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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 Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann rose rapidly to prominence in the mid-2010s with a clear tone that was ideally showcased in lighter Mozart and Italian bel canto roles.

Mühlemann was born on January 7, 1986, in the tiny town of Adligenswil, near Lucerne. She studied in Lucerne, with Barbara Locher at the city's conservatory, and has continued to make her home in the city. Mühlemann began appearing in operatic productions while she was still a student, and an indication of things to come was given when she reached the finalist level at the 2008 Prix Credit Suisse Young Soloists competition. She finished her master's degree at the Lucerne Conservatory in 2010 and was soon taking a variety of roles at the city's opera house and beyond. In 2012 she appeared in Baden-Baden, Germany, as Nanetta in Verdi's Falstaff, with Rolando Villazón, and that year also saw her Salzburg Festival debut in a work by contemporary composer Peter von Winter. Later she returned to Baden-Baden for a new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Mühlemann has been a major attraction on concert stages as well. A concert appearance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck marked her U.S. debut. She has made several appearances at the Lucerne Festival in such works as the Petite Messe Solenelle of Rossini, and she recorded that work for the Sony Classical label in 2014. Signed to that label, she released an album of Mozart arias in 2016. The program, consisting of little-known concert arias and obscure operatic selections, with only Exsultate jubilate, K. 165, coming from the standard Mozart canon, showcases Mühlemann's voice intelligently. The album earned critical raves and won the coveted Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2017, by which time the future looked bright for the young Swiss soprano. Mühlemann has appeared in an unusual film adaptation of Gluck's Orfeo, filmed on location in Prague. ~ 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

Christiane Karg is one of Germany's most active and versatile sopranos, with a large repertory stretching from the Baroque to contemporary music. Karg has appeared widely around Europe and beyond in opera, concert and choral music, and song recitals.

Karg was born in Feuchtwangen in central Bavaria, West Germany, on August 6, 1980. Showing musical talent early, Karg took lessons on piano and flute as a child but switched to singing at age 14 after attending opera performances. She won Bavarian and German federal prizes as a teen and was admitted to the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where she studied voice with Heiner Hopfner and lieder singing with Wolfgang Holzmair. Karg moved on to the Verona Conservatory in Italy, studying Italian opera. Karg rounded out her education with master classes with Grace Bumbry, Ann Murray, and Mirella Freni, among others. She began her career as part of the International Opera Studio at the Staatsoper in Hamburg, moving on to the company of the Frankfurt Opera in 2008. Two years later, she issued her solo album debut, Verwandlung: Lieder eines Jahres, on the Berlin Classics label with accompanist Burkhard Kehring.

Karg has sung at many European opera houses, including the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London, and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Her recital career has included appearances at the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, and Wigmore Hall in London. Karg has been a prominent figure at festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (with the NDR Symphony Orchestra), Lower Saxony Music Days, and the Heidelberg Spring. She is also the creator of KunstKlang, a festival held in her hometown of Feuchtwangen since 2014, as well as "be part of it! - Musik für Alle," a youth music education program. She has gone on to record for Deutsche Grammophon, Profil, and Harmonia Mundi, where she issued the album Erinnerung: Mahler Lieder in 2020. In 2021, Karg released the holiday album Licht der Welt: A Christmas Promenade on Harmonia Mundi. She moved to BR Klassik, the label of Germany's Bavarian Radio, for a 2022 recital of songs by Debussy and Reynaldo Hahn. The following year, she was heard on a recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor ("Resurrection") with Semyon Bychkov conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. ~ James Manheim

The German tenor Klaus Florian Vogt is identified closely with roles in Wagner's operas, especially that of Lohengrin. He is identified as a jungendlicher Heldentenor, or youthful heroic tenor, a classification that refers not to age, but to a heroic tenor whose voice also has lyrical aspects.

Vogt was born in Heide, in northern Germany, on April 12, 1970, and has continued to live in the Schleswig-Holstein region. His first love was the horn, which he studied at university; he was engaged as a hornist by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra in 1988 and remained there until 1997. During this period, he was also taking voice lessons at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, and in 1997 he abandoned his instrumental career to perform at the Landestheater Flensburg. He moved to the Semperoper in Dresden the following year, and there music director Giuseppe Sinopoli took an interest in his career. He sang lyric tenor roles such as Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, at first, but later he incorporated dramatic roles, such as that of Hans in Smetana's The Bartered Bride, into his repertory. Vogt sang the Wagnerian role of Lohengrin for the first time in 2002 at the Erfurt Theater. He has since sung that role in major houses worldwide, including La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Bavarian State Opera. He has also performed it at the pinnacle of the Wagnerian world, the Bayreuth Festival. Vogt has added other Wagnerian roles, such as Parsifal and Stoltzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, to his repertory, often earning strong critical acclaim. Vogt was signed to the Sony Classical label in 2011 and released his debut album, Heroes, the following year; it earned him Germany's prestigious Echo Klassik award for Singer of the Year. He has issued several more albums for Sony Classical, including Klaus Florian Vogt Sings Wagner (2013) and Favorites (2014). In 2019 Vogt was heard as Tamino on a recording of Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. ~ James Manheim

British contralto Claudia Huckle was trained partly in the U.S. and has also been active in Germany.

Huckle was born in Britain. Between 2000 and 2004, she was active as a street musician in various European capitals. She studied at the Royal College of Music in London as a Foundation Scholar, earning an education diploma in 2003. Huckle went on to the New England Conservatory of Music, earning an undergraduate music degree in 2005, and then moved to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for a professional studies certificate in opera the following year. In 2004, she was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and she won several other singing prizes in the U.S. and Britain. From 2006 to 2008, Huckle was part of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera. After making her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as the Forester's Wife in Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, she appeared in various Washington National Opera productions. In 2009, Huckle joined the cast of the Leipzig Opera and remained there for four seasons.

The 2013 Birgit Nilsson Remembrance Award at Plácido Domingo's Operalia competition helped Huckle's growing career along; she was the first female and the first British recipient. Huckle has appeared at major houses in Britain, the U.S., and continental Europe, including La Scala in Milan (as Die allwissende Muschel in Richard Strauss' Die Ägyptische Helena), the Zurich Opera, and the Opéra National de Paris in several Wagner roles. She is in demand as a concert singer, having appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, and Mahler's Symphony No. 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"), as well as on tour with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem, K. 626; her many other appearances include one in the Schubert Mass in A flat and the Beethoven Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, with Kent Nagano and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. After appearances on several opera recordings, Huckle made her debut as a featured artist in 2023, joining tenor Nicky Spence and pianist Justin Brown on the Champs Hill label for a recording of Mahler's original piano score of the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. ~ James Manheim

Conductor Justin Doyle has been active with choirs and orchestras not only in his native country but also, more unusually, in Germany, where he serves as conductor of the prestigious RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin. He has also arranged world music for choir and conducted musical forces for film scores.

Doyle was born in Lancaster, England, on May 9, 1975. He grew up in a highly musical family; his father was the conductor of the local Haffner Orchestra and a university music lecturer, his mother was a piano teacher, and his sister is a soprano. Doyle first picked up a conductor's baton at seven. That year, he also joined the Westminster Cathedral Choir, which has spawned an unusually large number of British musical careers, and when he was eight, he sang in a concert given for the Pope. He also studied conducting and cello at the choristers' school, and he entered King's College, Cambridge University, as a choral scholar. Devoting himself seriously to conducting, Doyle made guest appearances with top groups around Britain, including Opera North, the Haffner Orchestra (where he supplanted his father as conductor), and the BBC Singers, an ongoing relationship that began after he took second place in the highly competitive Cadaqués Conducting Competition in Spain.

Doyle has also made guest appearances with the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. He has traveled extensively in Africa, mostly in Kenya and Ethiopia, arranging indigenous music for choirs and incorporating African influences into his own compositions. In 2015, Doyle made his debut with Berlin's RIAS Kammerchor on the occasion of their performance at the opening of the Pierre Boulez Saal concert hall at the city's Barenboim-Said Akademie. He was subsequently hired as chief conductor, communicating with the choir in German, and he led the choir on a tour of Japan. Doyle lives in Skipton, U.K., with his family and commutes to Berlin for rehearsals and concerts.

He made his recording debut with the RIAS Kammerchor in 2019 on an album of choral music by Benjamin Britten on the Harmonia Mundi label. Doyle has made several more recordings with the RIAS Kammerchor, including one of Handel's Messiah, HWV 56, in 2020 and one of Handel's Coronation Anthems in 2023. On both recordings, the choir was backed by the Akademie für Alte Music Berlin. Doyle returned in 2024 with the same forces, offering a new collection of Handel choral works, including the Dixit Dominus, HWV 232. He has taught at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki as a visiting professor of early music. ~ James Manheim

Jory Vinikour is an American harpsichordist and conductor. A Chicago native, Vinikour studied in Paris with Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert on a Fulbright scholarship. He was the winner of the 1993 Warsaw International Harpsichord Competition and the 1994 Prague Spring International Music Competition, and he has appeared as a guest performer at music festivals around the world. With a concerto repertoire ranging from Baroque to contemporary music, Vinikour has been a soloist with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, working with Stéphane Denève, Martin Haselböck, Marek Janowski, Fabio Luisi, and Marc Minkowski, among many other conductors. Vinikour has performed as an accompanist for David Daniels, Hélène Delavault, Vivica Genaux, Marijana Mijanovic, Dorothea Röschmann, and Rolando Villazón, and he has toured Europe with Anne Sofie von Otter. Vinikour recorded a program of 17th century English and Italian music with lutenist Jakob Lindberg, which was released in 2005. A champion of new music, Vinikour has premiered works by Harold Meltzer, Frédéric Durieux, Stephen Blumberg, Patricia Morehead, and Graham Lynch, in addition to more established modern pieces by Cyril Scott, György Ligeti, and Michael Nyman. Vinikour has recorded for Sono Luminus, Dorian, Deutsche Grammophon, Affetto, Delos, Mandala, and Consonance.

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