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To many, Diana Damrau is the complete soprano, with early success in coloratura roles and later thriving in lyric and bel canto roles. With a beautiful voice and astounding technique that allow her to reach the highest notes with seeming ease, she has a keen sense of drama, giving her operatic characters real emotions and total believability. She also exudes likable and attractive qualities on-stage. While she is perhaps best known for roles in Mozart and Richard Strauss operas, her repertory includes operas by Vivaldi, Rossini, Wagner, and many others. She also sings lieder by Richard Strauss, Mahler, and Wolf, among others. Damrau regularly appears at major opera houses and concert venues across the U.S. and Europe, including the Met, Covent Garden, and the Vienna Musikverein. In 2023, she returned to her early operetta roots with the album Operette: Wien, Berlin, Paris.

Damrau was born in Günzburg, Germany, on May 31, 1971. Her vocal studies were at the Würzburg Musikhochschule, where her teachers included Carmen Hanganu, and she further studied in Salzburg with Hanna Ludwig. Damrau steadily built her career with appearances at the Stadttheater Würzburg and then at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and the Frankfurt Opera. During this period, she often sang in operettas such as Lehár's Die lustige Witwe ("The Merry Widow") and musicals (My Fair Lady). In 1995, she made her operatic debut at Würzburg's Mainfranken Theater in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.

Damrau debuted at Covent Garden in 2003 as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. The following year, she sang the title role in Salieri's L'Europa riconosciuta in a television broadcast from La Scala, with Riccardo Muti conducting. The breakthroughs continued with her 2005 Metropolitan Opera debut as Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. In 2007, Damrau astounded Met audiences when she sang Pamina for six performances and then, in the same run, as Queen of the Night for two. Several of her major releases came out that year, including Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn alongside Iván Paley and her first solo release, Arie di Bravura.

Damrau married bass-baritone Nicolas Testé in 2010. After the birth of their first son in 2010, she resumed her busy schedule: in 2011, she sang Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani in Geneva and then returned to the Met as Countess Adèle in Rossini's Le Comte Ory and as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto. Similarly, the birth of her second son in 2012 didn't slow down her performance docket, either, and she returned to the stage in 2013. That year, she premiered Iain Bell's A Harlot's Progress in the title role at Theater an der Wien. Damrau earned Echo Klassik Awards for her albums Poesie (2011) and Forever (2014), and she was named the Opus Klassik Female Singer of the Year in 2018 for her album Grand Opera. In 2020, she issued the album Tudor Queens with Antonio Pappano and a recording of lieder by Richard Strauss with Helmut Deutsch and Mariss Jansons. Damrau released the holiday album My Christmas in 2022 and returned to her early operetta roots with Operette: Wien, Berlin, Paris in 2023. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Anna Prohaska has drawn comparisons with Anna Netrebko and other leading sopranos owing to the beauty, warmth, and power of her voice. Indeed, critics noted the ravishing character of Prohaska's tone, from its secure and potent upper notes to its dark middle register and her seemingly effortless manner of delivery. She sings an extensive range of operatic roles, and her concert and recital repertoire is equally broad. In 2024, Prohaska was heard on a recording of George Benjamin's opera Picture a day like this and was named the Opus Klassik Female Singer of the Year.

Prohaska was born into a musical family in Neu-Ulm, Germany, in 1983. Her great-grandfather, Carl Prohaska, was a respected composer, and her grandfather was conductor Felix Prohaska; her mother and her brother, Daniel, are singers, and her father was an opera director. Raised in Vienna, Anna began piano and ballet lessons at age six. At 11, she and her family moved to Berlin, and she began vocal studies at 14 with conductor Eberhard Kloke. At the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, she continued vocal studies with Brenda Mitchell, Norma Sharp, and Wolfram Rieger. Prohaska was busy during her student years on the concert stage, making her first professional appearances at 16 at the North-Rhine Westphalia and Potsdam music festivals. In 2002, she debuted at the Komische Oper Berlin as Flora in Britten's The Turn of The Screw. Prohaska had further training at the Aix-en-Provence Festival's Académie Européenne de Musique in 2003 and later on at the International Handel Academy Karlsruhe.

Prohaska appeared at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera) in 2005 in the premiere of Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence, a contemporary opera fashioned by seven different composers and librettist Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In 2006, Prohaska sang Frasquita in a Barenboim-led performance of Bizet's Carmen at the Berlin State Opera, and the following year, she became a member of the company. Since 2007, Prohaska has appeared regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2008, Prohaska debuted as the First Wood Nymph at the Salzburg Festival under Franz Welser-Möst in Dvorák's Rusalka. Prohaska gave the 2009 Berlin premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's Mnemosyne with the Berlin Philharmonic under Matthias Pintscher. Prohaska's 2010 live performance in the Berg Lulu Suite with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra under Abbado was issued on an acclaimed Accentus DVD. Prohaska's other roles have included Poppea in Handel's Agrippina, Blonde in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, and Anne Truelove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. Her concert and recital repertoire offers works by Dowland, Haydn, Luigi Nono, and many others.

In 2011, Prohaska signed with Deutsche Grammophon and released Sirène, her first recital disc for the label featuring works by Mahler, Debussy, and Dowland, among others. She has also recorded for the Alpha, Accent, and Wergo labels. On Alpha, she has released two albums, both to critical success: Serpent & Fire in 2016 and Paradise Lost in 2020. In 2022, Prohaska was joined by violinist Isabelle Faust for an acclaimed recording of György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente. In 2024, Prohaska was featured alongside Marianne Crebassa on a recording of George Benjamin's opera Picture a day like this, conducted by the composer. That year, she was named the Opus Klassik Female Singer of the Year. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Touted as a possible successor to Plácido Domingo, Rolando Villazón burst on the scene in the early 2000s with a flurry of appearances at top opera houses around the world. He survived a vocal cord cyst in 2009 and has gone on to become one of the world's top opera stars.

Villazón was born on February 22, 1972, in Fuentes de Satellite, Mexico. Domingo's Perhaps Love album, recorded with John Denver, was the first example of operatic singing Villazón heard. Domingo served as a mentor to Villazón later in his career, and Villazón's voice has frequently been compared to Domingo's. His vocal gift was of the sort that emerges from a well-rounded education in the arts rather than one that shaped his life from childhood. Villazón studied theater, ballet, and modern dance as well as music at the Espacios arts academy. A voice teacher, Arturo Nieto, introduced Villazón to opera when he was 18. He enrolled at Mexico's National Conservatory of Music (studying with Enrique Jaso and Gabriel Mijares), and soon he was taking home top prizes in national vocal competitions. Still, Villazón worked as a history and music teacher, unsure whether to plunge into a full-time operatic career. His girlfriend Lucia decided for him, telling him that she wouldn't marry him unless he pursued his dream. Another fortuitous encounter happened as Villazón was working as a stage manager in an operatic production at Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes. Columbia Artists Management representative Bruce Zemsky happened to be in attendance and, although Villazón wasn't performing, correctly guessed that he was a singer and invited him to audition. The shocked Villazón acquitted himself well enough to keep the relationship with Zemsky going, and eventually he was signed by the powerful agency. Villazón rounded off his education in 1998 with a stint at the San Francisco Opera's "Merola Opera Program" for young singers, taking classes with Joan Sutherland. The following year he made his European debut in Genoa, Italy, with an appearance as des Grieux in Massenet's Manon. Over the next five years, he appeared in a host of European and American houses. Villazón made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the fall of 2003, in Verdi's La Traviata. A highlight of his career was performing La Traviata with Anna Netrebko in a much-acclaimed production at the Salzburg Festival in 2005. Although his focus has been on the Romantic repertoire, he also has extensive experience performing works by Baroque composers, including Monteverdi, Handel, and Vivaldi.

His first appearance on disc came, oddly enough, as the Steersman in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. Villazón had sung little German music, but, noted Opera News writer Matthew Gurewitsch, "Villazón comes through in spades, flinging out his song in a blaze of openhearted romance that subsides disarmingly into sleepiness and dreams." Villazón's first solo release, Italian Opera Arias, appeared early in 2004. In the estimation of The Times of London, he was "the real thing, a tenor with star potential and striking individuality." His 2007 album Duets, with Netrebko, was an international best-seller. That year he became a French citizen. There was a break in Villazón's career in 2009 when he had surgery to remove a cyst on his vocal cords, but he was able to resume performing the following year. Since his return to the stage he has specialized in Mozartian tenor roles, but he also issued ¡México!, an album of Mexican popular song standards, in 2010. An appearance on a recording of Handel's Messiah with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir brought Villazón new exposure among U.S. audiences. Beginning in 2013 with a recording of Così fan tutte, the tenor has spearheaded a major new series of Mozart opera recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label; in 2019, his recording of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in that series appeared, with Villazón in the role, not of the tenor lead, Tamino, but of the comic baritone Papageno. ~ James Manheim

The operatic bass Franz-Josef Selig has been a mainstay of the German operatic scene. As his voice has matured, he has increasingly often focused on the operas of Wagner.

Selig was born in Mayen, a small town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, on July 11, 1962. He had the ambition to become a church musician and entered the Musikhochschule Köln with that goal in mind. After earning his degree, however, he began studying voice at the university with Claudio Nicolai. He made rapid progress and was already giving concerts during his student program; he was also accepted in 1989, still a student, as a company member at the Aalto-Theater, the opera house of the city of Essen. Remaining there until 1995, Selig made guest appearances at increasingly prominent houses around Europe and beyond, including the Vienna State Opera, La Scala in Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1992 he won the Aalto Stage Prize for Young Artists. After leaving the Aalto-Theater, he began a successful freelance career that included appearances around Europe and North America including return visits to the Mozart House at Austria's Salzburg Festival. The role of Sarastro in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, was a common one for Selig during the first part of his career; he also favored bass roles such as Rocco in Beethoven's Fidelio, and Osmin in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. His repertory also included Wagnerian roles such as Marke in Tristan und Isolde and Gurnemand in Parsifal. Wagner has come to the fore in Selig's performance schedule as his voice has deepened. In 2012 he appeared for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival, as Daland in Der fliegende Holländer, and he soon added Hunding in Die Walküre to his repertory there. Selig has performed enthusiastically as a song recitalist with pianist Gerold Huber, and, more unusually, in the Liedertafel part song repertory. With Markus Schäfer, Christian Elsner, and Michael Volle, he released an album of this music, entitled Liedertafel, in 2004; the genre has not often been recorded. Selig has appeared on various operatic recording as well as, in 2013, a recording of Mozart's Coronation Mass, K. 317, with the Cologne Chamber Choir on the EMI label. He was also heard in recordings of the Bach St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, and St. John Passion, BWV 245, with the Collegium Vocale Gent under Philippe Herreweghe, and, in 2019, as Sarastro in a new Die Zauberflöte with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ~ James Manheim

Thomas Quasthoff was a thalidomide baby, growing to only about four feet tall and, in common with many of his fellow victims of the drug, has severely undeveloped arms. However, his voice and breathing apparatus are normal -- if a bass-baritone voice that is uncommonly magnificent can be considered normal.

When Quasthoff reached school age, he was assigned, according to government policy, to school programs designed for children with cerebral palsy. A lively, intelligent, and artistic child, Quasthoff clearly needed the stimulation of normal schooling, which a change in policy soon permitted. He was raised in a highly supportive environment, being treated in exactly the same way as his normal brother. The phrase he remembers being said most often to him when he was young was "Tommy, you can do that. Do it!" As a result he grew up with a sunny and optimistic outlook. Music was special to him. But when he tried to get a musical education, he found that the highly regarded conservatory to which he applied had a strict policy that all students had to learn to play piano, and turned him away on the grounds that this was impossible for him. "That was legally correct. I have to admit that," he says. "Morally -- well, that raises a big question."

His parents procured private voice lessons for him with Charlotte Lehmann, a concert singer of Hannover. She taught him for 17 years, and proved a superb voice teacher. The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau said "It's clear to everyone who has heard Thomas Quasthoff that he has a wondrously beautiful voice and that he has had excellent previous training...."

While studying, Quasthoff found a position as a radio announcer in Hannover, becoming highly popular. In 1988 he won first prize in voice at the prestigious ARD music competition of Munich. This led to his beginning a concert and recital career that rapidly grew, although cautiously, Quasthoff retained his radio job for six more years. He finally adopted music as his full-time profession in 1996, the year he won the Shostakovich Prize in Moscow and the Hamada Trust/Scotsman Festival Prize, and in 1998 he won the Echo Prize. In 1996 he was appointed professor at the Detmold Music Academy, where he was one of the most popular voice teachers. He was also associated with the University of Oregon at Eugene, where he appeared regularly in the Oregon Bach Festival.

He has performed with many leading orchestras and conductors. His repertory includes the great choral/vocal/orchestral works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Mahler, and Britten. He sings opera arias in his programs, and has sung operatic roles in recordings of Beethoven's Fidelio, Haydn's L'Anima del Philosopho, and Schumann's Genoveva. It wasn't until 2003 that he appeared in opera on stage, in Fidelio (as Don Fernando) and in 2004 as Amfortas in Parsifal. Quasthoff is also a great fan of other vocal music and dedicated 2007's Watch What Happens to jazz songs and 2010's Tell It Like It Is to soul and pop songs.

He has recorded on the Hännsler, MDG, RCA, Teldec, Orfeo, and Philips labels, and since mid-1999 has been an exclusive artist on Deutsche Grammophon.

Although it maintains headquarters in London, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe lives up to its name: the group's roughly 60 members come from all over the European continent as well as Britain. Cultivating relationships with many conductors and venues, the orchestra is especially noteworthy for its recording catalog, which has earned critical acclaim and major awards.

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe was founded in 1981 by a group of young players who had aged out of the European Community Youth Orchestra and wanted to continue making music together. One of the initial movers was Douglas Boyd, who remained the orchestra's lead oboist for many years, and numerous other founding members have remained with the group. The idea of forming a smaller orchestra oriented toward Baroque and Classical repertory was common at the time; less common was the orchestra's democratic structure, which involved a small directorate elected annually by the players. There is no permanent conductor, but the Chamber Orchestra of Europe quickly began to catch the attention of some of the biggest names on the podium. Two years after its formation, the group was tapped by Claudio Abbado for a Deutsche Grammophon recording of Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims. The orchestra has worked with conductors Bernard Haitink, Sakari Oramo, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and many others, and has performed or recorded with top-caliber soloists including Janine Jansen, Emanuel Ax, and Renaud and Gautier Capuçon.

Accordingly, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe tours all over Europe (and sometimes in North America), with no identification with a particular city. These connections have resulted in an unusually deep collection of recordings: since the late '80s, multiple recordings of the orchestra have appeared in almost every year, and 2006 alone saw seven Chamber Orchestra of Europe releases. The group was a European Union cultural ambassador from 2007 until 2013. In 2009, the orchestra established the COE Academy to provide educational opportunities for student performers. Many of the group's recordings feature Baroque or Classical repertory (especially Mozart), but not all; in 2018, the orchestra issued Visions of Prokofiev on Deutsche Grammophon. The orchestra's vast, critically acclaimed recording catalog has earned two Grammy Awards and three Record of the Year Awards from Gramophone magazine. In 2020, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, led by Harnoncourt, was heard on a live recording of Schubert's symphonies made at the Styriarte festival in Graz, Austria, in 1988. The following year, the orchestra and Harnoncourt were heard on an album of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; these recordings were made at the same festival spanning from 1989 through 2007. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe is a nonprofit organization and a registered charity in Britain. ~ James Manheim

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has had one of the most meteoric rises of any conductor of the early 21st century. Since conducting virtually all of the major Canadian orchestras while still in his twenties, he has established a substantial international career.

Nézet-Séguin was born in Montreal on March 6, 1975. He began studying piano at age five and decided on a career as a conductor at age ten after attending a performance by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under Charles Dutoit. He studied piano, chamber music, conducting, and composition at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec, and he studied choral conducting at Westminster Choir College. When he was 14, he began leading rehearsals of the Chœur polyphonique de Montréal at the Montréal Cathedral; he became the group's conductor in 1994, at age 19. That same year, Nézet-Séguin, who had a lifelong admiration for the work of Carlo Maria Giulini, was invited to follow the famed conductor for a year, observing rehearsals and concerts and working extensively with Giulini during his final year of public performances. In 1995, Nézet-Séguin founded Le Chapelle de Montréal, a vocal and instrumental group that began with a focus on the Baroque. He continued performing with this group until 2002.

From 1998 until 2002, Nézet-Séguin was the chorus master and assistant conductor of L'Opéra de Montréal. In 2000, he was named the artistic director and principal conductor of Orchestre Métropolitain du Montréal. From 2008 until 2018, he served as conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, succeeding Valery Gergiev. From 2008 until 2014, he was the principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2012, Nézet-Séguin succeeded Dutoit as the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 2018, he was named the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, following annual appearances leading the company. He also took on the title of Honorary Conductor with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in 2018. The following year, after extending his contract several times, the Orchestre Métropolitain du Montréal awarded Nézet-Séguin a lifetime contract.

Nézet-Séguin records mainly for Deutsche Grammophon, but he has also recorded for several other labels. In addition, he is active as a pianist and is featured on a number of discs as a soloist or accompanist. In 2019, he released several albums, including Verdi, with the Orchestre Métropolitain du Montréal and soloist Ildar Abdrazakov. An unusually active 2021 saw eight releases, including his first-ever solo piano album, Introspection, and a Grammy Award-winning recording of Florence Price's first and third symphonies with the Philadelphia Orchestra. That year, he was the subject of Patrick Delisle-Crevier's book about his life and career, Raconte-moi Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The following year, he led the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a cycle of Beethoven's symphonies, and he backed Lisa Batiashvili on her album Secret Love Letters, once again with the Philadelphia Orchestra. ~ Stephen Eddins & Keith Finke