Reading the various obituaries of the great Maureen Forrester this week, a thought occurred. When I was a boy - and still now, actually - my father would regale me with stories of the legendary singers he had seen, actually witnessed with his own eyes and ears, on stage. Callas, Gobbi, Vickers, Di Stefano, I knew the parade of glory well, and was suitably awed.

And often I used to see singers myself and would think, "This is an occasion I can tell my children about." But I wonder if that is the case in quite the same way. Callas, Gobbi, Vickers, these legends are known to many as much as anything through their many big opera recordings. Devotion was built up, set by set, over years. The luckiest new stars would be seized upon, and in part created, by a record company - and not just tenors and sopranos. For every Callas (EMI's resident Italianate soprano) vs Tebaldi (Decca) duel, there were other rivalries elsewhere - Sherrill Milnes, Renato Bruson and Piero Cappuccilli among the baritones, Grace Bumbry, Fiorenza Cossotto and Shirley Verrett among the mezzos, and so on.

So the question is - with fewer opera sets being made by major companies, with all the attendant hype and marketing budgets that majors traditionally commanded, how many of today's crop of singers will be remembered and revered by future generations? Who are the legends of today? Will my children be awed to hear, say, that I saw Leiferkus's Scarpia, or Kaufmann's Don José, or Finley's Onegin, or Furlanetto’s Philip II? Who else? Gheorghiu? Fleming? Villazón? Bostridge? Keenlyside?

Who do you think will stand the test of time?