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Praised for her unparalleled acting ability and beautiful soprano voice, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is among the most celebrated opera stars of her generation. A major attraction at opera houses and recital halls around the world, Te Kanawa was elevated to celebrity status with a performance at the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Te Kanawa is especially known for her Mozart and Richard Strauss roles, though her performances and extensive recording catalog covered operas by many composers as well as concert works, musical theater, recitals, and even jazz and blues, reaching well beyond the realm of strictly classical music listeners. Te Kanawa was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gramophone Classical Music Awards in 2017.

Te Kanawa was born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron on March 6, 1944, in Gisborne, New Zealand. She was adopted as an infant by Thomas and Nell Te Kanawa, who named her Kiri after Thomas' father. Studying with Dame Sister Mary Leo Niccol, she began her career performing in New Zealand clubs. A win at the 1965 Mobil Song Quest awarded her a grant to study in London. That year, her first recording was issued, an EP containing the Nuns' Chorus from Johann Strauss II's Casanova and Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim" from Samson. This recording became the first-ever gold record produced in New Zealand. In 1966, after appearing in the film Don't Let It Get You and winning the Sun Aria contest in Melbourne, Te Kanawa enrolled at the London Opera Center, where she studied with Vera Rózsa and James Robertson. Shortly after, she made her first stage appearance as the Second Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

In 1969, Te Kanawa appeared as Elena in Rossini's La donna del lago at the Comden Festival and made her debut at Covent Garden in the role of Xenia in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov the following year. Her U.S. debut came in the summer of 1971 at the Santa Fe Opera as the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, which also featured a young Frederica von Stade. Te Kanawa's career took off when she reprised the role later that year at Covent Garden under Sir Colin Davis. After her audition for the role, Davis was quoted in The Royal Opera House in the Twentieth Century as saying, "I couldn't believe my ears.... Let's hear her again and see if we're not dreaming." While her Countess made Te Kanawa famous, she quickly expanded her repertoire, adding roles in the Mozart operas Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1974 as a short-notice substitute for Teresa Stratas as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. Te Kanawa continued to make major opera house debuts throughout the 1970s, and in 1977 at the Houston Grand Opera, she made her first appearance in the titular role in Richard Strauss' Arabella, a composer whose works also garnered her fame. Other R. Strauss roles she championed were the Countess in Capriccio and Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier.

In 1981, Te Kanawa performed at the wedding of England's Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and her performance of "Let the Bright Seraphim" was broadcast worldwide to an audience of more than 600 million viewers. The following year, she was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for services to opera and was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine. Leonard Bernstein tapped Te Kanawa in 1984 to star alongside tenor José Carreras as his leads in a new recording of West Side Story, with the composer conducting. The recording was released in 1985, along with a documentary made during the recording sessions, The Making of West Side Story. The new recording was a hit, earning a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album.

Te Kanawa remained active into the 21st century, stepping back from operatic appearances but remaining busy as a recitalist, concert soloist, educator, and recording artist. In 2004, she founded the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation in New Zealand to mentor, support, and offer financial assistance to young musicians. In 2010, with BBC Radio 2, she held the Kiri Prize Competition, which received more than 600 auditions. The winner, Shuna Scott Sendall, performed with Te Kanawa and Carreras at the BBC Proms that fall. That year, Te Kanawa made two appearances as Marschallin at the Cologne Opera and returned to the Met as the Duchess in Donizetti's La fille du regiment, a speaking part, reprising this role over the next few years at several opera houses. In 2013, she was featured on the television series Downton Abbey as Dame Nellie Melba. Te Kanawa's final performance, though only she knew at the time, was in a 2016 concert in Ballarat, Australia. She officially announced her retirement in 2017 but continued teaching and mentoring young singers. That year, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement from the Gramophone Classical Music Awards. Auckland's Aotea Centre renamed its ASB Theatre the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in 2019, with the famed soprano honored with a gala at its unveiling. ~ Keith Finke

José Carreras, one of the legendary "Three Tenors," was born Josep Carreras (Josep is his Catalan name, the equivalent of the Castilian Spanish José) in Barcelona in 1946. He began singing at a very early age; family lore holds that he serenaded passengers on a voyage home from Argentina when he was only five. He was inspired by the film biography The Great Caruso, starring Mario Lanza, and is said to have learned each and every aria contained within.

After a mere two years of voice lessons, the young Carreras sang "La donna è mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto on Spanish National Radio -- a performance that has been preserved and is included in one of his video biographies. He made his professional operatic debut at the age of eleven in Manuel de Falla's El retablo de Maese Pedro. This unique opera, written originally for a puppet theater, has as one of its primary roles an exceptionally difficult part for boy soprano -- a part so challenging that it is rarely sung by a child, usually taken instead by an adult mezzo-soprano.

After his voice changed, he took up studies with Francisco Puig, then with Juan Ruax, whom Carreras now regards as his "artistic father." At Ruax's encouragement, he auditioned at the Barcelona Liceo and landed the small role of Flavio in Bellini's Norma. This small break would have enormous consequences, since it brought him into contact with the already-famous Montserrat Caballé, who was very taken with the young tenor and recommended him to her management. The resulting engagement, opposite Caballé in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia as Gennaro, is now generally considered his real debut as a tenor, and helped to launch his career.

Carreras made his American debut in 1972 at the New York City Opera as Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. His Covent Garden debut (1974) was as Alfredo in La Traviata, and his first appearance at the Salzburg Festival was in Verdi's Requiem at the request of maestro Herbert von Karajan. He first appeared at the Vienna State Opera as the Duke in Rigoletto (1974), at the Met the same year as Cavaradossi in Tosca, and as Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera in 1975.

By the age of 28 he had already sung 24 different roles in the leading opera houses of Europe and the Americas. This busy schedule gave rise to some controversy: critics sometimes found his voice strained and complained that he might be overtaxing himself. It was not immediately recognized that this tiredness masked the onset and development of the blood disease leukemia, not diagnosed until 1987, when it had reached an acute phase.

It was during his treatment that the Three Tenors phenomenon was born. Having competed ruthlessly with both Domingo and Pavarotti for ascendancy in the world of opera, he now struck up genuine friendships with both men, who supported him during his illness. Their first concert together was conceived as a fundraiser for the newly created Josep Carreras International Leukemia Foundation. It drew a live audience in the tens of thousands and an international viewership of tens of millions. The resulting records and videos were phenomenal sellers.

Carreras is widely represented in operatic and concert recordings, numerous crossover recordings of various styles, and a large number of videos. He has over 50 complete opera recordings. His video biography, A Life Story, which included his battle with leukemia, won an international Emmy award.

One of the world's most renowned tenors, Plácido Domingo -- along with his frequent collaborators Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras -- is largely responsible for the increasing mainstream popularity of opera among contemporary listeners. He became established quickly as one of the greatest lyric tenors of his time, and one who could also sing dramatic tenor roles with nearly equally fine results. Domingo's forays into Latin and pop music were also successful, earning him Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards as well as silver, gold, platinum, and multi-platinum-selling albums. As his voice deepened with age in the 2010s, he continued to perform as a baritone.

Born March 21, 1941, in Madrid, Spain, Domingo's parents were both singers in the zarzuela, Spain's distinctive national form of musical theater. His family relocated to Mexico in 1950; there he studied vocal technique, as well as piano and conducting, at the Mexico City Conservatory. His operatic debut was in the small role of Borsa in Verdi's Rigoletto with the National Opera in Mexico City in 1959. His first appearance in the leading tenor role was as Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1960. Subsequently, he spent close to three years with the Israel National Opera, singing 280 performances in a dozen different roles. His debut with the Metropolitan Opera Company was in a Lewisohn Stadium concert performance of Cavalleria Rusticana, as Turiddu, August 9, 1966. His Metropolitan Opera debut was on September 28, 1968, as Maurice de Saxe in Adriana Lecouvreur -- the first of well over 400 performances at the legendary venue.

In the years to follow, Domingo's stature grew on the strength of regular performances at the world's most famed opera houses, among them La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, London's Covent Garden, the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, the San Francisco Opera, Chicago's Lyric Opera, and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera (which he co-founded). His recordings included performances with sopranos such as Rosalind Plowright, Katria Ricciarelli, and Montserrat Caballe.

During the '80s, Domingo broadened his horizons. He added pop and Latin music to his repertoire, scoring a Top 20 hit with the 1981 John Denver duet "Perhaps Love" from the album of the same name, and winning a Best Latin Pop Performance Grammy in 1985 for Siempre en Mi Corazón (Always in My Heart), a collection of Ernesto Lecuona songs. He also appeared in several filmed operas, including Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata in 1982, Franco Rossi's Carmen in 1984, and Zeffirelli's Otello in 1986.

However, Domingo's greatest popularity came as one of the Three Tenors, a trio featuring Pavarotti and Carreras, whose albums and live concert videos enjoyed mainstream success not enjoyed by operatic recordings in many decades. The Three Tenors' 1990 debut album became one of the best-selling classical albums of all time, and they continued to perform and record until 2003. In 1992, Domingo began the Christmas in Vienna series of concerts and albums, which featured vocalists such as Carreras, Diana Ross, Charles Aznavour, Tony Bennett, and many others.

During the '90s and 2000s, Domingo's behind-the-scenes work in opera and the arts increased. Having established a relationship with the Washington National Opera in the '80s, he became its Artistic Director in 1996, a position he held until 2011. Meanwhile, he became Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Opera in 2000, ultimately taking on the role of General Director in 2003. He also founded the international opera competition Operalia and became the president of Europa Nostra, a European cultural heritage federation.

Along with these responsibilities, Domingo continued to perform, though his roles were changing. He performed in more Wagnerian operas and Russian-language operas such as Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades. He also added new roles in classic and modern operas including Arrigo in Verdi's La Battaglia di Legnano and Tan Dun's The First Emperor. Domingo earned particular acclaim for his performance as Tristan in the 2005 EMI Classics studio recording of Tristan und Isolde, which featured Operalia winner Nina Stemme in the other lead role. In 2009, Domingo switched to baritone parts, starting with Verdi's Simon Boccanegra and following it with roles in the composer's Rigoletto, I due Foscari, La Traviata, and Macbeth, among others. He also continued to record classical and pop albums. His 2011 collection of Verdi baritone arias won a Latin Grammy Award; other projects included 2012's Songs, which featured collaborations with Josh Groban and Susan Boyle, the 2015 holiday album My Christmas, and an appearance on Il Volo's Notte Magica: A Tribute to the Three Tenors in 2016. Another seasonal collection, Placido Domingo & Friends Celebrate Christmas in Vienna, arrived in 2017. ~ Jason Ankeny

One of the most successful and admired opera singers of all time, Luciano Pavarotti was king among tenors from the late 1960s through the 1990s. His voice was noted for its exciting upper register, and tailor-made for the operas of Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti, and Puccini, and as it darkened slightly over the years, for the verismo composers as well. His vocal longevity, which kept him singing youthfully well into his sixties, and still beautifully after that, was a credit to his commanding technique and artistry, and remarkable considering his nearly 40 years of performing.

Pavarotti's father was a baker, and his mother worked in a cigar factory. As a boy, he sang alto in the cathedral choir, and when his voice changed he joined the Modena city choir. He had brief careers as a schoolteacher and an insurance agent; during that time, his major extracurricular activity was not music but soccer, and his play made him a local star. However, increased involvement in the choir (which took prizes in international competitions) led him to pursue vocal studies, and he eventually settled on singing as his aspiration.

Pavarotti studied voice with Arrigo Polo in Modena, then with Ettore Campogalliani in Mantua. His operatic debut was as Rodolfo in La Bohème in Reggio Emilia (April 19, 1961), and soon increasing success led to a debut in Amsterdam on January 18, 1963, as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor. After singing the same role with Joan Sutherland in Miami in 1965, he was engaged to travel with her in the Sutherland Williamson International Grand Opera Company, touring Australia. In 1966 he appeared at Covent Garden as Tonio in La fille du régiment, where his seemingly effortless handling of the nine successive high Cs in the aria "Pour mon âme" sent his career into high orbit. He repeated the feat at the Metropolitan Opera in 1972, and for more than two decades after that he was a fixture on the operatic scene, appearing in nearly every major European and American house, and even China, where he performed Puccini's La bohème in the 1980s.

Pavarotti appeared in the first "Live from the Met" broadcast on the PBS network and was the most consistent draw on that series for years. His outstanding catalogue of recordings on the London (Decca) record label preserves nearly every role he ever performed and is hard to match for its quality and scope. His charity work included AIDS benefit concerts and world hunger gala events, as well as his "Pavarotti and Friends" concerts to benefit children, especially in the former Yugoslav states. He also founded a quadrennial contest to identify talented young singers and boost their careers. And, as one of the "Three Tenors," he brought operatic singing to a wider popular audience than previously might have been thought possible. In 2003 he released his first solo crossover CD, Ti adoro. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, yet remained positive and hopeful of still being able to record and perform until his death.

Trained in both music and law, Peter Hurford enjoyed an enviable reputation for both his organ playing and his musical scholarship. The latter produced not only revised ideas about performance of early music, but also different notions about the construction of the instruments upon which such music ought to be played. His extensive recordings for the Decca label (earlier, London Records in the United States) passed into the realm of the legendary and his live performances attracted positive reviews, as well as stimulating numerous discussions regarding performance practice and the art of organ building.

After initial studies with Harold Darke, the famous and much-respected English organist and composer, Hurford read both music and law at Jesus College, Cambridge University, graduating with dual degrees. Through study in Paris with the blind French organist André Marchal, Hurford explored the music of the Baroque period, with a particular emphasis on J.S. Bach and the French masters, and he acquired something of his teacher's brilliance as an improviser. His own singular notions of authentic performing style also took form at that time and were soon regularly implemented before the public once he had received an appointment as music master at St. Albans Abbey in 1958. There he experimented and rebuilt the organ to comply with his convictions, and soon began to attract the attention of other English organists unsatisfied with the traditional and often heavy-handed Baroque style customarily heard in English churches. By 1963, Hurford's stature made possible the immediate success of the International Organ Festival he devised for St. Albans. There, organists and organ scholars were able to gather to hear and discuss performances and share scholarly findings regarding performance style, registration, repertory, and audience building. Winners of competitions at the St. Albans Festival have included such international virtuosos as Gillian Weir and Thomas Trotter. Many a competitor counted himself fortunate to have received an autographed copy of Hurford's recordings of Bach's complete organ works. After decades at St. Albans, Hurford resigned to fulfill the demand for solo performances. By that time, his recordings had made his name a familiar one even to those who had not heard him in live performance. In addition to his concert appearances, Hurford began to devote time to teaching and made himself a welcome visiting scholar in numerous venues, especially in England and the United States. After having worked out his ideas during several decades of lecturing and performance, Hurford assembled them in written form in his book Making Music on the Organ, published in 1988. The simple, direct title conceals a wealth of carefully considered issues and effective solutions to them. Hurford also achieved some renown as a composer of organ works and choral pieces. Mostly dating from his St. Albans years, some of them are flowingly lyrical while others are joyously animated. All reflect Hurford's skill and inclinations as an improviser. Hurford's largest recording project was putting on disc the complete organ works of Bach, a project that began in the 1970s and finished in the early 1980s. Another double-disc set of organ masses by Couperin is also a seminal issue. Hurford's often-brisk tempi and variety of registration decidedly changed organ performance; both sets demonstrate why.

Hurford retired from performing in 2009, after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. He passed away in early March 2019. The full set of his Bach recordings was still available (in remastered sound) at that date, alongside a smaller, two-disc set of highlights. ~ Erik Eriksson