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Julia Varady is a highly respected soprano who has had a major European career and considerable success elsewhere.

She comes from a fabled part of Rumania that used to belong to Hungary and is home to most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarian population. She studied at the Conservatory in Cluj (formerly Klausenberg), then at the conservatory in the capital city of Bucharest.

She returned to Cluj and in 1960 gained a contract with the Cluj Opera and quickly was given the leading roles in the lyric-dramatic repertory, including Judith in Bluebeard's Castle, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Butterfly in Madama Butterfly (after originally playing the short part of Kate Pinkerton), the Marriage of Figaro (in which she sang, at various times, all three soprano roles), Turandot (as Liù), Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. During this period she also made guest appearances at the National Opera of Bucharest and in Budapest, Hungary.

In 1970 she joined the company of the Frankfurt-am-Main Opera House at the invitation of its music director, Christoph von Dohnanyi and continued to expand her already large repertory, singing Margarethe in Gounod's Faust, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Antonio in Tales of Hoffman, and the Young Maiden in a historic performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, among other parts. In guest appearances in Cologne she had a large success as Violetta in Traviata.

She spent the 1972 - 1973 season with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich following a highly successful appearance in the Munich Festival as Vitellia in Mozart's Clemenza di Tito. As a member of that company she had a triumphal portrayal of Elettra in the same composer's Idomeneo and added Senta in Flying Dutchman and Aïda to her repertory.

During those same years she sang with the leading baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, to whom she was married in 1974. (Their son Martin Fischer-Dieskau began a conducting career in the 1990s.)

By now Varady was appearing at the major international operatic venues and continuing to add important roles to her repertory. She sang at the Edinburgh Festival, Salzburg Festival and other international summer events. Her notable debuts included the Deutsche Opera Berlin in 1978 (Countess in Nozze di Figaro), Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1982, Aïda), Metropolitan Opera (1977 - 1978 season as Donna Elvira), and in the newly opened Bastille Opera in Paris in 1995 (Abigaille in Verdi's Nabucco).

She sang all the major roles in operas of Mozart and Verdi, several Puccini and Strauss roles (Composer, Arabella, and the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten), and such other parts as Orfeo and Alceste in Gluck's operas, Yaroslavna in Prince Igor, Micaëla in Carmen, Handel's Ariodante, Adele in Rossini's Le Comte Ory and the title role in his Cenerentola, Beethoven's Leonora, and the Tchaikovsky roles of Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Lisa in Queen of Spades.

She has had particular success in Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle singing opposite Fischer-Dieskau. The husband and wife team also scored a major success in Aribert Reiman's opera Lear, with Fischer-Dieskau in the title role and Varady as Cordelia, in Spontini's Olympie, and in Halévy's La juive.

During a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau established himself as one of the most accomplished performing artists of the twentieth century. He is widely considered to have been the finest modern interpreter of German lieder, and his extensive operatic career was noted for fine musicianship and powerful characterization. He has also made important contributions as an author, conductor, and teacher.

Born in Berlin on May 28, 1925, Fischer-Dieskau began his vocal studies at the age of 16, only shortly before being drafted into the Nazi Wehrmacht. After two years as a prisoner of war, the young baritone returned to Germany and soon made his oratorio debut in Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, and his stage debut in Verdi's Don Carlos (Posa). Engaged as the 'house' lyric baritone (kammersänger) at the Berlin Städtische Oper, he also began making guest appearances at the Vienna Staatsoper, and the Salzburg Festival. In the early 1950's he began a series of engagements at the Bayreuth festival, establishing a lasting relationship with the music of Wagner, especially the role of Wolfram in Tannhäuser. In the following decades, Fischer-Dieskau would traverse an impressive range of operatic roles, including Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous work, Mittenhofer in Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers, and John the Baptist in Strauss' Salome; his most critically admired performances were as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Germont père in La Traviata, and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.

Fischer-Dieskau's recital career began equally early and impressively -- with a 1948 Radio Berlin broadcast of Schubert's Winterreise; however, it was with his first concerts and recordings with the English collaborative pianist Gerald Moore that his international fame began to spread. Together, the two of them recorded every song of Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf (excluding those few that are generally reserved for the female voice) and considerable portions of those by Brahms, Strauss, Loewe, and Beethoven. This catalogue of repertoire is impressive for its sheer size, and even more so for its consistent excellence; while opinions have sometimes diverged on the subjective merits of Fischer-Dieskau's voice, there is no question that his performances of lieder represented the perfect wedding of poetry and lyricism -- the very essence of the lied. While his collaboration with Gerald Moore was singular in its productivity, Fischer-Dieskau was by no means a "one-pianist" man. His work with accompanist Jörg Demus represents an impressive catalogue of its own, and he made memorable appearances and recordings with many other leading musicians, such as Alfred Brendel, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Barenboim, and Sviatoslav Richter. Also, his repertoire was by no means limited to works of the Romantic masters; he has championed the works of lesser-known composers, such as Othmar Schoeck. His cumulative body of recorded performances is stunning, perhaps best illustrated by the number of pieces of which his discography contains multiple (sometimes as many as four!) performances. A number of composers wrote works for him, the most notable of which is Benjamin Britten (Songs and Proverbs of William Blake), whose War Requiem the baritone also premiered in 1962.

Certainly Fischer-Dieskau is best characterized by his performances of works for voice and piano, in which his imagination, musicianship, and vocal timbre were showcased to the fullest. However, he made equal strides in the realm of orchestral lieder; his performances of Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder are some of the finest on record. Other works he performed with orchestra included the Michelangelo Sonnets of Dmitri Shostakovich, Brahms' German Requiem, and numerous cantatas of Bach and Telemann.

This noted British singer and choral conductor began as a chorister at Westminster Abbey. He studied as a musical scholar at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, and then entered King's College, Cambridge, under David Willcocks as an alto choral scholar. At Cambridge, he built and refined his skills as a choral director while concentrating on music of the Renaissance.

He became a lay clerk at the New College in Oxford (1968 - 1969) and taught in schools for the next ten years. Upon leaving Cambridge, Brown sang for several years with a vocal ensemble called the Scholars and with several of the leading choirs in London, including the Monteverdi Choir. In 1979, he began serving as the director of music at Clare College, where he was also a fellow and director of studies in music. He retired from that position in 2010, and the following year, he was asked to form a choral ensemble to work alongside the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Zürcher Sing-Akademie, which he led until 2016. Brown also re-established the Cambridge University Chamber Choir and founded the ensemble English Voices. He has also conducted the Cambridge Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, the Cambridge Village College Choral Society, the New Cambridge Singers, and London's Canticum Novum.

British organist, harpsichordist, pianist, and conductor Ian Watson is a native of Wooburn Common, Buckinghamshire. At 14 he attended the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship, and later studied with Flor Peeters in Belgium. He held several positions in London, playing organ at St. Margaret's, Westminster and St. Marylebone Parish Church, and serving as director of music at St. James's, Piccadilly. As a concert artist, Watson has performed with many orchestras, among them the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Academy of Ancient Music, and he toured internationally with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Watson has also performed as an accompanist, notably with Renée Fleming, and he played and conducted a series of Mozart's piano concertos with the Dalarna Sinfonietta in Sweden. He became artistic director of the Arcadia Players in 2003, and in 2004 he led the Monteverdi Choir in a performance of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in San Marco, Venice. Watson is also active as the principal guest conductor of the Karlsbad Baroque in Sweden. He has recorded for Coro, Simax, Virgin Classics, and Hyperion. ~ Blair Sanderson

This internationally renowned tenor was the son of Italian parents who immigrated to Brazil. He studied piano and cello in Porto Allegre, and in Rio de Janeiro, he began vocal instruction with Eliane Sampaio. The legendary conductor Karl Richter was impressed by the beauty of Baldin's voice and arranged for him to study in Germany. Baldin continued his vocal studies with Martin Gründler at the Musikhochschule of Frankfurt am Main, with Margarethe von Winterfeldt in Berlin, and with Conchita Badia and Noëmi Perugia in Paris. From 1975 to1977, Baldin was engaged as a concert singer at Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern and was the first lyric tenor at the National Theatre of Mannheim. Baldin was especially noted for his roles in Mozart's operas, including appearances as Arbace in Idomeneo in 1983 at the Opera of Rome, and a guest appearance as Tamino in Die zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in Rio de Janiero. Baldin also sang acclaimed interpretations of Alfredo in La traviata, of Alfred in Die fledermaus (The Bat), and of David in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. His splendid solos in oratorios and religious choral works drew him special appreciation. At the 1987 Salzburg Festival, he sang the tenor solo in Dvorák's Stabat Mater, and at the same festival in 1988, he sang in Handel's Messiah and Mozart's Mass in C minor. With conductor Helmuth Rilling, Baldin recorded all of Bach's cantatas involing the use of a tenor voice. He also recorded other religious works, such as the Mozart and Donizetti Requiems. Baldin's concert tours covered Europe, Israel, the U.S., and South America (Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo). In 1979, Baldin served as a lecturer at the Musikhochschule of Heidelberg. Later, he was appointed a professor at the Musikhochschule of Karlsruhe.

English baritone John Shirley-Quirk enjoyed singing and playing the violin as a child, but his true vocal talent did not become apparent until he was already studying chemistry and physics at the University of Liverpool. After several years of teaching those subjects at a British Air Force station, he began to study with the baritone Roy Henderson (1957). In 1961-1962, he sang with the Cathedral Choir at St. John's in London; during the same time he made his debut at Glydebourne in 1961 as Gregor Mittenhofer in Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers.

In 1963, Benjamin Britten recruited him to join his English Opera Group; with that group he sang the premiere performances of Britten's Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace, The Prodigal Son, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice (between 1964 and 1973). During that time, he also sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte and, later, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Scottish National Opera. He created the role of Lev in Tippett's The Ice Break at Covent Garden in 1977.

Though his career centered around British venues and the music of English composers, Shirley-Quirk's career was by no means provincial. He sang his first performances of Wozzeck in St. Louis, and debuted in Berlin with Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in 1969. Milan's Teatro alla Scala engaged him as Rangoni in Boris Godunov, and in 1974 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Britten's Death in Venice. Other important roles in his career were the Speaker in Die Zauberflöte and the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos.

Shirley-Quirk had equal success as a recital and concert singer. He was highly regarded for his interpretation of the major choral works of Bach and Elgar and sang Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn on many concerts in Europe, North America, and Australia. His recitals usually included songs by his mentor Benjamin Britten as well as those of Vaughan Williams and Butterworth.

John Shirley-Quirk's lyric baritone voice, while not large, commanded a wide dynamic and expressive range; he had a wonderful sense of phrasing. It was as a Lied interpreter that he was best known; his intellectual curiosity allowed him to explore the inner world of the works he sang. His recordings, particularly of the works of Benjamin Britten, document his fine artistry. In 1975 he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

While mezzo-soprano Janet Baker was best known for her performances of British music, especially that of her compatriot Benjamin Britten, she was also a fine performer of art song, sacred music, and Classical and pre-Classical opera. Her repertoire, as well as her background, frequently overlapped that of her great predecessor, Kathleen Ferrier; though her career was mostly centered in England, and she always had a special place in the regard of English audiences, her fame was international.

In 1956, she won the second prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Competition; that year also saw her operatic debut as Roza in Smetana's The Secret, in an Oxford University Opera Club performance. In 1962, she first sang with the English Opera Group, as Polly in Benjamin Britten's famous production of The Beggar's Opera at Aldeburgh. She later credited the leading spirits of that group, Britten and tenor Peter Pears, as giving the ensemble and its singers the highest possible standards, as well as raising the reputation of British singers internationally. In 1966, she made her Covent Garden debut as Hermia in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and her Glyndebourne debut as Purcell's Dido. In 1971, Britten wrote the role of Kate Julian for Baker in his opera Owen Wingrave, written for BBC television.

As her operatic career progressed, Baker focused on pre-Classical and Classical works such as Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Handel's Giulio Cesare, the title role of Gluck's Alceste, Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Ottavia in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, and Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutte. However, she also performed Romantic and 20th century roles such as Dido in Berlioz's Les Troyens a Carthage; Donizetti's Maria Stuarda; Charlotte in Massenet's Werther; and Octavian in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. Much of her recital repertoire was drawn from the standard works of Fauré, Schumann, Schubert, Duparc, Haydn, and Mahler, and the British masters such as Purcell and Elgar; however, she also drew from the works of lesser-known composers, particularly from the pre-classical period, taking special pleasure in bringing their works to public attention. In 1982, she gave her farewell performances as Orfeo in London and at Glyndebourne. ~ Anne Feeney

While too much versatility can sometimes be a curse in forging a singing identity, Welsh tenor Robert Tear established a significant career by being able to master numerous areas of the tenor repertory. A similarity in vocal quality to Benjamin Britten's companion and singer of choice, Peter Pears, permitted Tear to perform the same works with authenticity and he worked often with the composer during Britten's later years. In fact, in two of Britten's "church operas, or parables," Tear appeared with Pears in the premieres, performing roles written particularly for him. Tear's voice is serviceable rather than sensuous, but his keen intelligence and sophistication in matters of style and stage deportment made him an invaluable artist in a wide range of settings. In addition to leading roles, Tear built a gallery of well-considered portraits in the character tenor category. He performed extensively in oratorio, as well, and appeared often in recitals covering territory from English song to Tchaikovsky.

Trained as a choral scholar at Kings College, Cambridge, Tear made his operatic debut as the Male Chorus in Britten's Rape of Lucretia in 1963 with the English Opera Group. This began an association with Britten leading next to roles in the second and third of the composer's church parables, The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). Subsequently, both of these works were recorded by Decca. Other significant premieres followed, including: Todd in Gordon Crosse's Grace of Todd (1969); the homosexual Dov in Michael Tippett's Knot Garden (1970); the Deserter in Hans Werner Henze's We Come to the River (1976); Rimbaud in John Tavener's poorly-received Therese at Covent Garden (1976); the Painter and the Negro in the Paris premiere of Friedrich Cerha's completion of the three-act version of Berg's Lulu (1979); and Ubu Rex in Krzysztof Penderecki's opera of the same name (1991).

Tear sang memorable performances of leading roles, parts as diverse as Rakewell in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress; the title role in Peter Grimes; Aschenbach in Death in Venice; Captain Vere in Billy Budd; Lensky in Yevgeny Onegin; Jack in Tippett's Midsummer Marriage; and Paris in the same composer's King Priam; the eponymous hero in Handel's Samson; and (on record) Sali in Delius' A Village Romeo and Juliet. Character roles encompassed Wagner (Loge, Froh, and David), Mozart (Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro and Monostatos in Die Zauberflöte), Strauss' Herod, Emperor Altoum in Turandot, Shuisky in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (a singularly cunning and treacherous portrayal) and the Director in Lucio Berio's Un re in ascolto. Tear continued to include both Captain Vere and Don Basilio in his 21st century repertory.

In the concert realm, Tear performed live and recorded his distinguished reading of the tenor part in Britten's War Requiem. He embraced works as early as those of Monteverdi to compositions of the late 20th century, such as Tippett's Mask of Time. His performances of music by J.S. Bach and his Handel singing were liberally praised, and many samples of both were recorded. In earlier years, he included Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in his active repertory.

Robert Tear's discography is extensive. Among his outstanding recordings are Delius' Mass of Life, a solo disc of Tchaikovsky songs, Bach's St. John Passion (sung in English and conducted by Benjamin Britten), Tippett's Knot Garden and the Britten church parables.

In 1984, Tear was made a Commander of the British Empire.

From his teen years, Philip Ledger seemed destined to become one of England's leading organists; he did so, and quickly, but he also expanded his musical activities in several other directions. Early on, he was a prize-winning fellow of the Royal College of Organists in London, and was further trained at King's College, Cambridge, where he was an honors student. He became the youngest cathedral organist in England with his 1961 appointment as master of music at Chelmsford Cathedral; he remained there until 1965, at which point he became director of music at the new University of East Anglia (until 1973). There, Ledger also served as dean of the School of Fine Arts and Music from 1968 to 1971. It was in 1968 that Ledger was also made an artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, from which time he was deeply involved in Benjamin Britten's recordings of his own choral music. Around this time Ledger became ubiquitous in concert around London and on recordings, playing piano with the Melos Ensemble, harpsichord with chamber orchestras and ensembles (as both soloist and continuo player), and organ in recitals at Royal Festival Hall.

Ledger's prominence peaked with his work as music director of King's College, Cambridge (1974-1982), where he took over from David Willcocks and made an extensive series of choral recordings. He gave up King's to become principal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and became an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow in 1993. In 1985, he had added to his list of honors Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Ledger was especially highly regarded as a performer of early English music, on which his scholarly work has centered; Ledger edited the Oxford Book of English Madrigals and works of Byrd, Handel, and Purcell, most notably a performing edition of the latter's King Arthur.