The most beautiful female voice of all time

k.d.lang!!! Hands down! Best voice of our generation.

Good choice!
In my day Bonnie Raitt, especially on her first album.
And Joni Mitchell, though her voice was trashed cause she smokes like a chimney.
In Jazz I like Annie Ross, Blossom Dearie and Anita O'Day.

My new fave is Julie Fowlis, the Gaellic singer from North East Scotland.

Dusty Springfield

If one is specifically addressing the quality of the voice, it's hard to top Hayley Westenra . . .

You got that right boss.
Where the hell did you dig her up?

Inva Mula, Albanian soprano ... singing Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor: “Il dolce suono” (popularized in the movie "The Fifth Element").

The more energetic part, "The Diva Dance," starts at 3:18 ...

My wine glass broke. What a range!

Dig her up? Hell, buddy, she was the rage of classical music circles when she began her career at about age 13. (Click here to read her Wikipedia bio.) She did recordings of operatic arias and "art songs," which is how she became known to a large international audience. She had actually started out busking in Christchurch, New Zealand, and many of her early efforts mixed classical arias and art songs, popular songs, classic folksongs and Protestant hymns. She didn't puruse the ordinary career of a classical diva, though, and many clowns in the classical community have dubbed her a "traitor." She has always followed her own muse.

Here she sings with the great Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli:

She's my favorite female vocalist.

Here she does Giacomo Puccini's aria O mio bambino caro (Child of My Heart). She has perfect tone and pitch, and all without formal trainng.



On top of that, she's a real babe. At 35, she still looks like a little slip of a girl. Many operatic sopranos are big women, not necessarily fat, but built large, with a large chest from which they project their voices. Hayley's got all that talent, all that singing power without that.

Hayley does folk song classics, and some of them just send chills down my spine.

Here she does the American classic Shenandoah:

The great Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, wrote the Bachianas Brazileiras, a series of compositions using themes from Bach, modified by the Brazilian musical tradition. The fifth composition, for soprano and eight cellos, is his most famous work. It also routinely frightens sopranos. Hayley sings it here:

To me, Joni James backed up by David Terry's orchestra
set the standard for beautiful music about sixty years ago,
my favorite being their "Little Girl Blue':



The lilt to her voice is such that she could read a telephone directory and sweep the listener off his feet.

Enya's Evening Falls enchanted me but I didn't know who it was singing, it was just in a movie sound track. Then I heard Exile on the radio and I needed to know who was singing with that pure and angelic voice. I'm a fan ever since.

Caterina Valente's The Breeze and I could sure get the listener's attention back in the day.

How'd I miss this thread when it was new?

Anyway, for me it's a tossup between Yma Sumac and Maria Callas. Jessye Norman comes in a very close third.

Jackie Evancho (E-van'-ko), is one of the best I've ever heard. This first song hardly does her justice. Since the age of 10 yrs, she's has been wowing international crowds. This is the voice of an angel with a platinum and gold awards for record sales already. If you can listen to the 2nd song, 'Music of the Night', you'll be rewarded:





I'd be hard-pressed not to include this gorgeous version of 'My Heart Will Go On' back when she was 12...yes she was 12 yrs old ... when she sang this ...last yr:

I think I had a thread about Ima Sumac, and I used to listen to Callas cd driving through the forest. Liked Jessye Norman too, but don't have a cd (cd's are my speed).

My favourite female vocalist is Elizabeth Fraser. Her voice paints the most beautiful pictures in my mind.