Dutch critics believe that no Italian singer can surpass light-timbred Dramatic Soprano Gre Brouwenstijn, 41, as an interpreter of Verdi.

For nearly a decade, those two warring soprano queens, Maria Meneghini Callas and Renata Tebaldi, have dominated the world of European (and U.S.) opera, leaving other postwar singers to peep about to find themselves honorable mention. But slowly, and largely unnoticed in the U.S., old Europe has fashioned a new…