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One of the top singers of her generation, soprano Barbara Hendricks has excelled both on the operatic stage and in concert halls. Noted for her humanitarian work, Hendricks has had an exceptionally long career as a performer and recording artist.

Hendricks was born on November 20, 1948, in Stephens, Arkansas. As a girl, she took voice lessons and sang many solos. She attended Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, graduating with honors, and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After a stint at the Aspen Music Festival's summer school, she was accepted at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, studying there with Jennie Tourel. Hendricks won several major awards over the next several years, including the Grand Prize and the Mozart Prize at the Concours International de Paris in 1972. In 1973, she earned a bachelor's degree in voice from Juilliard.

The year 1974 saw Hendricks make several major breakthroughs, including a recital debut at New York's Town Hall, operatic debuts with the San Francisco Symphony (as Erisbe in Cavalli's Ormindo), and the Glyndebourne Opera in Britain, a debut with the Chicago Symphony under conductor Georg Solti, and a recording of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess with the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. In 1977, she moved to Europe and has lived there ever since; she married producer Martin Engström in 1981, and the couple has three children, one named Jennie. Hendricks is a Swedish citizen.

Hendricks has appeared at most of the world's major operatic venues, including New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Paris Opéra, La Scala in Milan, Italy, and Covent Garden in London. She has a large repertory of German lieder and has extensive experience as a recitalist with such famed accompanists as András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Radu Lupu, and increasingly often in her later career, Love Derwinger, with whom she has often recorded on her own Arte Verum label.

Hendricks gave peace concerts in Sarajevo and Dubrovnik during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, and in 1998, she formed the Barbara Hendricks Foundation For Peace and Reconciliation. She has championed contemporary music, premiering works by such composers as David Del Tredici, Bruno Mantovani, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Arvo Pärt. She also performs jazz, and in 1981, she recorded an album of Gershwin songs with the piano duo Katia & Marielle Labèque. Hendricks has made more than 80 recordings, releasing them mostly on Arte Verum since its formation. She has remained quite active as a senior citizen, and in 2023, she issued an album of orchestral songs by Berlioz with the Pori Sinfonietta. Hendricks has been widely honored in later life; French president François Mitterand made her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1993. ~ James Manheim

Araiza's father was a tenor and also the chorus master of the Mexico Opera, so Araiza was exposed to opera at an early age. In 1966, he studied organ at the Escuela de Música in Mexico City, and, to fulfill a curricular requirement, he reluctantly joined the choir, though he was not particularly interested in vocal music. He actually began as a bass, but a teacher found that he had an exceptionally good upper register, with a natural high B flat. Under Irma Gonzalez, he developed his voice into a lyric tenor with a strong ring. He made his operatic debut in 1970 as the first prisoner in a concert version of Beethoven's Fidelio, sang his first major performance as a soloist in Haydn's Creation in 1973, and in the fall of 1974, competed in the ARD Singing Competition in Munich, Germany. While he won only the third prize, the jury recognized his potential as a Mozart singer, and he was given the chance to audition for the Karlsruhe Staatstheater Mozart project, a multi-year full Mozart cycle. He was offered a two-year contract with an option for the third year, but he had not studied Mozart before to any great extent, so Anton Dermota and Richard Holm (two of the three judges) both took him under their wing, training him in Mozart style. He enjoyed great success as Tamino and Ferrando.

In 1979, Herbert von Karajan took a special interest in Araiza's career, and chose him for Tamino in his new recording of Die Zauberflöte. In 1981 he made his U.S. debut, and in 1983, made his Met debut. During the mid-'80s, however, Araiza began to take on slightly heavier roles, but when he started to sing such spinto and dramatic roles as Alvaro in Verdi's La forza del destino, Cavaradossi in Tosca, and even Lohengrin, his voice lost much of its flexibility, becoming rather leathery in timbre as well by the 1990s. In 1996, he was scheduled to sing performances of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Metropolitan, but his contract was bought out by mutual agreement. Araiza still performs those lighter roles in which he is comfortable, and also spends much of his time teaching.

Some of his early recordings, the Mozart Così fan tutte under Neville Marriner (Philips) and the Rossini Barbiere di Siviglia, also under Marriner (Philips), are still considered benchmarks for post-Wunderlich and Gedda tenors.