Ten voices, from Caruso to Pavarotti, that turned opera from a night at the theater into a sound the whole world could own.

For three centuries, an opera singer’s art vanished the moment the curtain fell. Then, in a Milan hotel room in 1902, a young tenor sang ten arias into a metal horn, and everything changed. The 20th century became opera’s recording age: the first era in which a voice could outlive its owner, cross oceans without a steamship ticket, and reach listeners who would never set foot in an opera house. Shellac discs gave way to LPs, then to stereo, television, and stadium broadcasts, and at every stage the technology did not just capture opera, it reshaped it. Singers began to be judged against their own recordings, careers were built in studios as much as on stages, and a handful of artists became household names in houses that had never heard a note of Verdi.

The ten singers here, presented in no particular order, were chosen for influence rather than fame alone, though most had both in abundance. Each one changed how opera was sung, staged, heard, or imagined, and together they span the century’s full range: Italian tenors and Swedish sopranos, a Russian bass, American pioneers who broke the art form open, and voices from vaudeville pits and farm kitchens as well as conservatories. A couple may be new to you. That is deliberate. The recording age preserved them all, which means every discovery below is one search away.

1. Enrico Caruso

The first recording star

The Neapolitan tenor (1873-1921) was the artist in that Milan hotel room, and his gamble on the new gramophone made him the first global recording celebrity in any genre. His 1904 recording of “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci is widely cited as the first record to sell a million copies, and his warm, baritonal sound happened to flatter the primitive acoustic horn better than almost any voice alive. As the Metropolitan Opera’s leading tenor for nearly two decades, he set the template for what a tenor should sound like, a template singers still argue with today. Start with “Vesti la giubba”: the sob in his voice cuts through a century of surface noise.

2. Feodor Chaliapin

The singing actor

Born to a peasant family in Kazan, the Russian bass (1873-1938) did for operatic acting what Caruso did for the operatic voice. At a time when singers planted their feet and delivered, Chaliapin built characters from the inside, and his tormented tsar in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov remains the role against which every bass is measured. He carried Russian opera to Paris, London, and New York, making it part of the international repertoire rather than a regional curiosity. Start with his excerpts from Boris Godunov, where you can hear a man dying of guilt in real time.

3. Rosa Ponselle

1918-1937

Here is the list’s great secret. A Connecticut movie-house and vaudeville singer with no European training, Ponselle (1897-1981) made her operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera itself in 1918, opposite Caruso in Verdi’s La forza del destino, at age 21. The conductor Tullio Serafin later said he had known three vocal miracles in his lifetime: Caruso, the baritone Titta Ruffo, and Ponselle. Her dark, velvet soprano proved that America could produce world-class voices without a detour through Milan, and her 1927 Met revival of Bellini’s Norma anticipated the bel canto renaissance by a quarter century. Start with her recording of “Casta diva.”

4. Marian Anderson

The contralto who opened the door

Anderson (1897-1993) sang more concerts than opera, yet no history of 20th-century opera makes sense without her. When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred the Black contralto from Constitution Hall in 1939, she sang instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of some 75,000, a broadcast moment that made a voice an instrument of conscience. In January 1955 she became the first Black soloist to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, opening the door through which Price, Arroyo, Verrett, and Norman would walk. Toscanini reportedly called hers a voice heard once in a hundred years. Start with her recording of “O mio Fernando” from La favorita.

5. Jussi Björling

The Swedish Caruso

If Caruso invented the recorded tenor, Björling (1911-1960) perfected it. The Swede, who began performing as a child in a family vocal quartet, possessed a silvery, effortless instrument that microphones adored, and tenors from Pavarotti onward have named him the voice they studied most. He proved that the great Italian repertoire belonged to no single nation, ruling the Met’s Verdi and Puccini wings for two decades while remaining a national hero at home. His death at just 49 froze the voice at its peak. Start with the 1956 La Bohème conducted by Thomas Beecham, with Victoria de los Ángeles, still a favorite for the most beautiful complete opera recording ever made.

6. Maria Callas

La Divina

Born in New York to Greek parents, Callas (1923-1977) is the singer around whom the century pivots. She almost single-handedly revived the bel canto repertoire, restoring Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Anna Bolena from museum pieces to living drama, and she insisted that beauty of tone mattered less than truth of expression. Her partnership with EMI produced the most scrutinized discography in opera, and her offstage legend made her the first opera singer since Caruso to be front-page news. Start with the 1953 Tosca conducted by Victor de Sabata, with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia, routinely named the greatest opera recording of all.

7. Birgit Nilsson

The voice that filled Bayreuth

A Swedish farmer’s daughter, Nilsson (1918-2005) owned the heaviest roles in opera, Brünnhilde, Isolde, Turandot, and Strauss’s Elektra, with a gleaming, seemingly inexhaustible sound that could ride any orchestra Wagner or Strauss threw at it. She was also the dramatic soprano of the stereo revolution: her Brünnhilde anchors the Decca Ring cycle conducted by Georg Solti, the first complete studio recording of Wagner’s tetralogy and, for many critics, the recording of the century. Famously witty and famously durable, she sang Isolde by the hundreds of performances. Start with the immolation scene that closes Solti’s Götterdämmerung.

8. Joan Sutherland

La Stupenda

The Australian soprano (1926-2010) became a legend overnight with her 1959 Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden, and where Callas relit the bel canto flame, Sutherland kept it burning for three more decades with a technique of almost supernatural security. Her trills, runs, and stratospheric top notes set a standard coloratura singers still chase, and her long Decca partnership with her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge, put dozens of neglected operas back into circulation. On a 1965 tour of Australia she hired a little-known young tenor named Luciano Pavarotti, changing his life and ours. Start with her 1960 double album The Art of the Prima Donna.

9. Leontyne Price

1952-1985

Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Price (born 1927) walked through the door Marian Anderson opened and made herself at home. Her 1961 Metropolitan Opera debut as Leonora in Il trovatore drew an ovation reported at 42 minutes, and she went on to become the company’s reigning prima donna, the first Black singer to hold that status. When the new Met opened at Lincoln Center in 1966, it was Price who sang the first notes, in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, written for her. Her creamy, blazing soprano found its truest home in Verdi’s Aida. Start with “O patria mia” from her RCA recording of the role.

10. Luciano Pavarotti

King of the high Cs

The Modena tenor (1935-2007) earned his crown in 1972, tossing off nine effortless high Cs in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment at the Met. But his larger achievement was scale: through television, arena concerts, and the 1990 Three Tenors concert in Rome with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, he carried opera to audiences of millions, and the resulting album became the best-selling classical record in history. When the BBC adopted his “Nessun dorma” as its theme for the 1990 World Cup, a Puccini aria topped the pop charts. He closed the century Caruso opened, sunshine in the voice and all. Start with “Nessun dorma” from the 1972 Turandot conducted by Zubin Mehta, with Sutherland in the title role.

Final thoughts

What unites these ten is not a sound, since no century produced a wider variety of them, but a relationship with the machine. Caruso trusted a horn and a wax disc when the gramophone was a toy; Nilsson and Solti treated the studio as a theater of the imagination; Pavarotti treated a stadium camera like a friend across the dinner table. Each understood, sooner than their rivals, that opera’s future audience would mostly encounter the art form through loudspeakers, and each made that encounter feel like a privilege rather than a compromise. The recording age did not shrink opera. In their hands it multiplied it.

Any list like this leaves giants on the doorstep. Renata Tebaldi, whose radiant Puccini made her Callas’s great rival and Decca’s darling, missed the cut by a whisper, as did Tito Gobbi, the baritone whose Scarpia opposite Callas remains the most chilling villain on record. Consider them the eleventh and twelfth chairs. If these voices have set you searching, our guide to the history of opera on CreARTivity traces the art form from Monteverdi’s Orfeo to the present day, and every singer here is waiting, one recording away.