25 Best Famous Opera Singers

Opera theatre stage. Image from Pixabay

25 Best Famous Opera Singers

Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component, and singers take dramatic roles. In opera, singers are divided based on their singing range; female voices are Contralto or soprano, and male is tenor or bass. Opera singers require good training, and only a few rises to fame in the opera industry. Opera singers have modernized the art by diversifying the singing style with more voices and tones. With these fantastic voices, they take the audience into a different world, offering great entertainment.

Major cities throughout the world have opera houses that show and expose the talents of trained singers and gifted ones. In this article, you will discover 25 best famous opera singers.

1. Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti was an Italian operatic tenor nicknamed “King of the High Cs”. During the late years of his career, he crossed over into popular music, becoming one of the most acclaimed tenors of all time. Pavarotti was one of the Three Tenors, a famous tenor’s operatic singing trio, which experienced success; it performed its first concert during the 1990 FIFA World Cup. Additionally, he made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining fame worldwide. Some of his works include Nessun dorma, La boheme, Madama Butterfly, Turandot and Tosca.

Read more on Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Luciano Pavarotti

2. Placido Domingo

Placido Domingo. Photo by Fotografías-Wikimedia

Domingo is one of the most recognized opera singers, conductors and art administrators. In 1957, he made his first professional appearance at a concert in Merida, Yucatan. He can perform in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Russian and English in the most prestigious opera houses in the world. For most of his career, he was a Lirico-spinto tenor, then moved into more dramatic roles, becoming the most acclaimed Otello of his generation. In 2010 he transitioned from the tenor repertory into exclusively baritone parts, notably Simon Boccanegra.

He has achieved great success as a crossover artist and has recorded over a hundred complete operas as of 2020; he has performed 151 different roles. He won 14 Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards and various of his records have gone Silver, gold, platinum and multi-platinum.

3. Renee Fleming

Renee Fleming is an American soprano best known for performances in operas, concerts, theatre, film and recordings. She has performed coloratura, lyric and lighter spinto soprano operatic roles in Italian, Czech, German, English and Russian. Additionally, she has been a performer of new music, including world premieres of operas, concert pieces and songs composed for her. Apart from being an opera singer, she has sung and recorded jazz, chansons, lieder, musical theatre and indie rock.

Throughout her career, she has won five Grammy Awards, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur from the French government, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit and honorary membership in England’s Royal Academy of Music. Subsequently, she became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline a season-opening night gala.

4. Maria Callas

Photo of Maria Callas from the television talk show Small World. The program was hosted by Edward R. Murrow. Photo by CBS Television-Wikimedia

Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the greatest and most influential opera singers of the 20th century. Her musical and dramatic talent earned her the nickname La Divina (the Divine one). Her operas ranged from classical opera seria, to bel canto operas of Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti and Puccini. She was also a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

5. Andrea Bocelli

Andrea Bocelli. Photo by Jakub Janecki-Wikimedia

Despite going completely blind at the age of 12, Andrea Bocelli became an Italian tenor and multi-instrumentalist who rose to fame in 1994, winning the newcomer’s section of the 44th Sanremo Music Festival. Since then, he has recorded 15 solo studio albums of pop and classical music, three greatest hits albums and nine complete operas selling over 75 million records worldwide. In 2006, he was made a Grand officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and awarded a gold medal for Merit in Serbia in 2022 for his contribution to Live Theater.

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6. Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso was an Italian operatic who started as a Lyric tenor and then dramatic tenor and performed at major opera houses in Europe and the Americas. In the early 1990s, he made 247 commercially released recordings, making him an international star. Caruso spent the last years of his career and life in New York City, singing at the Metropolitan Opera and recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1987, he was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and voted into Gramophone’s Hall of Fame in 2012.

7. Kiri Te Kanawa

Born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron, she is a retired New Zealand opera singer who has a full lyric soprano voice and the ability to sing in several languages. She used to perform works composed in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and was associated with the music of Strauss, Mozart, Puccini, Handel and Verdi. Her long discography list includes three albums that featured in the top forty charts in Australia in the mid-1980s.

During the last years of her career, before retiring, she spent time giving masterclasses and supporting young opera singers. Kanawa’s final performance was in Ballarat, Australia, in October 2016, and she announced her retirement in September 2017.

8. Anna Netrebko

Anna Netrebko. Photo by Simon Wedege Petersen-Wikimedia

Anna Netrebko is a Russian and Austrian operatic soprano who has performed at Metropolitan Opera at the Salzburg Festival, The Royal Opera and Vienna State Opera. She began her career at the Mariinsky Theatre after being discovered and promoted by Valery Gergiev. She gained international fame after playing Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the 2002 Salzburg Festival. Netrebko has won multiple Echo Klassik Awards, in 2007 she was on the Time 100 list and was named a People’s Artist of Russia in 2008 and an Austrian Kammersangerin in 2017.

9. Cecilia Bartoli

Cecilia Bartoli, after a concert performance of “La Cenerentola”, Salle Pleyel, Paris. Photo by Andreas Praefcke-Wikimedia

Cecilia Bartoli is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best recognized for her interpretation of the music of Bellini, Mozart, Rossin, Handel and Vivaldi and her performance of lesser-known music from the Baroque and Classical periods. Bartoli can sing both soprano and mezzo roles. She has received prestigious awards, including the Polar Music Prize, the Handel Music Prize and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

10. Bryn Terfel

He is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer who made an operatic debut as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte and is best known for his opera roles in Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. At the start of his career, he was known for his roles as Mozart but later shifted to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner and Puccini. Terfel was a recipient of the Grammy award and Queen’s Medal for Music in 2006, and he was knighted for service to music and many more.

11. Marilyn Horne

Without a doubt, Horne is one of the best American mezzo-soprano opera singers, known for her bel canto and opera seria roles. Her first professional engagement was in 1954 when she executed the voice of Dorothy Dandridge in the film Carmen Jones. Some of her performances include Vincenzo Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda and Wozzeck. Throughout her career, she received awards such as Best Opera Recording in 1993, Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2021.

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12. Juan Diego Florez

Juan Diego Florez. Photo by Franz Johann Morgenbesser –Wikimedia

Florez is a Peruvian operatic tenor best known for her roles in bel canto operas. His breakthrough and professional debut happened in 1996 at the Rossini Festival in the Italian city of Pesaro. He is also active on the stages of North America, Europe and South America. Florez received Peru’s highest decoration, the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Sun of Pero, on June 4, 2007.

13. Mirella Freni

Mirella Freni was an Italian operatic soprano. She gained international fame at the Glyndebourne Festival when she appeared as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. His career spanned 50 years, and he appeared at major international opera houses portraying her characters both in acting and singing. During the grade of Knight Grand Cross in 1990, Freni was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

14. Jessye Norman

Jessye Norman. Photo by Walters Art Museum-Wikimedia

Legendary American opera singer and recitalist, Normani was born in Augusta, Georgia, to a musical background family. She could perform dramatic soprano roles and was associated with roles including Kundry and Didon by Berlioz and Cassandre. Norman performed in the most prominent venues, including London’s Royal Opera, Opera Paris and Metropolitan Opera.

15. Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price. Photo by Carl Van Vechten-Wikimedia

Born Mary Violet Leontyne Price, she is an American soprano who was the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. She was known for performing the title role in Verdi’s Aida and gained immense fame with an appearance in the TV production of Tosca. Price also appeared in the world’s leading houses, including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Royal Opera House, La Scala and San Francisco Opera.

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16. Jose Carreras

Jose Carreras is a Spanish operatic tenor known for his performances in Verdi, Puccini and Donizetti operas. At the age of 11, he made his debut on the operatic stage as Trujaman in Manuel de Falla’s El retablo de Maese Pedro. He gained fame with a wider audience as one of the Three Tenors and went on to have a career encompassing over 60 roles, performing in the world’s leading opera houses.

17. Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills. Photo by Bernard Gotfryd-Wikipedia

Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano known for performing coloratura soprano roles in live operas and recordings. She was associated with the operas of Donizetti. Her signature title roles include Massenet’s Manon, Rosina in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata. In 1980, after retiring from singing, she became general manager of the New York City Opera, chairwoman of the Lincoln Center in 1994 and chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera in 2002.

18. Renata Tebaldi

Photo of Renata Tebaldi as Madame Butterfly from an appearance on the television program The Bell Telephone Hour. Photo by NBC Television-Wikimedia

She was an Italian Lirico-spinto soprano famous in the post-war period and often considered among the great opera singers of the 20th century who was primarily focused on the verismo roles of the lyric and dramatic repertoires. Tebaldi is best remembered for her performance at major opera houses like Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and San Carlo. 

She received awards, including Grammy Awards and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, France.

19. Franco Corelli

Corelli was an Italian tenor associated mainly with the Italian repertory’s spinto and dramatic tenor roles. He was celebrated for his powerhouse voice, remarkable performances, clear timbre and was even dubbed the “prince of tenors”. Corelli had a major international opera career between 1951 and 1976. He successfully partnered with the Metropolitan Opera between 1961 and 1975. He also appeared on stages in most of the major opera houses in Europe and opera companies throughout North America.

20. Jonas kaufmann

He is a German- Australian tenor opera singer renowned for the versatility of his repertoire. He can perform various opera roles in multiple languages in recitals and concerts and for his performances in roles like Carmen, Tosca and Don Carlos. He debuted in theatres like Hamburg State Opera, Stuttgart Opera, Lyric Opera, La Scala and Opera National de Paris.

21. Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland. Photo by Vanilafeel-Wikimedia

Joan Sutherland was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano, and she is best known for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s to the 1980s. In December 1952, she sang her first leading role at the Royal Opera House, Amelia, in Un ballo in Maschera. Sutherland used to perform in major opera houses, including Metropolitan Opera and La Scala. Her last full-length dramatic performance was as Marguerite de Valois at the Sydney Opera House in 1990. She was the first Australian to win a Grammy Award for 1961 Best Classical Performance.

Discover Top 10 Amazing Facts about Dame Joan Sutherland

22. Birgit Nilsson

Birgit Nilsson. Photo outsourced from Wikimedia

Nilsson was a celebrated Swedish dramatic soprano, and she used to sing a wide repertoire of operatic and vocal works. She was renowned for her performance in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. She made her first debut in 1946 at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm and continued to have a successful career. Additionally, she won many awards, including the Swedish-American of the Year Award in 1982, and in 2012 she was inducted into the Gramophone’s Hall of Fame.

23. Kathleen Battle

Kathleen Battle is an American operatic soprano who became known for her work within the concert repertoire through performances with major orchestras during the mid-1970s. Battle expanded her repertoire into lyric soprano and coloratura soprano roles during the 1980s and early 1990s. In November 2016, she performed a concert of spirituals. Her career became successful, becoming a five-time Grammy Award winner. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement and received six honorary doctorates from American universities such as Westminster Choir College and Ohio University.

24. Nicolai Gedda

Nicolai Gedda. Photo by Nystenl-Wikimedia

Nicolai Gedda was a Swedish operatic tenor who had a long and successful career in opera. He was skilled at language and could perform operas in Russian, French, Swedish, Italian, German, Czech, Latin and English. One of his most iconic works includes Anatol in the world premiere of the American opera Vanessa at the Metropolitan Opera, and he is one of the most widely recorded opera singers in history. In 1966, he was inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

25. Aida Garifullina

She is a Russian lyric soprano of Tatar descent. In 2013, she was the winner of the Operalia competition and featured in several productions staged at the Mariinsky Theatre, the Vienna State Opera and St. Petersburg. Between 2013-2014, she was featured in several notable performances with Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Dmitry Hvorostovsky. Subsequently, on June 13, 2018, she performed at the 2018 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony held at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. She is currently signed to Decca Records.