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Elizabeth Connell was a South African-born soprano with a strong international reputation in the dramatic soprano roles of Strauss and Wagner.

Her debut was as Varvara in Janacek's Katya Kabanova at the Wexford Festival in 1972. Following that, she primarily sang with the English National Opera and the Australian National Opera. She won a nomination for an Australian Drama Critics' Award for her performance in the title role of Beethoven's Fidelio.

Her debut at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden was in Verdi's I Lombardi. She first sang at Bayreuth in 1980 as Ortrud in Lohengrin, a role she performed in a video production, at the Vienna State Opera and the Paris Opéra (Bastille). Her dramatic qualities were praised in her performance (as Senta in The Flying Dutchman) in Tokyo with Seiji Ozawa conducting. Her San Francisco Opera debut was in 1987 and she was frequently invited back.

She sang the role of Brünnhilde in both Die Walküre (Santiago, Chile opera) and Siegfried (Rome Opera). Her repertory included leading roles in the Verdi operas Nabucco, Macbeth, and Oberto. Her performances as Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde included appearances at the Opera Real in Madrid and a concert performance in Carnegie Hall. Other parts she sang were Ellen Orford in Britten's Peter Grimes and the Kostelnicka in Janacek's Jenufa.

Connell also had an active concert career. She performed in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis under Carlo Maria Giulini, the Verdi Requiem, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and Arnold Schoenberg's Guerre-Lieder.

She was recorded in all those works, in addition to Mendelssohn's Second Symphony, as well as Guillaume Tell, Poliuto, Lohengrin, I Due Foscari, and Schreker's Die Gezeicheten.

In the 1990s, the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila established herself as one of the world's leading operatic sopranos. Coming to early attention as a prize-winning singer adept at the more lyric roles in the repertory, she developed the qualities of a dramatic soprano as well, with an especially warm and grand voice. She is a tall, blond, and striking woman with excellent stage presence and acting skills.

She studied voice at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. While still a student, she won one the first prize of the Lappeenranta Competition in 1981. This led to her professional debut at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where she sang Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 1983, she became the first Cardiff Singer of the World.

She was now ready to enter the international opera world. Once again she debuted in one of the great Mozart roles: Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro at La Monnaie Opera in Brussels. While not exclusively singing Mozart, she became best known for her work in his operas. She chose Donna Elvira (another role in Don Giovanni) for her British and American debuts in 1985; these were at the Scottish Opera and Washington, D.C. Opera, respectively. She made her Covent Garden and Paris debuts the next year as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, and also added Pamina and Ilia to her operatic repertory.

She continued to make international appearances, but found that her career was leveling out in the early 1990s. She went into a period of introspection and she came to the realization that full vocal maturity was leading her into a different quality. She took the time needed to restudy and retrain it for its new, rich, and weighty quality.

After that, she re-emerged with a striking new capacity to sing roles such as Eva in Die Meistersinger and Chrysothemis in Richard Strauss' Elektra. She sang the Wagnerian role of Elsa in Lohengrin in her debut at San Francisco in 1996. But the role in which she had her greatest triumphs was that of Elisabeth of Valois in Verdi's Don Carlos, a level of acclaim that has since been matched by her stunning appearance as Janacek's Jenufa at the Hamburg Opera in 1998. She has proven especially effective in Slavonic operas; in addition to Jenufa she is noted for her performances as both of Tchaikovsky's greatest heroines, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Lisa in Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades), which she sang at the Metropolitan Opera in 1995.

Other roles she has sung are Emma in Schubert's Fierrabras, Musetta in La bohème, Puccini's Manon Lescaut, and Amelia in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. In 2000, her first performance as Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelio (Metropolitan Opera with James Levine conducting) won accolades.

When she appears in lieder recitals, she regularly receives great acclaim, especially in Sibelius songs. Her stage presence allows her to appear effectively in the increasingly popular large-scale outdoor arena events, where she is not hesitant to use electronic amplification.

She holds her performances down to between 45 and 60 performances a year, believing that this represents for her the right mixture of work and rest to keep her voice in good shape. This means that she has come to restrict her performances to leading music venues like New York, Paris, London, and Salzburg. "Not the crappiest places in the world, are they?" she laughs.

Karita Mattila was an active recording artist, with releases on the Philips, Ondine, Bis, and EMI labels, and has recorded popular songs as well as classical and operatic selections.

A light-voiced tenor with a sensuous sound and a trim, handsome appearance, Hans Peter Blochwitz made a somewhat late debut in opera, but quickly rose to the top level of Austro-German lyric tenors. His thoroughness and accuracy as a musician brought engagements with the most fastidious conductors and he secured a place among those artists well suited to Bach and Handel, as well as Mozart. In addition to opera and orchestral concert work, Blochwitz soon found himself in demand as a Lieder singer. After studies at both Mainz and Frankfort, Blochwitz graduated with a doctorate in computer science. By the time of his debut as Lenski, he was nearly 36, but engagements were almost immediately proffered from major European houses. When Peter Schreier, one of the era's leading Don Ottavios, conducted his first Don Giovanni, he chose Blochwitz for the role in the 1987 Hamburg production. His suitability for Mozart tenor roles placed him in demand with such theaters as Vienna, La Scala, Paris (both the Bastille and Châtelet), Zürich, Brussels, Covent Garden, San Francisco, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam, as well as in San Francisco and San Diego. During the 1990 - 1991 season, Blochwitz made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera (again in the role of Don Ottavio). The Salzburg Festival also beckoned and his first appearance there during that same season was as Belmonte in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Two other parts with which he became closely identified were undertaken in 1992 - 1993. At Frankfurt, he sang Tito in La clemenza di Tito, and for Zürich, he introduced his Flamand in Strauss' Capriccio. Despite his successes in music of the eighteenth century, Blochwitz has not neglected works of his own time. His repertory has included works by Britten, Henze (Der junge Lord), and Martin. He was chosen to premier Hans Zender's adaptation of Schubert's Die Winterreise and subsequently recorded the work. Blochwitz's song recitals have been heard worldwide from London's Wigmore Hall to Japan. On recording, he has collaborated with conductors as diverse as Levine, Chailly, and Harnoncourt.

The year 1966 was a major watershed in the history of the London Symphony Orchestra. The oldest of London's full-sized orchestras, founded in 1904, it had never possessed a permanent venue of its own and had long been in uncertain financial and artistic shape. In that year, the Corporation of the City of London committed to building the new Barbican Arts Centre and chose the London Symphony Orchestra (which had seen a vast improvement in standards in a short time) as its permanent residential orchestra. Also in 1966, the London Symphony Chorus was formed as a complement to the LSO. (Prior to then, recordings and concerts featuring a group designated "London Symphony Chorus" usually had an ad hoc chorus, or a chorus provided by such organizations as the Ambrosian Singers, a core group of hundreds of available professional singers.)

The London Symphony Chorus comprises over 200 amateur singers from all walks of life. Although it works closely with the London Symphony, it is not organizationally a part of the orchestra (which is a self-governing co-op of its members). The chorus is, instead, a separate self-governing group, whose members choose nine elected representatives to administer it.

In addition to appearing regularly in concerts with the LSO, the chorus is free to appear with other orchestras. The heart of its repertoire is the wide range of twentieth century choral music, including Mahler's three choral symphonies, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, Britten's War Requiem, Janácek's Glagolitic Mass, and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. It has made over 90 recordings, including Richard Hickox's recording of War Requiem (winner of the Grand Prix du Disque), Bernstein's Candide, and Britten's Peter Grimes (the latter two both Grammy Award winners).

It has a commissioning program, which has led to the writing of such works as Tavener's The Myrrh-Bearer and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Three Kings, a Christmas cantata. It appears in major festivals, and frequently undertakes tours to all parts of the world.

Founded in 1904 and therefore the oldest of the city's symphony orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra became world-renowned for recordings that date back to early gramophone records in 1912. Amid decades of diverse classical programming that followed, including performances for radio and TV, the orchestra also became known for its appearances in numerous film scores, including the Star Wars series. The LSO also tours and first visited North America in 1912 (narrowly avoiding passage on the Titanic).

The ensemble's direct antecedent was the Queen's Hall Orchestra, formed in 1895 for conductor Henry Wood's series of Promenade Concerts. The summer series was so successful that a series of weekly Sunday afternoon concerts was established the same year. The orchestra, however, had never become a permanent group; its members could and often did send other musicians to substitute for them at concerts. In 1904, Wood attempted to end this practice, prompting 46 members to leave and form their own orchestra.

The London Symphony Orchestra was organized as a self-governing corporation administered by a board selected by the players. They arranged for the great Hans Richter to conduct the inaugural concert, and continued to engage a variety of conductors, practically introducing the concept of the guest conductor to the London musical scene. Soon, though, the title and post of principal conductor was established for Richter. The LSO's connection with the BBC goes back to 1924 when Ralph Vaughan Williams conducted the orchestra in the premiere broadcast performance of his Pastoral Symphony. It was the unofficial orchestra in residence for the BBC until the formation of the BBC Symphony in 1930 and continued to broadcast concerts and provide background music for many BBC productions. Other conductors most associated with the orchestra's first few decades include Edward Elgar and Thomas Beecham. During World War II, Wood was welcomed for a series of concerts.

The War took its toll on orchestra membership as it had the general populace, and a concurrent drop in private funding led to increased reliance on the state arts council. This eventually led to structural reorganization in the 1950s, resulting in increased professional standards and the abandonment of profit-sharing; players became salaried employees. The revamped orchestra made only its second tour of the United States in 1963 (the first had been in 1912), and in 1964 embarked on its first world tour. In the mid-1960s the city of London broke ground for the Barbican Arts Centre, intended as the LSO's permanent home. The building was an architectural and acoustic success, and since 1982 has provided the orchestra the solid base it lacked during the first 70-plus years of its existence. The venue opened under principal conductor Claudio Abbado, who took over for André Previn in 1979.

In the meantime, the orchestra made its Star Wars debut, performing John Williams' score for the original 1977 film. While the organization had recorded its first film score in 1935 (H.G. Wells' Things to Come) and appeared in such classics as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and The Sound of Music, Star Wars won three Grammys, an Academy Award, and a BAFTA, among many other accolades, sold over a million copies in the U.S. and over 100,000 in the U.K., and endures as a touchstone in modern film music. The LSO went on to record music for the franchise's entire first two trilogies as well as films like 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1993's Schindler's List, 1997's Titanic, and select installments of the Harry Potter series.

During the tenure of Colin Davis, who was named principal conductor in 1995, the LSO established its own record label, LSO Live. Dvorák's Symphony No. 9, recorded at Barbican Centre in 1999 and released in 2000, bears catalog number 0001. Their 2000 recording of Berlioz's Les Troyens won two Grammys in 2002, and Verdi's Falstaff took home the Best Opera Grammy in 2006. In 2007, Davis took the position of orchestra president, its first since Leonard Bernstein's passing in 1990, and Valery Gergiev became principal conductor.

Also known for crossing over into rock, jazz, and Broadway, among other categories, they followed hit recordings such as Symphonic Rolling Stones and Gershwin Fantasy (with Joshua Bell) with albums like 2017's Someone to Watch Over Me, which had them accompanying archival recordings of Ella Fitzgerald. ~ Marcy Donelson, Joseph Stevenson & Corie Stanton Root

One of the top conductors of the 20th century, Claudio Abbado left an enormous recording catalog covering a wide range of composers from the Classical era to the early modern period. He was chief conductor and artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 1989 to 2002.

Abbado was born in Milan, Italy, on June 26, 1933, into an old family that traced its roots to Moorish-era Spain. His father, Michelangelo Abbado, was a prominent violinist and a professor at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, and his mother, Maria Carmela Savagnone, was a skilled pianist. Abbado and his brother Marcello, who also became a pianist and composer, had their first lessons from their father. Their careers were interrupted by the Nazi occupation of Milan during World War II; Abbado's mother was arrested for giving refuge to a Jewish child, and the young Claudio became a confirmed anti-fascist who scrawled "Viva Bartók" on a wall and triggered an unsuccessful manhunt. He enthusiastically attended performances at Milan's La Scala opera house and, when he could, orchestral rehearsals led by the likes of Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Abbado went on to the Milan Conservatory, graduating in 1955 as a pianist. He also studied conducting with Antonio Votto. He then moved to Vienna, studying piano with Friedrich Gulda and conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music. He and his classmate Zubin Mehta joined the school's chorus so that they could observe the conducting technique of such legends as Bruno Walter and Herbert von Karajan. After more classes at the Chigiana Academy in Siena, Italy, he made his debut as a conductor in Trieste, leading a performance of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges. In the summer of 1958, Abbado had a major breakthrough when he won the Koussevitzky Conducting Competition at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts. That led to various European conducting engagements and, in 1960, to a conducting debut at La Scala.

Advancement in the Western hemisphere came in 1963 when Abbado was awarded the Dmitri Mitropoulos Prize. That came with the chance to conduct the New York Philharmonic for five months. In 1965, Abbado conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time at Austria's Salzburg Festival. In the late '60s, he conducted several productions at La Scala, and in 1971, he was named the company's music director. He raised the opera orchestra's standards and formed it into an independent Orchestra della Scala, which often performed contemporary works. Abbado also became principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1971, and he also began to appear frequently with the London Symphony Orchestra, becoming its principal conductor in 1979 and later its music director. His recording career stretched far back into the LP era; with the London Symphony, he made a notable early recording in 1972 of Rossini's opera La Cenerentola. Abbado also found time to conduct the European Community Youth Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Gustav Mahler Youth Chamber Orchestra, and he mentored many young musicians.

Abbado served as principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 1986. He was then appointed music director of the Vienna State Opera, and he also held the post of general music director for the city of Vienna. In 1988, he established the Wien Modern music festival, which flourished and now encompasses other media in addition to music. In 1989, Abbado succeeded von Karajan as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, remaining in that post until 2002. He gave up his Vienna State Opera post in 1991 but remained active in Vienna. Abbado made recordings with all the major orchestras with which he was associated, and he was prolific even by the standards of the 20th century classical recording golden age. After his death, reissues of his recordings continued to appear, and by the early 2020s, his catalog comprised well over 500 items. Deeply thoughtful in his approach, Abbado was an expert in a wide variety of music, from Mozart to Iannis Xenakis. He often conducted from memory. Abbado cut back his pace after a bout with cancer in 2000 but continued to perform and record, often leading youth orchestras. He died in Bologna, Italy, on January 20, 2014. ~ James Manheim