Teyte's Debussy recordings, especially the ones she made in 1936 with the great French pianist Alfred Cortot, are among the vocal treasures of the century. The most devastating is "Colloque sentimental" ("Sentimental Dialogue"), the last of Debussy's six settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, Fêtes galantes. "Do you remember our old ecstasy?" one of the haunted figures says. "Why do you want me to remember it?" the other ghost replies. "Does your heart beat at my very name?" "No." "Oh, the wonderful days of unspeakable happiness when our mouths were joined." "It's possible." "How blue the sky was, and how great our hope!" "Hope has fled, defeated, into the black sky." Teyte had one of the qualities I admire most in a singer, the ability when she's singing to sound as if she were talking.

If anything, the British tenor Heddle Nash had an even more purely beautiful voice than Teyte's. Yet he too sings with the intimacy of speech, a sung whisper. He's probably most famous for his roles on the very first complete recordings of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Cosí fan tutte, but he was a beloved figure in a wide variety of operas, operettas, and oratorios. My nomination for one of the most gorgeous recordings ever made is Nash's rendition of the languorous tenor aria from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, which in English becomes "In memory I lie beneath the palms and dream of love." Nash makes even the Victorian diction sound intensely erotic.

There are, of course, other marvelous performances on these discs. And on a CD of live broadcasts, Teyte and Nash appear together - a 1938 vocal summit meeting - in scenes from Massenet's Manon. But the Debussy and Bizet define my personal ideal, rare examples of moments I wish all singing aspired to.

- Lloyd Schwartz