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Inge Borkh enjoyed major success in the world's leading opera houses not only because of her bright and attractive soprano voice, but also because of her deft dramatic skills. Indeed, she was trained as an actress and managed to convert her superior sense for drama seamlessly to the operatic stage, taking on a variety of standard roles, but with many memorable successes in early-20th century opera. She sang Verdi -- Aida, Macbeth (Lady Macbeth), Cherubini -- Medea, Wagner -- The Flying Dutchman (Senta), Die Walkure (Sieglinde, Freia), and many other staples. But in the 20th century, beside singing Richard Strauss (Salome and Elektra) and Puccini (Tosca and Turandot), she took on somewhat riskier fare, including Magda in Menotti's The Consul and Cathleen in Egk's Irische Legende. Because Borkh also had training as a dancer, she often moved about on-stage with a keen balletic sense and gracefulness. Though she retired from singing in 1973, many of her recordings are still available from a variety of major labels, including DG, Decca, RCA, Opera D'oro, Orfeo D'or, Melodram, Ponto Recordings, and Myto Records.

Inge Borkh (Ingeborg Simon) was born in Mannheim, Germany, on May 26, 1917. She studied music in Milan, and during the war years resided in Switzerland. Borkh made her debut at the Lucerne Opera in 1940, singing Czipra in Johann Strauss, Jr.'s Der Zigeunerbaron. In the postwar era she gained international notice when she sang Magda in The Consul at the Basle Opera in 1951. This was a major production at the time, not least because it was the German-language premiere of the Menotti masterwork. Other important debuts followed: Bayreuth (1952), singing Sieglinde and Freia; San Francisco (1953), as Elektra; and Florence (1954), as Eglantine in von Weber's Euryanthe.

Her debut at the Met came in 1958, singing Salome, and at Covent Garden the following year in the same role. Borkh was appearing in major recordings as well, including the 1957 Dimitri Mitropoulos-led Elektra (also available on Orfeo D'or) and the acclaimed 1960 version of the same opera with Karl Böhm on DG.

Borkh remained a major operatic star throughout the 1960s, even though she did not amass a large number of recordings. In 1973 she retired from serious singing, but returned to the stage four years later as an actress. Following retirement, Borkh also briefly appeared in a cabaret-style act. Her autobiography was published in 1996, and she collaborated on the 2006 book Nicht nur Salome und Elektra with Thomas Voigt. She died in Stuttgart in August 2018. ~ Robert Cummings

Renata Tebaldi was one of the dominant lyrico-spinto sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s, with a large, powerful voice that, despite a severely flawed top, was described by many of her admirers as one of the most beautiful of the 20th century. In many ways she and Maria Callas were defined by one another, although often far too simplistically, assuming that what one had, the other did not. (Rather like the cats versus dogs debates among pet lovers, in which all dogs are loving but dumb and all cats are bright but treacherous.) Those who backed Callas against Tebaldi denounced Tebaldi as a stodgy singer of the "this is about showing off my voice" school and lauded Callas as the genuine operatic artist who let the voice be subservient to the opera and to the drama; those who held Tebaldi to be the prima donna denounced Callas as overly erratic, with an unattractive voice that was on the edge of disaster. In fact, Tebaldi was not without a sense of the stage and of dramatic presentation, and for much of her career, in many ways Callas had the more reliable and versatile technique.

She studied at the Arrigo Boito Conservatory in Parma, and her stage debut was as Elena (Helen of Troy) in Boito's Mefistofele in 1944 at Rovigo. Her career took off with a concert performance rather than an operatic one. In 1946, Toscanini was performing the Verdi Te Deum to reopen the La Scala opera house, and he engaged her to perform the soprano solo. Whether he was referring to the way that she was physically placed considerably above the other soloists, exhorting her to sing like an angel, or in fact describing her voice as "la voce d' angelo" (the voice of an angel), a question which has aroused some controversy, she was soon identified by that phrase. Her stage debut was three months later as Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger. She made her London debut in 1950 as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello as part of a La Scala tour, the year of her United States debut in San Francisco as Tosca, and her Paris and Rio de Janiero debuts the next year. Her Met debut was in 1955, also as Desdemona, and thereafter it became something of a home base for her. While she had performed relative rarities earlier in her career, even including such unlikely composers as Handel (Giulio Cesare) and Rossini (Le siege de Corinthe) and obscure works by Spontini (La vestale and Fernando Cortez) and Refice' s Cecilia, she began to narrow her repertoire to mainstream works by Verdi, Puccini, and some of the verismo composers. In the early 1960s, a problematic technique and personal crisis (the death of her mother, to whom she had been especially close), led to a vocal crisis, and in 1963, she left the stage to rest and rework. While her vocal condition had not especially improved by the time of her return, her acting received far more praise than before. Her physical mobility was still limited by the after-effects of childhood polio, but she had become more expressive, and better able to use gestures and expressions to convey drama. In the early 1970s, she began her retirement, and her final stage performance was at La Scala in 1976.

Among her recordings, her Liu on the Leinsdorf Turandot with Nilsson and Bjoerling (RCA Living Stero 62687) shows her at her best; the tempo is not allowed to become lugubrious, and the role lies particularly low for a soprano, allowing the velvety richness of her middle and lower range to be displayed without the flatness or harshness that plagued her upper range throughout her career. ~ Ann Feeney

The stentorian dramatic tenor of Mario del Monaco was heard throughout the world during the 1950s and 1960s. While often berated by critics for his unsubtle vocal production, del Monaco was a favorite of audiences who appreciated his power and sincerity of approach while tackling the heaviest roles in the Italian tenor repertory. A contract with Decca (London in the United States) produced a long series of recordings, many of them in partnership with Renata Tebaldi, and most of which have been reissued in CD format.

After having studied the early recordings of many tenors, del Monaco studied for a short time at the Pesaro Conservatory before gaining entry in 1935 to the school attached to the Rome Opera, largely through the urging of conductor Tullio Serafin. His formal debut occurred in 1941 at the Teatro Puccini as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly -- while on leave from the army. Engagements were quickly forthcoming once WW II ended. A successful Radames (Aïda) at Verona was followed by appearances at Covent Garden with the Neapolitan Opera (Canio, Cavaradossi, and Pinkerton). Central and South America offered performances in Mexico City, at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and in Rio de Janeiro.

His North American debut took place at the San Francisco Opera as Radames in 1950. He was thereupon engaged by Rudolf Bing for a November 1950 appearance at the Metropolitan as des Grieux in Manon Lescaut. Subsequently, he sang more than 100 performances at the Met over the course of seven seasons, appearing also at Chicago's Lyric Opera during the 1950s. In that time, del Monaco became the world's leading Otello, performing the role (according to his own tally) 427 times. Other roles which formed the core of his repertory included Enzo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda, the title role in Giordano's Andrea Chénier (next to Otello perhaps his most authoritative role), Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, Don José and Saint-Saëns' Samson (despite his less-than-fluent French), Verdi's Ernani, Dick Johnson in Puccini's La fanciulla del West and Pollione in Bellini's Norma. In Italy, he occasionally ventured into the Wagnerian repertory, although these performances were sung in Italian. He did, however, record Siegmund's "Winterstürme" from Die Walküre in German. It was not regarded as a success.

From the 1960s to his retirement from the stage in 1973, del Monaco increasingly confined his appearances to Italy, although he continued to record for Decca. His Loris in Giordano's Fedora (with Magda Olivero as the heroine) was taped when the singer was in his mid-fifties, by which time his voice had lost what little pliancy it had possessed earlier.

Among del Monaco's most prominent recordings are his two as Otello, each with the same principals (Tebaldi as Desdemona and Aldo Protti as Iago), but the second with Herbert von Karajan as conductor. His Andrea Chénier was preserved by Decca with Tebaldi as Maddalena and Ettore Bastianini as Gérard as well as in a live recording from Tokyo with Tebaldi and Protti.

The un-orthodox method of vocal production favored by del Monaco allowed him an overwhelming measure of strength in his middle and upper-middle registers, but lent a metallic buzz to his timbre and precluded his singing softly. Still, critics, following his death, rued his passing as they recalled performances of unsurpassed excitement.

Conductor Alberto Erede was well known for his opera performances in Europe and the United Sates, especially from the 1930s until the 1960s. He began his musical studies on the piano and cello. He studied composition at the Milan Conservatory before deciding to devote his energies to conducting. He went to Basle to study conducting with Felix Weingartner, then trained under Fritz Busch at Dresden. In 1930, he made his professional conducting debut with the Accademia di St. Cecilia at Rome. In 1934, he was hired to serve on the conducting staff at the opening season of the Glyndebourne Festival, where he conducted until 1939. During this period, he was also musical director of the Salzburg Opera Guild, with whom he toured the United States in 1937. That same year, he made his debut conducting an American ensemble, with Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra. This led to further engagements with NBC and in 1939, Erede conducted the broadcast premiere of Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief. Erede returned to Italy during World War II, conducting operatic and symphonic performances. He was chief conductor of the RAI Symphony Orchestra, Turin, from 1945 to 1946. Following the war, Erede was especially active in Britain and Germany. In 1946, he was appointed musical director of the New London Opera Company at the Cambridge Theatre, a post he held for two seasons. From 1950 to 1955, he regularly conducted at the Metropolitan Opera (he was on the podium when Kirsten Flagstad gave her farewell performance in 1952 in Gluck's Alceste), and he was named general music director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 1958 (the first Italian to hold this post). During the 1950s and '60s, Erede was in demand as a guest conductor, especially at Covent Garden and the Edinburgh Festival. In 1968, he led a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin at Bayreuth, making him the third Italian (after Toscanini and de Sabata) to conduct at that festival. In 1961, he took the position of chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. As late as 1988, he was still conducting at the Rome Opera. Erede's recorded legacy includes 14 complete operas, as well as discs of operatic arias by singers such as Tebaldi and Gobbi.