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The singers in this list are sorted into their respective voice types in the tabs at the bottom of this document. Except where indicated, the singers listed here have at least one extant recording that can be found on YouTube or Spotify. Many have extensive discographies—some only in the acoustic era, some only in the electric, with several straddling both technologies. In a handful of cases, the singer has live recordings (the earliest being 1926, when Melba's farewell and a Zenatello Otello were recorded basically in full at Covent Garden).

I have compiled this document since 2015 for these reasons:
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1) To directly encourage any aspiring singer that they—yes, even you—are capable of becoming a great singing artist in the grand tradition, but that to do this—if it's truly what you desire—requires a great force of will and patience, a total changing away from the current mindset about singing technique and training and attitudes toward repertoire and career, for today's attitudes and ideas are in most cases fundamentally opposed to those required for the formation of the voices and artists of the four or five generations of golden age singers on record.
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2) To demonstrate that the sine qua non of the great singer in the grand tradition is in the EMISSION OF THE VOICE; that the proper emission—because of its unique and specific physiological qualities—creates a unique sound with specific acoustic qualities; that this sound contains in it the functional qualities that make it arise, and that they stand apart from other, less coordinated and defective actions that create certain other sounds often found in other singers (be they modern or older) deliberately not included here.
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3) To encourage all singers to listen—not passively, but with their entire mind and attention—to the clarity and precision of every vowel, to the firm and centered pitch, to the vowel centered on that pitch and the pitch centered in the vowel; to hear and memorize the tonal qualities with relation to the whole gamut of pitch and intensity; in effect: to build a complex but clear vocal model for the male and female voices, no matter their type or calibre/weight.

Why do this? Because modeling and imitation are fundamental elements of our biological and social makeup, and they are powerful tools in the training of voices. Infants learn to speak (emit their voices) by imitation. Unconsciously they take on the physiological coordinations and mis-coordinations of their vocal models. This modeling continues throughout our entire lives. As it is impossible for the voice to make a sound that the mind cannot first conceive, it is imperative that the sound concept be established by the best, the most perfect, the most coordinated, and the least defective vocal models. This was a vital component of the old Italian school and the reason why the old school teachers—even in their published treatises and writings—bade their students to go to the theater to hear the finest singers of their day as often as they could afford. They all knew that, among all the generations of the bel canto, the binding strength of the schooling—and the whole school of thought about singing—was a culturally shared tonal ideal... that this set of sounds (and not others) were correct because beautiful because in accord with physiological and acoustic laws.
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4) To dispel the notion that youth, per se, limits a singer to a certain repertoire and that other more serious/dramatic repertoire should only be attempted after some vague period of "maturation" and waiting for the voice to "settle." Refer to the column about the singer's debut role and age. Many of these singers debuted quite young in repertoire that modern teachers and singers erroneously insist are off limits for young singers (i.e. in their 20s). For the most part, the singers listed here had careers of 30-40-50 years, singing multiple times per week in multiple roles of the most difficult and demanding music in the repertoire (baritone Giuseppe Danise sang 630 performances in the 2 and half years just after his debut), often traveling vast distances by boat and train, taking opera to America, Russia, South Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Those that debuted at a later age may have discovered their voice late, been involved in a totally separate trade or craft, or in some men's cases were conscripted to military service, etc. In some cases, the abandonment of wrong methods and the acquisition of the correct method of emitting the voice brought about an entire change of the singer's voice type, calibre, and repertoire.
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But what they all have in common—on the whole—is that they took great pains to work out the correct vocal emission with all its myriad complications and coordinations. In most cases this meant 1 to 5 years of meticulous and at times tedious training, multiple days a week, comprising rock-bottom vocal exercises under the care of a teacher with a very critical ear and mind—the both of them committed to an intense and immense idealism about the sound of the voice and its functional, aesthetic, and artistic capabilities. The singers and the teachers of this tradition knew and took seriously one certain thing: a voice that is not correctly put together and correctly emitted has no business singing any repertoire—but once a voice IS correctly put together, it can handle virtually anything and do so basically for the rest of the singer's life, provided they maintain the coordination and doesn't muck about with the basic nature of the complete voice. The correct coordination and emission of the voice—and there is basically only ONE such way that is truly and definitively correct—IS the reason for these singers' early debuts in difficult repertoire AND for their longevity AND for the profound power, beauty, clarity, sonority, flexibility, etc. of their voices.
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It is by the attainment of correct vocal emission that these singers entered the pantheon to which they belong, and it is only by this path that any aspiring singer today may join them.
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—Nick Scholl (nscholl@gmail.com)
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https://www.youtube.com/trrill
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https://parterre.com
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https://operadis.com
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