Renata Scotto Born 1934 Soprano An artist with a magnificent stage presence, Scotto enjoyed a 50-year career which saw her go from an early-1950s small-town debut in her native Italy to commanding curtain calls on the world’s greatest stages. It was at New York’s Metropolitan Opera that she enjoyed some of her greatest triumphs during the 1970s, from singing to an audience of 100,000 in Central Park in 1975 to playing all the lead roles in Il Trittico in one evening in 1976 and partaking in the Met’s first live television broadcast (with Luciano Pavarotti) in 1977’s Puccini La bohème. She was also the first woman at the Met to direct an opera she was also performing in (1987’s Puccini Madam Butterfly); indeed, her work as a director took her equally far and wide. It is, though, her innate sense of drama and an ability to embody a role – often at the expense of vocal perfection – for which she will be most remembered.
Anatol Ugorski Born 1942 Pianist Ugorski’s pathway to gaining international recognition was not straightforward; indeed, he was 49 when he first signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. This followed his flight from the Soviet Union, with his family, to East Berlin in 1990 and a spell in a refugee camp. Born in Siberia, the pianist never actually encountered a piano until he began studies at the Leningrad Conserva
