Brothers! Wow! I didn't know that. Thanks, Doug!

I think one singer from that era that was often underrated because he was more prominently associated with movies and musical comedy was baritone Nelson Eddy. I recall seeing him in the 1943 filming of The Phantom of the Opera (long pre-dating Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage version), with Suzanna Foster as Christine and Claude Rains as the mysterious masked and cloaked spook haunting the Paris Opera House.

Some of the opera sequences where slightly ersatz, with lyrics written by George Waggoner to Edward Ward's adaptations of music by Tchaikovsky and Chopin, except for one genuine opera scene from Flotow's Martha.

But Nelson Eddy's fine, robust singing in these scenes showed that he could very well have carried his own weight and then some on the opera stage.

Good, rich, full baritone voice.

Couldn't find any examples of his singing in Phantom except this short bit at the end of the trailer for the movie:   CLICKY. Doesn't really show how good his singing was in the movie.

Don Firth