Singers you wish you'd heard in the opera house

[Richard Tarleton]

If I could go further back, I'd like to hear Chaliapin, Caruso, Eva Turner and Jarmila Novotna in any of their cherished roles.

Anybody have any more?

If we're to go that far back, then Rosa Ponselle, who must have been one of the greatest voices of the last century. She made her debut as Leonora in Forza with Caruso at the Met in 1918. When she sang "Vissi d'arte" to Puccini at his home shortly before his death in 1924 he said "If only I had heard her earlier". Callas said she was "the greatest singer of us all".

Although she lived until 1981, she appeared on stage for the last time in 1937. She had a small repertoire and, apart from 3 appearances at Covent Garden and a few in Florence, only sang at the Met. The extracts from her great Verdi roles (2 Leonoras, Aida) on the Nimbus recordings are tantalising and spine tingling.

[Zauberfloete]

I don't know those recordings to I'll have to do a bit of digging. Someone else who had a marvellous reputation was Claudia Muzio. I have an ancient LP (picked up in a cheapo record shop many years ago) and she really did seem to have something special. Have you ever read Lanfranco Rasponi's "The Last Prima Donnas"? The book is a collection of interviews he conducted with many well-known (and some not so well-known) singers of the past. Muzio was reckoned by many of them to have been the greatest soprano of all.

There were many names in that book which I didn't recognise and, in spite of Rasponi's fawning style, it's a great source of information on singers I'd love to have heard. As well as Eva Turner and Jarmila Novotna (whom I mentioned at the beginning of this thread and some of whose recordings I have), wouldn't it have been amazing to have heard Kirsten Flagstad, Lotte Lehmann and Lina Pagliughi?!

[doversoul1]

Farinelli and Senesino, the great castrati. If this is going back too far not in the opera house but I really wish I’d heard Alfred Deller.

[Zauberfloete]

Yes, it would be fascinating to hear the creators of operatic roles. I have to confess, though, that I'm not a fan of the counter-tenor voice [hides behind sofa]. It really puts me on edge!

Josefa Weber must have been one heck of a coloratura for Mozart to have written the parts he did for her. As for Verdi, Mascagni and Puccini, they also had marvellous resources at their disposal. It makes me wonder what those composers would have made of the current crop of singers, how those singers compare to the creators of the composers' characters and whether they generally think that justice is being done to their works. Mozart thought that Luigi Bassi was the perfect Don Giovanni, having written the role especially for him, but what would he have made of Simon Keenlyside (the greatest living exponent of the role, in my opinion)?