Opera Women

The great women of opera are a sonic wonder, capable of unleashing finely tuned storm-force fury at one end of the scale, yet controlled enough to gently ruffle the hairs on a butterfly's back at the other. Here we've assembled some of the purest and most astonishing voices ever to grace the grand stage, including Maria Callas and Jessye Norman. Sing along at your peril. The great women of opera continue their spellbinding work in Next Steps.

Sydney-born Dame Joan Sutherland was bestowed the moniker La Stupenda ("The Stupendous One") after a performance of Handel's Alcina in 1960. Here, she wraps her amazing tonsils around Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer Some years earlier, Italian spinto soprano Maria Caniglia (here performing an aria from La Wally) had triumphed in that same Wagner opera. Discover performers you may not already know, in Deep Cuts.

Don't let the household names and legends in our collection eclipse the rest of the talent, which includes Canadian soprano Lyne Fortin (showing her chops with an aria from The Marriage of Figaro), and Bulgaria's Darina Takova, who won the International Opera Competition for Young Singers in 1992. Here she brings Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena to a rousing finale.

The passion, the drama, the industrial-strength vocal cords, the extraordinary amounts of hair lacquer — the universe of opera's great women is a maelstrom of intensity, counterbalanced with almost unimaginable delicacy. From the altos to the mezzo-sopranos and the full-on sopranos, our playlist offers you a truly international lineup, including New Zealand's Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Brooklyn's Beverly Sills, and, of course, our very own Dame Joan Sutherland. Rest assured, these women can blow the socks off anyone standing within 100 paces of them.