Two of my favorite current baritones, both with voices well suited to Billy. But Mattei's diction is suspect - much of the text is unintelligible.

 

Nathan Gunn for me.
Much as I love Mattei, to me in this particular aria, his voice sounds more like a Broadway singer than an opera singer.

 

I like a baritone (or tenor) who looks that good shirtless!

 

As it happens I was at one of the two performances at which the recording with Nathan Gunn was made. They were concert performances, and Gunn was the only singer to perform without a score. He made a totally believable Billy, and I really like him here too.

Mattei makes less of an effect, partly because his diction isn't that great and I wonder how well he understands the language.

This is a wonderful moment in the score and I also remember Christopher Maltman making quite an impression when he sang it as a competitor in the Cardiff Singer of the World.

Are there going to be any other rounds? What about Simon Keenlyside, who sings it on the excellent Hickox recording, Peter Glossop, who is on the original Britten recording and Thomas Allen who was a superb Billy on stage?

 

One more round. I was going to do Bo Skovus and Thomas Allen, but I can substitute if you highly recommend one. I heard Maltman sing it here early in his career. If two of you want 3 rounds we can do that.

 

delete

 

Why not? I heard Maltman live in Iphigenie en Tauride, I liked him.

 

The aria seems to quote Siegfried and Lucia at the same time.

 

Not having heard this opera for decades, I'm in a perfect position to have these gentlemen tell me what's happening in this section of it. I'm sorry to report that after listening to Peter Mattei singing in a language I didn't recognize I was as uninformed as before. Gunn is at least singing in recognizable English, and though I still can't distinguish more than half the words I seem to recall that Billy is musing about life on his last day of it (Britten's music is so eloquent we almost don't need words to tell us that). Mattei sounds introspective and dreamy, but Gunn is sensitive enough. Prize to Gunn for giving me a few words to latch onto.

 

Not having heard this opera for decades, I'm in a perfect position to have these gentlemen tell me what's happening in this section of it. I'm sorry to report that after listening to Peter Mattei singing in a language I didn't recognize I was as uninformed as before. Gunn is at least singing in recognizable English, and though I still can't distinguish more than half the words I seem to recall that Billy is musing about life on his last day of it (Britten's music is so eloquent we almost don't need words to tell us that). Mattei sounds introspective and dreamy, but Gunn is sensitive enough. Prize to Gunn for giving me a few words to latch onto.

He is singing in English. as a native English speaker, you can trust me on this.

 

Keenlyside. You don't give it as an option, for some reason.

I've attended a number of performances of Billy Budd in London down the years, and I rate the ENO 2005 (?) at the Coliseum as the finest I ever witnessed. Simon's singing and athletic stage-craft was mesmerising.

 

I suggested he be included in another round, so it's likely he will be an option.

 

Delete this post

 

[post deleted]

 

I don't think that's likely - Hampson is 67 years old, and Mattei's wife, Rose-Marie Wahlström, is 57.

It was Pisaroni -- that is why I deleted it.
Wikipedia: "It was through his 2002 appearance in Salzburg that Pisaroni met both the American baritone Thomas Hampson (who was singing the Don) and his daughter Cate. Cate and Pisaroni were subsequently married[1] and now make their home in Vienna."

 

I watch Young Wallander series on TV for the plot and for his looks and everyone is Swedish and their English is easier to understand than many of the people on the Great British Bake Off.

 

But they're speaking, not singing, right? Not that Swedes can't sing in good English, of course (Gedda has been mentioned as an example). And there are plenty of native English speakers whose diction in their own language is inferior to that of some foreigners. English, of whatever variety, does present some interesting challenges, as wkasimer points out. For that matter some Americans speak what purports to be my language so sloppily that I'd like to have them arrested for linguicide, or phonicide, or something.

This raises the interesting question of what sort of English to sing in - or, more acccurately, whether to sing in any particular spoken form of English at all. Neither British nor American singers make exactly the same phonetic sounds in singing - classical singing - as they do in speaking, Not only are regional accents eschewed, but there's a bit of internationalization most likely resulting from the Italian-based tradition of clear, open, non-diphthong- inflected vowels. It can be easy to spot native English-speaking singers when dipthongs creep into their pronunciation of other languages, commonly on the short "e" and long "o," and it's similarly easy to spot a foreigner speaking English when he fails to get the diphthongs right. But English-speaking singers singing in English need to make adjustments too: Americans generally need to modify their typically strongly rhotic final "r," and Brits need to open up their often very closed "a" as heard in words such as "wall" and "war." It's sometimes possible to tell whether a singer singing in English is British or American, but not always. Unless you're Enry Iggins, of course.

A singer might choose to retain and emphasize her regional accent for a specific artistic purpose. Sometimes we want to sound distinctly British or American. Moreover, it can be great fun aping the speech sounds from the other side of the pond. I once served as accent coach for a high school production of "Oliver," and even if I wouldn't have fooled a real Cockney we did at least have a blast playing make-believe. Some of the kids were actually pretty good at sounding like 19th-century London street urchins. "Please, sir, I want some more" has not a single vowel that's pronounced as anyone this side of the Atlantic does it (except possibly the schwa in "some"), so if you can say that properly you're well on your way to Eliza Doolittlehood.

 

Here's an example of very slightly accented, but crystal clear, English. I confess that my eyes well up every time I hear this magnificent voice savoring my language with such love. Could anyone listening to this doubt the importance of diction in singing?