl Amadeus Hartmann Symphony No. 1.

This Austrian singer, whose career trajectory has taken him from lyric to dramatic baritone, has established himself as a strong and reliable artist. At his first appearance in Bayreuth as Wolfram, Weikl revealed a linear, compact instrument with a quick vibrato. While by no means a bass baritone, his lower voice has gained in amplitude over the years, allowing him to fill out the deeper reaches of such roles as Wagner's Dutchman and Hans Sachs, and Strauss' Barak and Mandryka. Indeed, his handsome, burly appearance is now matched by the sound and texture of his expanded voice. By no means a penetrating actor, Weikl still brings earnest intent and solid craft to his stage performances. In addition to the heavier German repertory, Weikl has shown consistent interest in Italian roles, at one point recording an accomplished Rigoletto.

Following studies at Mainz and Hanover, Weikl made his stage debut at the latter city in 1968, singing Ottokar in Weber's Der Freischütz. He joined the company at Düsseldorf in 1970, remaining with that theater for three years. During that period, he was engaged by Karajan for Melot at the 1971 Salzburg Festival and, the year after, made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Wolfram. His first-season success led to further engagements as the Herald, Amfortas, and later, Hans Sachs.

For his London debut, Rossini's Figaro was the role -- an interpretation noted as boisterous, but somewhat Germanic. Weikl's Metropolitan Opera debut on December 2, 1977, found him singing Wolfram once more, enjoying another success with the part. Subsequently, he has returned to the Metropolitan as Orest, Jochanaan, Amfortas, Mandryka, and Hans Sachs.

Other theaters throughout Europe were likewise as quick to engage Weikl; he became a celebrated singer in his native Vienna as well as in Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg. Industrious in adding new parts, the singer can now boast more than 100 characters in his inventory. Beyond the Continent, he is best-known for his Wagner and Strauss roles, but in Austria and Germany he has just as often sung the Italian, Russian, and French repertories; these include such figures as Verdi's Posa, Count di Luna, Ford and Simon Boccanegra, Mozart's Don Giovanni (recorded with Solti), Count Almaviva, Guglielmo, Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin (also recorded with Solti), Tomsky, Morone in Pfitzner's Palestrina, and Goloud. Although his primary focus has remained on opera, Weikl is also a positive presence on the concert stage, both as a soloist in choral works and as a recitalist. These activities have largely been centered in Europe.

Of Weikl's many recordings, several deserve special attention. His Hans Sachs, recorded with Cheryl Studer, Ben Heppner, and Kurt Moll under the mature and understanding direction of Wolfgang Sawallisch is worth searching out. His Dutchman with Sinopoli has much of the requisite torment and is firmly sung. His Eugene Onegin, recorded with a good cast and lovingly led by Solti is worth pursuing, as is his Cardinal Morone in Kubelik's recording of Palestrina, captured in excellent sound.

Even though he spent much of his career behind the Iron Curtain in Communist East Germany, conductor Kurt Masur was one of the most respected conductors of the 20th century and was recognized internationally. The longtime conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, he conducted the New York Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic in later life and was acclaimed for his work with both. Masur's recording catalog is vast, and his performances began to appear in the West even before German reunification. His recordings continued to appear in reissues well after his death; a 1971 recording of Mendelssohn's 12 Jugendsinfonien was issued by the Berlin Classics label in 2023.

Masur was born on July 18, 1927, in Brieg in the German province of Lower Silesia (now Brzeg, Poland). Masur's father was an electrical engineer, and Masur completed an engineer's apprenticeship and went to work for his father. However, he also loved music and took piano lessons as a teen from Katharina Hartmann, and studied piano and cello at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław, Poland). Masur was active as a paratrooper with the German army during World War II, and of his 150-man unit, only 27 survived. After the war, he enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Leipzig, remaining there for several years but dropping out at 21 when he got a job as a répétiteur (rehearsal coach) at what is now the Halle Opera House. Masur's rise through the conducting ranks in the 1950s followed the old Kapellmeister model at first; he held that position with the Stadttheater Erfurt from 1951 to 1953 and then the same post with the Leipzig Opera Theater from 1953 to 1955. In 1955, he became the conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic; he returned to operatic posts at the State Theater of Mecklenburg and then the Komische Oper Berlin before returning to the Dresden Philharmonic from 1967 to 1972.

In 1970, Masur assumed the position for which he would become best known, that of Gewandhauskapellmeister of Leipzig, or conductor and artistic director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. This was the most prestigious ensemble in the former East Germany, with a long history dating back to its founder and first conductor, Felix Mendelssohn. Masur remained the orchestra's conductor until 1991, making many recordings with the group; an early one, issued in 1974, featured Mendelssohn's cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60. Some of Masur's albums were issued only in the Communist world, but as his popularity grew, he was allowed to perform in the West, and his albums were sold there. He conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1974 and took the Gewandhaus Orchestra on a U.S. tour that year. In 1981, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. In the last days of East Germany's Communist regime, Masur was widely noted for his activities in support of human rights.

In 1991, he was named music director of the New York Philharmonic, succeeding the modernist Pierre Boulez and the experimentally oriented Zubin Mehta. Masur, with a focus on middle-of-the-road German and Russian repertory, was credited with sharpening the orchestra's sound over his 11 years at the helm. In 1991 alone, he released ten albums, many of them on the Teldec label; some featured the Gewandhaus Orchestra and others the New York Philharmonic. Masur held positions as music director of the London Philharmonic from 2000 to 2007 and of the Orchestre National de France from 2002 to 2008. He maintained a busy schedule of guest appearances but revealed in 2012 that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Masur died on December 19, 2015, in Greenwich, Connecticut. His recording catalog, with Beethoven the most common composer but also including such novelties as a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, numbered some 300 releases; by the mid-2020s, the flow of reissues of his music had hardly slowed. Masur was honored with a "Google Doodle" on the anniversary of his birth in 2018. ~ James Manheim