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State of modern operatic singing

91K views 681 replies 67 participants last post by  Woodduck 
#1 ·
I have created this thread in order to have a proper discussion concerning one of the most important aspect of opera, which is singing. While some criticize, like me, the current state of operatic singing, others appreciate what they hear and are great admirers of the current stars of the operatic world. This thread is therefore a place to exchange on this subject freely and without constraint. Feel free to voice your opinion or defend your position. We are looking for an healthy exchange where arguments are thoroughly expressed and supported, when necessary, by videos or other medias. The objective is not to create animosity between forumers. So let's all be civilized and let the discussion begin!
 
#2 · (Edited)
Are you sure you want more of this?? :lol:

It's a frustrating debate if people aren't willing to do the necessary listening with a critical ear...it would be easy for us to compare videos here. Amato is not the greatest baritone of his generation, but I'd like to hear a better version from the last 50 years, let alone modern day.



The vocal freedom, dynamics, consistent vibrato and resonance, clean and consistent vowels, beautiful legato, perfectly blended registers. It's all there.

If someone prefers to listen to more modern recordings with better sound, I understand 100%. But to argue that those modern versions are better sung is going to be very difficult. I welcome the attempt.
 
#3 ·
I do want more of this :lol: I think it is important to talk about the quality of singing. I mean, apart from music, what is more important in opera than singing? Not much. And I do believe that we can have a great conversation on this matter and you started it quite beautifully with your post. I shall share some of my ideas in this thread as well but I also want people from the other side of the aisle to tell us what they think. I strongly believe that a discussion is needed on this subject.
 
#4 · (Edited)
I agree that opera singing is not what it used to be. Especially when it comes to Wagner.

Just today I was listening to some contraltos of old and was so amazed at the clarity and strength of their voices. I particularly gained appreciation of Clara Butt, Kerstin Thorborg, and Eula Beal.

I've been wanting to ask for some others' opinions on two singers that are more recent that don't seem bad to me — René Pape and Ewa Podleś.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I agree that opera singing is not what it used to be. Especially when it comes to Wagner.

Just today I was listening to some contraltos of old and was so amazed at the clarity and strength of their voices. I particularly gained appreciation of Clara Butt, Kerstin Thorborg, and Eula Beal.

I've been wanting to ask for some others' opinions on two singers that are more recent that don't seem bad to me - René Pape and Ewa Podleś.
You've maybe heard this electric record by Ernestine Schumann-Heink? I'm addicted!

 
#12 · (Edited)
I've listened to two recordings of French music recently, Rousset's performance of the original Faust and Nelson's Les Troyens which would suggest that French opera is doing quite well at the moment. The two lead tenors in both operas, Michael Spyres in Les Troyens and Benjamin Bernheim in Faust could both stand comparison with some of the great lyric tenors of the past and both operas are very well cast from top to bottom, the Méphitophélès of Andrew Foster-Williams being a comparative weakness, though the role is more of a character part anyway in this version.

Les Troyens also has one of today's greatest singers as Didon. Joyce DiDonato has proven herself to be a great exponent of Handel, Mozart, bel canto and the lyric French opera tradition. Furthermore she is a superb stage animal and actress. I personally find the voice a little lacking in individuality and colour, but there is no denying her technical accomplishment, and florid music holds no terror for her. Here at least, as John Steane might say, the Grand Tradition is being upheld.

But what of Wagner and Verdi?

One of the most recent Verdi recordings I have bought was Pappano's Aida, which impressed me most for Pappano's conducting and Kauffmann's Radames. I did enjoy it when I first heard it but it hasn't really stood the test of time. I still think Kauffmann is the best of the singers on the set and though we might quibble about the relative merits of others such as Caruso, Gigli, Bjørling, Corelli, Del Monaco or Domingo, he does at least belong in their company; but I'm not sure if any of the other singers on this set do bear comparison with the past. Compared to some other great Aidas from the past, such as Ponselle, Tebaldi, Callas, Leontyne Price or Caballé, Harteros is appealing but vocally pallid. She is closest, I suppose, to Freni who might also be considered to have a voice a notch too light for the role, but she doesn't have anything like Freni's vocal security.

If I want to listen to Aida, I find I tend to reach for one of my other sets, all recorded between 1950 and 1979 for a far more rewarding listening experience.

Just as a comparison, try this performance of O patria mia sung by Angela Meade then compare it to Rosa Ponselle in the same music.





Do I really have to point out Meade's deficiencies? The voice is artifically darkened and the excessive vibrato is actually painful to listen to. Quite aside from the greater beauty of Ponselle's voice, there is the firmness, the clarity, the musicality. OK, so Ponselle was the best of the best in her time, but let's look at the period after the war. We had Callas and Tebaldi to be followed by Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo and Caballé. Any of what you mght call second string Aidas, like Maria Chiara, Felicia Weathers, Aprile Millo, Anita Cerquetti are a good deal preferable to Meade and yet Meade is considered one of today's best lyric-dramatic sopranos. I don't get it.
 
#16 · (Edited)
One of the most recent Verdi recordings I have bought was Pappano's Aida, which impressed me most for Pappano's conducting and Kauffmann's Radames. I did enjoy it when I first heard it but it hasn't really stood the test of time. I still think Kauffmann is the best of the singers on the set and though we might quibble about the relative merits of others such as Caruso, Gigli, Bjørling, Corelli, Del Monaco or Domingo, he does at least belong in their company; but I'm not sure if any of the other singers on this set do bear comparison with the past.
Great post!

I have to agree to disagree about Kaufmann, however. I don't like his singing at all and I don't think he belongs anywhere near the singers you mentioned. His frog in the throat method of vocal production is all wrong imo. He's become unlistenable for me. Personally, I think Botha was a better singer, although he wasn't near Kaufmann as a performer.
 
#13 ·
I would say that there has most definitely been a slow decline overall in singing in the last one hundred or so years (perhaps longer, but we don't have recordings to know that and the star singers of the early 20th Century couldn't be much bettered).

There are two myths that have been brought up regarding this topic before:
If by 'today' we mean the 21st century, then we can go back thirty, forty or fifty years and find a better general standard of singing overall, so we don't have to listen to recordings in old fashioned sound to test the hypothesis that people singing today aren't as good as they were in the past. You could even compare recordings from the 50s and 60s with those made in the last twenty years.

The second 'myth' is where people have compared a small number of recordings from today verses the past. I am sure we could all find recordings that illustrate whatever our opinion on this topic, but the question is whether the standard has declined overall.

I think if anyone wants to claim that singing hasn't declined or is better today, they should post some examples of these wonderful singers with an explanation of why their singing is to be preferred or is equal to singers from the past in the same repertoire.

It might also be worthwhile defining what we mean by 'good' singing.

N.
 
#18 ·
Tsaraslondon said:
Michael Spyres in Les Troyens and Benjamin Bernheim in Faust could both stand comparison with some of the great lyric tenors of the past
I can't agree here. They both have overly light voices with little depth. The sound they produce doesn't sound really offensive most of the time, it just doesn't take off to the next level like the great French tenors of past like Thill, Franz, Jobin, Ansseau and D'Arkor.

Just as an example, I haven't heard any singing from either of these gentlemen that approaches something like this. Not just the flexibility, but the absolutely firm and ringing top notes, the rich, true darkness all throughout the register. D'Arkor's voice is perfectly registrated, so that he doesn't even have to do anything really to be expressive. The sheer sound is expressive. When he does things it sounds totally natural and not affected.


Likewise I find DiDonato to be underdeveloped with a strong tendency towards nasality and caprino. Of course there were singers of the past with these problems, but I don't find her singing to be anywhere on par with the great mezzos of the past, of which there were many.

Which is how I think of it. To my mind, the most important thing is, Are there truly great singers? As I see it, there are none at all today. There are various shades of okay and more or less inoffensive singers, but there are no great singers. In the past, especially before 1960, there were tons of great singers, there being more the further back you go. I don't prove this by a few examples of direct comparison, but by having listened to hundreds of singers past and present, and listening in detail to thousands of recordings, taking notes, comparing specific passages, looking for particular sounds and faults etc.. And of course, by just generally reflecting on which recordings left me amazed or moved. They are overwhelmingly from the 1930s and earlier.

I think examples are good to illustrate specific points. For example, the Zancanaro-Amato comparison illustrates as has been noted the difference between to good singers, one of whom rises to a level of excellence because of certain features of the voice. Now, Amato had his problems. He ended up with vocal problems, probably due to registration issues that at certain points in his career brought on vibrato issues. But when he was on, he was at a level we haven't had for a long time. You can also hear how relying on darkening instead of core and coordination occasionally catches up with Zancanaro, whose voice sometimes hollows out, bringing an effortful effect and an overly apparent vibrato. Now, that's being rather nit-pickey. Zancanaro is pretty good in the greater scheme. But just as there's a big difference between a pretty good opera like Herodiade and Tristan or Fanciulla, there's a big difference between these two singers. And if the canon were nothing but Herodiade and worse, would it be satisfying?

wkasimer said:
Unfortunately, over the past century, audiences have grown used to singers who make a lot of noise, and sound effortful doing so. I can't remember the last time I heard a Brunnhilde who didn't sound like she was in extremis at the beginning of Act 2 of Walkure, or at the end of Siegfried, or during virtually all of Gotterdammerung. I suspect that if Frida Leider showed up in 2020, most audience members would dismiss her as "too light".
Indeed, and I think it's even true that people now think that a singer is supposed to sound effortful when the music is difficult. I mean, you hear comments that a singer who to my mind is struggling and gasping to cope with the music, which is all I hear, is so involved in the character and drawing this deep portrait. I can only conclude that they interpret the singer's struggles as expression.

So what is great expressive singing? It is singing that is natural and free sounding; that has power and clarity (core or squillo produced by the chest voice) present throughout; that has softness and darkness present or available (coordination with the head voice or falsetto); that has a consistent and pleasing vibrato; and that uses the free and spontaneous manipulation of these qualities to convey the musical and dramatic effects created by the score and libretto. That to me is the standard of great singing. That doesn't mean all singing that doesn't measure up to that is bad or worthless. Rather, all singing should measured according to that standard. To me, the singers who demonstrate the pinnacle of that standard in each voice type are, from lowest to highest:
Bass
Mardones and Plancon

Baritone
Battistini and Ruffo

Dramatic Tenor
Caruso, Zanelli, Jadlowker, Volker, and Melchior

Lyric Tenor
Gigli, Schipa, D'Arkor, Piccaver and Malipiero

Contralto
Kirkby-Lunn, Onegin, Matzenauer

Dramatic Soprano
Flagstad, Destinn, Traubel, Leider

Lyric Soprano
Norena, Sayao, young Tebaldi, Rethberg

Coloratura Soprano
Tetrazzini, Kurz, Melba

Obviously this isn't anywhere near comprehensive, just illustrative.
 
#20 ·
I'm certainly not knowledgeable about opera singing, but I have a couple of comments leading to a question. I asked a professional cellist about this issue and specifically about whether instrumental performers were as good, better, or worse than earlier.

She felt that teaching techniques were much better today and the good techniques were more widely used such that modern instrumental performers were as good or better than those in the past. Mostly she felt that the average quality of instrumental performers was superior to those in the past, but that the best of various eras may be fairly similar.

She knows less about opera but wondered if an increased focus on appearance could act to somewhat reduce the quality of modern operatic performers. Also, she feels that singing has changed somewhat over time such that the voices are trying to sing slightly differently (e.g. more vibrato?).

In the other thread some suggested that modern vocal teaching techniques were not as good or that, at least, modern signers were not being taught to perform at the same level. If this is true, why would this be? If instrumental performers are as good or better than earlier due to improved teaching techniques, why would operatic performers not benefit from the same improved teaching?

Again, this issue is over my head, but it seems there are a few potential changes that could influence the quality of singing - teaching techniques, emphasis on appearance, and changes in style. I'd welcome thoughts from those here.
 
#23 ·
I have been attending live opera for roughly the last 50 years (I attended my first opera in the theater with my grandmother, when I was barely 10 years old), and I can share that the decline in the quality singing is a real thing, and is happening also during my lifetime.

It's not the same decline, however, in all fachs or in all the repertoire. Baritones for Italian opera is arguably the worst case. It's also less evident in female singing, than in men singing, but is there for both.

Thankfully, there are also some good things happening in opera that somehow compensate: the aarrival of the countertenor, the rescue of Baroque operas and the performance with period instruments, new operas being written, adventurous stagings,...

Many times I have discussed the reason(s) of the vocal decline, with many people. I confess I still don't have an answer. Lots of different would be explanations, but no real evidence pointing clearly to one specific direction, in my view.
 
#22 · (Edited)
mmsbls said:
In the other thread some suggested that modern vocal teaching techniques were not as good or that, at least, modern signers were not being taught to perform at the same level. If this is true, why would this be? If instrumental performers are as good or better than earlier due to improved teaching techniques, why would operatic performers not benefit from the same improved teaching?
I think the answer lies in the fact that teachers must not only train singers to use their voice, but they have to build the voice first. According to Cornelius Reid's research (Reid was a famous pedagogue who trained great singers like George Shirley), early practices focused on practical methods for building the voice: develop chest and head voice through scales, coordinate, drill florid techniques and ornaments etc.. Later, vocal teaching began to be dominated by supposedly scientific practices and subjective imagery that really didn't help because it doesn't get at the building blocks of the voice: the muscle groups in the throat. So you can tell someone all you want to put it in the mask, or give them nyah nyah nyah exercises to warm up their nasal resonators, but that doesn't do anything to build the voice. Singers like Antonio Cotogni or Giuseppe Danise spent years (!) singing scales to build the voice. But you can't build the voice with any scales: you have to understand how the registers work. Chest register activates at high volume towards the bottom of the range, falsetto is accessed at E above middle C and should be trained at increasing intensity as you go up the scale when first separating the registers, etc.. The pitch and intensity patterns are important. You can't just do scales for two years any old way and end up singing like Danise. Accessing nasal resonance does nothing to build the registers. At best, it covers over certain faults without introducing too much nasality (also a fault), but it totally inhibits further progress. Furthermore, many teachers now don't even try to separate the registers. They try to get an even sound from the beginning, which according to Reid leads nowhere. I'm very sympathetic to Reid's views, as they accord very strongly with what I have observed from listening.

Furthermore, unless the voice is built properly, you just can't get to the top level of playing it. You can't play a poorly built violin the way you can the best of the best. No matter the intentions of the performer, the instrument will not respond. That's what happens in modern singing.

Other suggestions have included that microphones allow for a smaller, more intimate style which then gets held up as the example for new generations; decline in the pool of great voices (though Netrbko, DiDonato, Kaufmann etc. are extremely talented by natural endowment, so I don't really buy that as anything more than a contributing factor); the chest voice being wrongly blamed for the decline of singers like Callas and Tebaldi; and many others.
 
#28 · (Edited)
Thank you for this very informative post! I adhere with everything that you've written and could not say it better myself. I think you are absolutely right regarding the importance of building a singer's voice. To illustrate what you have also mentioned about modern vocal teaching and their usage of pseudo-scientific practices and subjective imagery, here is a masterclass with Joyce DiDonato which took place at Carnegie Hall in 2017. Listen to what she says to the student. It is quite revealing...



I mean why put so much importance on the "nasal passage"?
 
#31 ·
The decline is most notable among heavy voices because they sound the most absurd, and are pushed beyond their limits in a different way. But I think light voices have suffered too, as I said about Mozart singers. Baroque singing may have learned a lot about style, but the tiny mixed register voices they use have nothing to do with the tradition. You could not possibly spend years developing proper chest voice, head voice, coordinating etc. and sound like Cecilia Bartoli. You would sound like Janet Spencer.

As for the DiDonato masterclass, it's pretty painful. Her focus on the nasal resonance brings about a minor, superficial improvement; it sounds a little less ugly. But "less ugly" doesn't mean "good." And there's no way to get from from there to good by the means being used, otherwise we would have great singers! Nothing in what she says to the student affects the real problem, which is that the registration is wrong.
 
#34 ·
A few points/questions from a newbie to this forum, less so to opera, but still way behind most here. And picking up on a few remarks in these related threads after the last week or so;
I do wonder how much of this is fashion. And I don't mean that pejoratively. Even within opera, tastes come and go, as the long dismissal of bel canto seems to attest to. If every current voice teacher is teaching their students in the 'wrong" way, perhaps the standard has changed?
Related, it is a new era. Somewhere else in all this, "park and bark" was actually lifted up as a good thing. Today, opera is recognized as a multi-sensory event. Audiences want visual interest. If all that matters it vocal quality, go to recitals.
The point about what we can and can't hear on old recordings was well-taken, I thought.
And knowing it will throw the cat among the canaries, the recording in post #6 of Schumann-Heinke (sp?) illustrates the problem so contentiously noted in other threads: the sound is so bad, I don't know what to listen for, and even if I did, I don't have a lot of confidence in being able to compare it to modern recordings. Life is too short; as a pleasure listener, I am not going to choose to listen to that sound quality unless I am told it is once in a multi--lifetime voice. (And I have come to appreciate some of those.)
Finally, there does seem to me to be a chicken and egg phenomenon: why aren't the opera singers today popular idols like they were before? Well, opera is not the art form of "the masses" that it was before (noting that perhaps it never was in the US?) Where are all the great singers? Well, since it has become, for better or worse, a niche, and given all the other options, maybe they are going elsewhere with their gifts, which are trained and used differently (Note someone like Kelli O'Hara with a foot in both worlds. Or Kristen Chenowith, both of whom might have been trained into operatic careers in the way suggested in this thread?) It's not unlike (to me, at least, LOL) the question about why there are so many fewer great Black baseball players than there were in the past--when the NBA, NFL etc were such smaller institutions.
Anyway, just food for thought. Sorry for the formatting. I've been on message boards since the pre-WWW days and still can't always figure out each board's style.
 
#35 · (Edited)
You make some interesting points, but I only partially agree with each of them.

I think fashion definitely has something to do with it, especially in early music repertoire where people have essentially made up a new technique and declared it historical. I said in the other thread that I think the right way to think about it is that there is a new technique and that the technique is inferior. So modern singers sing correctly according to that paradigm, but I certainly reserve the right to say that that paradigm is worse than the old one.

DeGustibus said:
Related, it is a new era. Somewhere else in all this, "park and bark" was actually lifted up as a good thing. Today, opera is recognized as a multi-sensory event. Audiences want visual interest. If all that matters it vocal quality, go to recitals.
I don't see any reason that you can't have visual interest and good singing at the same time.

DeGustibus said:
And knowing it will throw the cat among the canaries, the recording in post #6 of Schumann-Heinke (sp?) illustrates the problem so contentiously noted in other threads: the sound is so bad, I don't know what to listen for, and even if I did, I don't have a lot of confidence in being able to compare it to modern recordings. Life is too short; as a pleasure listener, I am not going to choose to listen to that sound quality unless I am told it is once in a multi--lifetime voice. (And I have come to appreciate some of those.)
I don't think the sound quality is that bad. It's a recording I would certainly listen to for pleasure. The voice is easily audible over the pretty quiet hiss. The reverb comes from the fact that the source of that recording, Prima Voce, transferred their records by playing them in rooms to attempt to get the sound that you would have heard playing it off the machine in a spacious room. Some people like the result, and some hate it. I personally prefer Preiser's transfers, which are more purist. Would you call this unlistenable sound quality?


DeGustibus said:
Where are all the great singers? Well, since it has become, for better or worse, a niche, and given all the other options, maybe they are going elsewhere with their gifts, which are trained and used differently (Note someone like Kelli O'Hara with a foot in both worlds. Or Kristen Chenowith, both of whom might have been trained into operatic careers in the way suggested in this thread?)
This is definitely part of the problem, but it doesn't convince me as an explanation for the problem as a whole. If it were true that the change was not in technique but simply in the pool of available singers, and that the best talent were going somewhere else so that we were only getting second rate talent, today's stars would sound like yesterday's second rate talent. in other words, they would have the same technique, make the same kinds of sounds, etc.. Here's some of the old second rate singers:








All of these singers were minor stars in their day, but who today among our global superstars can make those sounds? Shall we go to the third rate? I could give you 200 more examples of small time singers of the past who can out sing today's best. It can't just be about the field of talent shrinking, or today's stars would sound like this. If only!
 
#36 · (Edited)
In addition to the points you guys have brought up in this thread, and others, such as head voice, chest voice, register coordinates, etc., what I find generally missing in modern singing is clear enunciation.

Clear enunciation makes singing so much enjoyable, regardless of the language! I wouldn't mind Georges Thill singing Wagner in French, Lotte Lehmann singing Verdi in German, or
Leonid Sobinov singing Massenet in Russian - I enjoy them greatly indeed. But Netrebko's constant oww-oww-oww bothers me.
 
#38 · (Edited)
Sorry if this is something of a rambling post, but I am musing.

I think these days there is a desire for quick results. Most singers in the past studied for years before singing in public and then would start off in small houses where they could learn to project and grow. Nor were there marketing people around to push singers into the limelight before they were ready, their one concern being to find the next big star. Shortly after Alagna had had such an enormous (and warranted I might add) success as Roméo at Covent Garden, there was a programme about him on TV. It was disgusting to hear the marketing people talk about him as if he was just a commodity. I suppose for them he was.

I remember some years ago attending an event, I think it was in the crush bar at Covent Garden, at which Birgit Nilsson and Regina Resnik discussed opera singing, followed by a mini masterclass with some young singers. Nilsson and Resnik were most enlightening and entertaining throughout the talk and the class. One of the singers, a soprano, opted to sing Suicidio! from La Gioconda and it quickly became evident that, though there was definitely a voice there, she lacked any kind of technique. After she finished there was a silence before Nilsson blurted out, "Have you had any singing lessons, my dear?". She didn't mean it unkindly at all, but was obviously just stumped for something to say. She and Resnik then both advised her to do further study and put aside such dramatic roles as Gioconda until she had a sounder technique.

I also remember going to some of Schwarzkopf's masterclasses, which were heavily criticised because she was so hard on her students, barely letting them get a few notes out before stopping them, a method that was no doubt very frustrating for them. I went with my singing teacher, who adored her. He thought that none of the students had a sufficiently solid technique to be able to follow her instructions. One should also remember that Schwarzkopf was teaching the way she herself had been taught by Maria IvogĂĽn, who agreed to teach her on the proviso that she gave up all public performances. (Schwarzkopf was already by then appearing in small opera houses.) They then worked slowly and painstakingly on the voice, finding the exact right placement for the middle and then slowly expandinng the range outwards at both ends. It's not a method that would suit everyone, but it does show the amount of work she was prepared to do.

Callas often used to talk about the sheer hard work that went into singing. Just remember how long she studied with De Hidalgo, who said she would usually be the first student to arrive and the last to leave, listening to others to learn from their mistakes as well as their good points. It was a method she carried into her professional career, often arriving at rehearsal before anyone else even when she was not required. Margarita Wallman remembered arriving at La Scala one morning to find Callas already sitting in the stalls, "But, what are you doing here, Maria? I told you I was working with the chorus this morning and wouldn't need you till this afternoon." "I thought I would watch what you were doing so I would fit into the scene more easily when you called me in this afternoon." She was not the capricious prima donna the media made her out to be, though she undoubtedly had a temper and her outbursts were usually precipitated by what she considered unprofessional behaviour. Singing, at least until she was seduced by Onassis and his het set, was her total focus and raison d'ĂŞtre. It could be argued that when she started to relax and enjoy life, she also started to lose her voice. Until that time, music was her whole life.

Also, back in the 50s and before, singers with burgeoning careers would often travel to South America for an extended season, where they could try out new roles or perfect others. Sometimes, as can be heard from some of the broadcasts, these performances sound ill-prepared and under-rehearsed, but audiences were enthusiastic and it gave the singers room to try things out.

Nowadays a singer would be more likely to nip over to Mexico to do a couple of performances of one role before jetting back to Europe or North America to sing another a few days later. It can't do the voice much good.

Another point is that, back in those days, careers were forged in the theatre, not in the recording studio. It is well known that, even with modern recording techniques, smaller voices are easier to record than big ones. However good the recording quality of Sutherland's and Nilsson's Decca recordings, there are plenty of people who heard them in the flesh who will tell you that the recordings give you no idea of the size of their voices. Baroque opera also requires smaller forces and is therefore much cheaper to produce than the operas of Verdi, Wagner and Strauss which need not only larger voiced singers but huge orchestras.
 
#40 ·
I think these days there is a desire for quick results.
THIS ^^^

I remember some years ago attending an event, I think it was in the crush bar at Covent Garden, at which Birgit Nilsson and Regina Resnik discussed opera singing, followed by a mini masterclass with some young singers. Nilsson and Resnik were most enlightening and entertaining throughout the talk and the class. One of the singers, a soprano, opted to sing Suicidio! from La Gioconda and it quickly became evident that, though there was definitely a voice there, she lacked any kind of technique. After she finished there was a silence before Nilsson blurted out, "Have you had any singing lessons, my dear?". She didn't mean it unkindly at all, but was obviously just stumped for something to say.
Hilarious story. And pretty much summarizes my opinion on most "espresso stardom" modern-day singers.
 
#43 ·
Tsaras has a point with the too-fast-too-soon mania that destroy careers. However, it is a problem that started in the 30's and 40's (Onelia Fineschi is an example) and I believe it to be related to the onset of the microphone and electronically recorded music. The microphone dependent singing and its exposure via recordings has accustomed generations to take as good singing technique a breathy and weak voice production so much so, that they find the sound of the naturally projected voice 'artificial'. When there were no microphones, people spoke out and sang out. A breathy, whispered voice productions -- let alone the frying that people use today -- is not heard beyond a couple of meters (if that much) without electronic amplification.

Conversely, an example of someone who developed slowly instead of the too-much-too-soon-and-everything is Christine Goerke. Irrespective of one liking her or not, Ms. Goerke developed her career carefully into the dramatic soprano roles that she now tackles. She sang a remarkable Elektra with the BSO and Andris Nelsons signaling that a dramatic soprano with a torrential voice and personality had arrived in 2015 when he was 45. Interestingly, Ms. Goerke has not landed a big recording contract like some of the tiny voices -- Tebaldi called them moscerini (mosquitoes) -- who are very microphonic and are bigger recording artists than the larger voiced ones still around: the Bartolis, Di Donatos, Kauffman's vis á vis Goerkes, Bothas, Radvanovskys.

BTW, the focus of JDD on the nasal production is to encourage positioning the sound dans la masque that gives the resonance and squillo to the voices. Ponselle's great squillo was based on a masque placement. Sills told the story of walking around Villa Pace (Ponselle's house) trying desperately to get the mask resonance until she threw her vocal arms up, as it were, and decided that she had a french voice (her words) instead of an italian one. Horne master classes also encourages the students for a mask placement. She herself used it sometimes to the point that it made her sound hard to listen for me.
 
#44 ·
BTW, the focus of JDD on the nasal production is to encourage positioning the sound dans la masque that gives the resonance and squillo to the voices. Ponselle's great squillo was based on a masque placement. Sills told the story of walking around Villa Pace (Ponselle's house) trying desperately to get the mask resonance until she threw her vocal arms up, as it were, and decided that she had a french voice (her words) instead of an italian one. Horne master classes also encourages the students for a mask placement. She herself used it sometimes to the point that it made her sound hard to listen for me.
The real squillo in Ponselle's voice came from the development of the chest voice. Sometimes she got too nasal and that was a fault. DiDonato is not producing squillo in that student, she is making a cosmetic alteration to the voice to cover up other faults that will inhibit further growth. If placing the sound in the mask did anything real, where is the squillo in all the mask-trained singers today? That technique is everywhere but we just have nasal voices like Florez that don't have squillo. It's one thing to be nasal if you have a huge developed voice. Many great singers such as Ponselle, Reizen, Bechi, and others were sometimes nasal. But they had developed and properly coordinated registers, which is why they were still great singers. They would have been even more extraordinary without the nasality.
 
#60 · (Edited)
This entire thread got me to thinking that it almost seems like human nature to prefer what you couldn't have.
For example: I yearn for the: Sutherland/Sills/Muzio/Ponselle/Callas/Tebaldi/Corelli/Tucker/Bergonzi/Steber/Bjorling/DiStefano -- you get the picture -- days, and how I wish I could have been there to see the golden era in person but of course I could only listen to those magnificent voices so dedicatedly trained and the unusual sounds so different that many were immediately recognizable, unlike the majority of voices today.
I partially blame the lack of talented teachers today (one I have heard about who, over and over, has damaged some top tenors singing today and how they are pushing their high notes and getting into trouble). I also think that many today are so anxious to get to the top quickly that they are rushing through instead of taking their time and being more patient and taking more pains to hone their craft.

Having said all this, I have this picture in my head that 20 years from now the opera aficionados of the day will be echoing my very words about "my" wonderful singers of today -- the ones who still give me great pleasure, and could vie for any position back in the '40's, '50's, '60's era -- Gheorghiu/Radvanovsky/Kaufmann/Netrebko/Fleming/Calleja -- to name just a few examples. They will rant and hurl insults about the singers of their day and how anyone who knows anything about great voices wouldn't give 2 cents to listen to their present crop of losers, in comparison with the years 1980-2020's.
However, when all is said and done, I think I have the best of all worlds because I was able to enjoy all of the singers from the "30's on and in many of them have I found gems as they imparted much beauty in my life.
For those who just cannot bear the thought of listening to
today's singers because they don't come up to the past generation, I say, too bad for you. You're missing out on a lot.
 
#63 · (Edited)
You can even take someone like John Tomlinson:

He at least has a relatively good voice BUT what I think is one of the biggest changes in Wagnerian singing nowadays is the lack of proper legato. I recall once thinking that Tomlinson's singing sounds occasionally like sprechgesang...

I think James Morris's early endeavours in the German repertoire were very interesting. James Morris really wanted to be a proper Italian bass/baritone until someone suggested that he should give a try to German opera as well. He didn't want to because he didn't want to ruin his voice. He was a huge fan of legato which he thought was largely missing in Wagnerian singing. When he was finally considering taking up Wotan, he was told that he wouldn't be able to sing Italian repertoire anymore because the styles, particularly the use of legato, were so different. It was only after it turned out that Hotter, famous for his old-school legato, was going to coach him that everyone felt very okay with Morris singing Wotan. Copying Hotter's legato technique would have enabled Morris to continue also singing Verdian and bel canto repertoire, which he successfully did.

It's a common misconception, which Morris admitted he himself also had, that Wagnerian singing is supposed to have less legato than Italian. Listening to the old singers, one realises that that's not the case at all.
 
#67 · (Edited)
Fedora Barbieri said:
But I think the main problem is there are no more teachers.
I've seen this debated a lot, but those who mention problems with teachers are in good company.

If I remember correctly, I believe Birgit Nilsson said that she had bad teachers back when she was still training her voice.
 
#75 · (Edited)
Talking of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, here is part of an interview given to Gramophone in 1990. It fits well within the topic of this thread.

Q: It seems a lot of young singers want to get to the top of their profession fast. If they have a great success as Lucia before they are 30 that's it; that almost seems more important than building up a technique, a repertoire.

A : Yes, they always say that times have changed, that's true, but the vocal apparatus hasn't changed, over the last hundred or thousand years. Vocal technique had been developed to the very fullest some hundred years back, so this is the measure we must take. You cannot alter the vocal apparatus of the singer, you can only bring the technique to the utmost degree of perfection, in order to be able to fill the big halls of 10,000. It is a swindle if you use microphones, because you don't have to learn to sing at all for the hall. We all learned to sing to overcome the distance, to fill the big hall, get through or over an orchestra, with beauty, significance, health, and lasting through the years, not just being finished in two years. Maybe three years of singing is all they want. I can't count how many generations of singers have disappeared in my lifetime - they sing for three years and then they are never heard of again.


Here is the complete interview for those interested.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/elisabeth-schwarzkopf-remembered

We can say a lot of things regarding Schwarzkopf, but it remains undeniable that she was extremely dedicated to her art.

And when she talks of younger singers lacking humility, I think of Netrebko and all the great dramatic roles she has undertaken...
 
#80 ·
This is a long thread and I don't remember chiming in. I think Joyce diDonato is a good place to begin. I have said this elsewhere but she has a very beautiful voice and is technically spot on BUT there is no distinctive personality to her sound. I would greatly enjoy hearing her live but would not buy a recording. This same homogenization of sound is very pervasive. Goerke, Kaufman and two counter tenors- Fagioli and Hansen- have disctinctive sounds to me but most lack it. It must have something to do with the type of voice instruction which is in vogue today. All of my favorite singers from the past had instantly recognizable voices. Eaglen and Podles and Barton were the last live singers I heard with signature sounds.
 
#85 · (Edited)
I agree with you about DiDonato. The first time I was really aware of her was when I saw her as Dejanira in a superb Luc Bondy production of Handel's Hercules which the Aix-en-Provence Festival brought to London. She was absolutely riveting, both vocally and dramatically and made a huge impression on me. When her first recital came out (a recital of Handel arias titled Furore) I snapped it up immediately, but was rather disappointed with the result. Technically she had no problems, but the voice lacked personality and individuality. I then went to a concert at the Barbican in London, where she and the same forces on the CD performed much of the same music and she won me over once more. Yet again, live she was thrilling. There seems to be a gap between her stage and recorded performances. Or maybe, it's just that when confronted with her undeniable stage presence, one is less likely to notice that the voice itself is not a particularly distinctive one.

Something I've also noticed is that the voices from the past that I liked, and even those I didn't, had their idiosyncracies, whereas today, maybe in an attempt to sing in a perfectly homogenised way, any idiosyncracies get ironed out.
 
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