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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.

Cheryl Studer's repertoire is among the widest-ranging of those of any soprano, ranging from the Baroque to the twentieth century; her roles include Violetta (La Traviata), Die Kaiserin in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Odabella in Verdi's Attila, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, Floyd's Susannah, and nearly all of the lyric Wagner roles: Elizabeth (Tannhäuser), Elsa (Lohengrin), Freia (Das Rheingold), and Sieglinde (Die Walküre). She has also explored the art song repertory extensively; in all these things, she has applied a strong sense of musicianship and period style.

Born in Midland, Michigan, Studer took up music at an early age with piano and viola studies. She attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and did her college studies at the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She first gained recognition during three summers at the Tanglewood festival, where both Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa expressed admiration for her singing; Ozawa, in fact, engaged her for several BSO concerts during the 1978-79 season. In 1977 she also won the High Fidelity/Musical America award, and in 1978 the Metropolitan Opera Auditions.

In 1979 Studer went to Europe to continue her studies, with, among others, Hans Hotter. There she made her opera debut at the Bavarian State Opera in 1980 as the First Lady in Mozart's The Magic Flute. She sang with various other theaters in Germany, including Bayreuth, where she made her debut as Freia in 1985. Her United States debut was in 1984 as Micaela in Carmen at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. In 1987, she returned to Bayreuth to sing Elsa, which brought her to international fame. Her La Scala debut was the next year as Mathilde in Rossini's William Tell, and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1990 was as Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. During the late 1990s, she had a period of vocal problems that led to the Bavarian State Opera canceling her contracts, but after a brief time off the stage, her performances indicated a return to form.

The Sawallisch recording of Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten shows her at her best, with a warm, lyrical tone that still has the necessary carrying power for the difficult role of the Empress.

Wolfgang Sawallisch was a German conductor and pianist, known for his refined interpretations of orchestral and opera repertoire. As a pianist, he was a revered accompanist and chamber musician, as well as an accomplished soloist. He was born in 1923 in Munich to Maria and Wilhelm Sawallisch, and had a brother named Werner who was older by five years. He started learning the piano at age five, and by the age of ten he had already decided that he wanted to be a concert pianist as an adult. Upon graduating high school in Munich in 1942, he studied piano with Wolfgang Ruoff until he was drafted into the military, where he served in France and Italy with the Wehrmacht, a branch of the Nazi armed forces. During the final stages of World War II in 1945 he was captured and held in a British POW camp. After he was released, he returned to Munich and began studying with composer Joseph Haas. In 1946 Sawallisch graduated from the Staatliche Musikhochschule in Munich, testing out after only a single semester. The following year he began his first professional appointment as répétiteur, and eventually chorus master at the Augsburg Opera Theater. He was also studying conducting with Hans Rosbaud and Igor Markevitch at the time, and performing as an accompanist with violinist Gerhard Seitz, with whom he won the Geneva International Competition in 1949. It was also around this time when he married his wife Mechthild Schmid, who was a singer. They had known each other since childhood, when Sawallisch performed as her accompanist. Sawallisch's reputation as a conductor was growing, and with that came guest conducting assignments from German orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1953. Over the next ten years, he held Music Director positions in Aachen, and then Wiesbaden, and finally in Cologne where he also taught at the Conservatory. In 1957 he became the youngest conductor to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival, opening with Tristan und Isolde. That same year he also had two debut performances in London that included a recital where he accompanied Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and he conducted the Philharmonia. Throughout the 1960s he simultaneously held principal conductor appointments at both the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and the Hamburg State Philharmonic. Additionally, he first appeared as guest conductor in Japan with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1964, where he would annually return to conduct for over 30 years. Again in the 1970s Sawallisch maintains simultaneous directorship positions, with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Bavarian State Opera. Throughout his tenure in Munich, he conducted a staggering 1200 opera performances, and also the complete Wagner Ring des Nibelungen cycle 32 times. His appearance in 1984 as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra would prove to be important, as he eventually returned in 1993 to take over the position as Music Director, succeeding Riccardo Muti. In his first year, they toured Japan, China, and made an appearance in Vietnam. He held this position until 2003, and eventually retired from conducting due to a health condition. However, he continued his affiliation with the Philadelphia Orchestra as Conductor Laureate until his death in 2013. ~ RJ Lambert & Joseph Stevenson

While Heppner considers himself fundamentally a lyric tenor, he has become an eminent Wagnerian, and his Tristan has been hailed as a worthy successor to Lauritz Melchior's. Even after his "second debut" in Wagnerian roles, he still sang the title roles of Mozart's Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, complete with ornamentation, and added not only lieder, but popular parlor songs to his recital repertoire. His operatic repertoire also includes Verdi, Massenet, and Puccini, and he is a noted Peter Grimes. While his voice is not as large as that of some of the heldentenors, it has a very bright, focused sound that allows it to carry through even the heavier orchestral writing in Wagner, though it also has a slight tendency to crack, particularly in the longer operas that require high notes toward the end.

Like his compatriot Jon Vickers, also hailed as Grimes and in Wagner, he grew up as a farm boy in Canada (in a town named Dawson Creek, oddly enough). He studied at the University of British Columbia School of Music, and upon graduation, began a career as a lyric tenor, winning the Canadian Broadcasting Competition award in 1979. In 1981, he made his opera debut as Rodrigo in Otello at the Vancouver Opera, and performed such light roles as Camille in The Merry Widow and Alfredo in Die Fledermaus with the Canadian Opera Company. However, in 1987, he returned to study, this time preparing for dramatic tenor roles, and won the first Birgit Nilsson Prize in 1988 in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions. He made his U.S. debut at Carnegie Hall that same year and his United States opera debut was at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the small role of Walter von der Vogelweide in Tannhäuser in the fall season. As part of the Nilsson Prize, he made his Stockholm debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1989 in his first Lohengrin, later traveling with the same company to Moscow to perform the same role at the Bolshoi.

His La Scala debut was in 1990 as Walter von Stolzig in Der Meistersinger, and his Salzburg debut in 1992 as Tito in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, and later that year he created the title role in William Bolcom's McTeague at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. In 1998, he sang his first Tristan in Seattle with Jane Eaglen as Isolde, to great critical acclaim.

His Walter on Solti's Die Meistersinger (Decca 452 606) is an excellent example of the lyricism that he brings to Wagner, and his recording of Richard Strauss arias on a CBC recording (SMCD 5142) makes some of the most difficult tenor scenes in the entire repertoire seem natural and fluid. His BMG recording of Italian arias (BMG 62504), while focusing on the spinto repertoire, does display his trills to advantage in the scene from Il trovatore.

Heppner sticks hard to his personal rule of taking every other summer off, not doing the usual festival performances, in order to spend more time with his wife and three children and to prepare for opera roles.

A true bass voice is a relative rarity in the operatic world (though not as rare as a true contralto), and all too often, even the major candidates "gravel out" at the bottom of their ranges instead of singing, or have a tendency to bark or at least overuse sprechstimme while singing. Kurt Moll was one of the basses known for singing every note of his roles, even the lowest notes for Osmin in The Abduction from the Seraglio. The richness and sonority of his voice and sensitivity to the inflections of both music and text made him one of the foremost performers of Wagner bass roles, especially King Mark in Tristan and Isolde; Gurnemanz in Parsifal, and Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, perhaps his most acclaimed role. He was also known for his lieder singing, and was especially admired for his renditions of Brahms' Four Serious Songs. He and Hermann Prey championed the songs of Loewe, a composer greatly overshadowed by Schubert and Schumann.

He first studied at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik, and while a student, made occasional appearances in small roles at the Cologne opera, though his official debut was not until 1961, as Lodovico in Otello. He sang at most of the small opera houses in Germany during the 1960s, slowly rising to larger parts and more prestigious houses. He joined the Hamburg Staatsoper in 1970, the same year of his Salzburg debut, and he made his Bayreuth Festival debut in 1974 as Fafner in Das Rheingold. His La Scala debut was also in 1974 as King Mark in Tristan and Isolde, and his Covent Garden debut was the next year as Caspar in Der Freischütz.

In 1982, he first began to perform Russian roles, first singing Pimen in Boris Godunov at the Vienna State Opera, and adding the title role of that opera to his repertoire in 1983, also at the Vienna State Opera. He was cautious about adding new roles, repeatedly turning down Wagner's Wotan and Hans Sachs, as they are written in a higher tessitura, closer to bass-baritone than bass, and so might require the kind of pushing that could have damaged his voice. Moll officially retired from the stage on the last night of the 2006 Munich Opera Festival, after a performance in Die Meistersinger von Nürnburg. He died following a long illness in March 2017.

He credited conductor Herbert von Karajan for guiding him to many of his most telling musical and dramatic insights, and recorded both his Gurnemanz (DG 413 347-2) and Baron Ochs (DG 423 850-2) under von Karajan; though both these recordings have some less than ideal aspects, the casting of Moll and his performances are not among the flaws.