Top 10 Best Female Opera Singers Of All Time

Who Are The Best Female Opera Singers Of All Time? - Top 10

Opera is a classical music art form that combines singing with theater. Most major cities throughout the world have opera houses that showcase the talents of incredibly gifted and trained singers.

An opera singer has to project their voice in a powerful way to a live audience, filling the entire theatre with music. The talented women featured on this list have made a significant impact in the world of opera, and are incredibly talented. Female opera singers are usually sopranos or altos. If you’re interested in opera and want to see these female singers in action, but can't afford to attend, there are many operas available on DVD as well.

The greatest female opera singers on this list include Maria Callas, Renee Fleming, and Anna Gottlieb. Vote up the best of the best below or add the top female opera singers you think are the best if they aren't already on the list. Scroll down to discover the 10 greatest female opera singers of all time.

Who Are The Best Female Opera Singers Of All Time?

1. Megan Marie Hart

2. Joan Sutherland

3. Maria Callas

4. Leontyne Price

5. Montserrat Caballe

6. Mirella Freni

7. Renata Tebaldi

8. Anna Moffo

9. Rosa Ponselle

10. Shirley Verrett

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Top 10 The Best Female Opera Singers Of All Time

1. Megan Marie Hart

Photo: operabase

Megan Marie Hart (born 1983 in Santa Monica) is an American operatic soprano from Eugene, Oregon, performing in leading operatic roles and concerts in America and Europe.

2. Joan Sutherland

Photo: deccaclassics

Born in Australia, Joan Sutherland was one of the dramatic sopranos of the mid-20th century known for punctuating Italian opera roles with trills and vocal agility.

She is well regarded for her performances of Lucia de Lammermoor, especially the “Mad Scene,” which she sang for more than 30 years and 200 performances in Sydney, Paris, New York, and at the famous La Scala in Milan, Italy.

Sutherland added new roles throughout her career, ultimately singing Die Fledermaus on December 31, 1990, for her final live performance.

She made numerous recordings and operatic movies during her career and was a frequent collaborator with many other singers on our list.

3. Maria Callas

Photo: Youtube

Known as much for her off-stage antics and illicit love affairs as for her dramatic and tender voice, Maria Callas is one of the greatest opera singers of all time.

She was born in New York City, raised in Greece, and began singing Italian opera in her late teens.

Callas gained fame for Beethoven’s Fidelio at the age of 21. Within a year, she was offered major roles at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and several opera theaters in Italy.

She was one of the few sopranos who could pull off both heavy German opera roles and lighter Italian bel canto opera.

4. ​​​​​​​Leontyne Price

Photo: gramophone

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was the first African American to become a leading performer at the Metropolitan Opera, and one of the most popular American classical singers of her generation.

Leontyne Price was a real opera singer; not just someone who sang in a soprano voice. She was the real deal! One of the greatest exponents of the operas of Verdi, she had a beautiful deep rich voice, which she used with intelligence and feeling. You have to go back to Renata Tebaldi, Claudia Muzio, Rlizabeth Rethberg and Rosa Ponselle to find her equal. The only singers in the list above her as of date (7/8/2014) that are real contenders to the crown are Joan Sutherland and Monserrat Caballe (I suppose I should include Maria Callas, but she lacks beauty of voice)

5. ​​​​​​​Montserrat Caballe

Photo: warnerclassics

A powerful soprano voice, Monsterrat Caballe hailed from Barcelona and received much acclaim for her duet with Freddie Mercury (of the rock band Queen) for the official theme song of the 1992 Olympic Games.

Caballe was a legendary opera singer whose first international claim to fame came for substituting in during a Carnegie Hall performance of Lucrezia Borgia in 1965.

It was no different than her first foray into the opera world. She was a late substitute at the Basel (Switzerland) Opera production of La Boheme in 1956.

Caballe was one of the few Spanish singers to find success in German opera, such as Der Rosenkavalier.

6. ​​​​​​​Mirella Freni

Photo: tiasang

Mirella Freni, OMRI, (born Mirella Fregni, 27 February 1935 – 9 February 2020) was an Italian operatic soprano who had a career of 50 years and appeared at major international opera houses. She received international attention at the Glyndebourne Festival, where she appeared as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and as Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

"Definitely one of the greatest sopranos of the last century," says Catherine Bott, "Freni had an inborn gift for creating a perfect, smooth vocal line, and a natural talent for inhabiting every role, from the innocent Butterfly to the courageous Tosca. I was once lucky enough to spend a whole day with her: unlike many an opera diva, she didn’t have a single photo of herself, or any of her recordings, on display in her house. 'When I'm at home, I'm mainly a grandmother,' she said. True story. A glorious artist and a wonderful woman."

7. Renata Tebaldi

Photo: deccaclassics

Like many opera singers on our list, Renata Tebaldi was born and raised in Italy. She grew up listening to opera as a child, then began singing it in her teens and early 20s.

Tebaldi was particularly successful in the years after World War II, both in Italy and internationally.

Her American debut came at the San Francisco Opera as the title role of Aida in 1950, and her Met debut was five years later when she played Desdemona in Otello.

Tebaldi performed almost exclusively at the Met for the next 20 years and 270 performances.

8. Anna Moffo

Photo: open.spotify

Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932 – March 9, 2006) was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agility. Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed “La Bellissima”.

Anna Moffo, an American soprano who was beloved for her rosy voice, dramatic vulnerability and exceptional beauty, died on Thursday night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York. She was 73 and lived in Manhattan.

She died of a stroke after grappling with complications of breast cancer for 10 years, said a stepdaughter, Rosita Sarnoff.

Though Ms. Moffo's career began splendidly, her voice had declined by her late 30's. With her radiant appearance, she was drawn early on into television and film, playing host of her own variety show on Italian television for many years.

9. Rosa Ponselle

Photo: hub.jhu.edu

For many of those who experienced both singers live, Rosa Ponselle was even greater, both as a voice and as an artist, than Maria Callas.

After a teenage career as a vaudeville singer, Rosa Ponselle, at the age of 20 and with no previous operatic experience, made her debut at the New York Met in 1918 in the leading role of Leonora in Verdi’s La forza del destino, partnering Enrico Caruso. Apart from three seasons at Covent Garden (1929-31) and one at the Maggio Musicale in Florence (1933), her operatic appearances were all with that company.

She created unforgettable impressions in such operas as Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, Montemezzi’s L’amore di tre re, Verdi’s La traviata and Bellini’s Norma. Her recordings reveal the liquid gold of her voice, heady in emotional power, with a matchless sense of line and legato.

10. Shirley Verrett

Photo: pinterest

Shirley Verrett (May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010)[1] was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles, i.e. soprano affogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly well known for singing the works of Verdi and Donizetti.

Verrett’s operatic stage debut came in 1957 as Lucretia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Yellow Springs, Ohio; and the following year she appeared (under her first married name of Shirley Carter) with the New York City Opera as Irina in Weill’s Lost in the Stars. She made her European debut in 1959 with the Cologne Opera as the Gypsy in Nabokov’s Rasputin’s End; but at this point her interest was concert singing rather than opera. Her role model was Marian Anderson, reflecting her strong interest in civil rights: in 1960, when touring the South, she refused to sing to segregated audiences. (When Leopold Stokowski invited her to sing with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the board overruled him, but he later invited Verrett to sing and record Falla’s El amor brujo with himself and the Philadelphia Orchestra.)

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