Aaaah yes! That's the problem with your fach system (or possibly the German fach system).

I don't have as many categories as you do and the fach system that I follow only considers itself with intrinsic qualities of the voice such as colour and weight of the voice. I would say that the colour of the voice indicates whether it is a soprano, mezzo etc. voice and the weight at its most basic is whether a voice is heavy (dramatic) or light (lyric). I don't view 'coloratura' as an intrinsic characteristic of a voice, it's a skill that can be acquired and all singers should seek to do so.

N.

 

I do not see the problem you're trying to solve.

Are you hoping for yet another system of somewhat arbitrarily rigid labels which refer not merely to voice types but to the changes voices undergo? A system which will recognize and characterize changes in progress?

How will this work? And how will it help anyone do anything better?

Singers should sing what they're comfortable singing, turn down assignments they're not comfortable accepting, use their judgment and ask the advice of others who know their voices well, and forget labels. The last thing anyone needs is more of them.

 

I do not see the problem you're trying to solve.

Are you hoping for yet another system of somewhat arbitrarily rigid labels which refer not merely to voice types but to the changes voices undergo? A system which will recognize and characterize changes in progress?

How will this work? And how will it help anyone do anything better?

Singers should sing what they're comfortable singing, turn down assignments they're not comfortable accepting, use their judgment and ask the advice of others who know their voices well, and forget labels. The last thing anyone needs is more of them.

I'm not proposing a new system. I'm proposing better application of the current one via being more mindful of the effects of age on the voice.

 

I don't see a problem either. If a singer's voice progresses into a new fach, the agent will be made aware & will look for the corresponding opportunities.

 

- I heard Dimtri Hvorostovsky live in Chicago around 2 years ago. I was impressed many aspects of that performance (almost immediately following a bout with treatment for throat cancer), but omg....those LOW NOTES! I'd suspected for awhile that his tone, even for a dramatic baritone, was almost exaggeratedly dark, and that his high notes seemed pushed and unnatural, but after listening to him live, those suspicions were confirmed: clearly a bass-baritone in disguise.
- Joan Sutherland overstayed her time in the coloratura spotlight, or at least joyful, virginal ingenues of the standard bel canto rep. the voice by the mid 70s had developed more depth, weight, a more somber timbre. as much as I love her, I think she got lazy toward the end of the year when she should have done a bit of retraining and added some spinto/dramatic rep to her arsenal. What little we have of her in more dramatic rep like Oberon, Turandot and Idomeneo is spectacular, and I feel like her last 15 years or so would have been even more astounding had she moved closer to this sort of rep being the norm.
- last but not least (although perhaps the most obvious), late-career Callas was about as coloratura as Robert Merrill was tenor. The voice has become wobbly and shriek-y on anything above an A, while the middle register possessed the color and consistency of nutella and the chest register sounded dam near like a dramatic tenor.

I know you love to classify, declassify, and reclassify singers and put them in repertoire they didn't sing. I'll just go on record here and say that I think the singers you mention all did more or less the repertoire they were best suited to. Hvorostovsky was a superb baritone who sounded just fine in his upper range and would have been wasted growling around in a lower tessitura. Sutherland, lacking a substantial chest voice and a dramatic edge to her tone, was never meant for spinto or dramatic parts; she was merely louder than most other people who sang her roles, and her strong upper range allowed her to record a few more dramatic parts successfully. Callas lost quality and volume but not skill in coloratura. But why do you even bring her up? She never did fit into your neat little fach boxes.

 

So basically categorising singers really isn't worth a fach!

 

I think its very useful & important for the agents, houses, & singers. There is grey area & a lot of overlap however.

 

More specifically, the problem with its application. There is nothing wrong with having a thorough system of categorization for the human voice. Classical and operatic repertoire is designed to push the boundaries of what the human voice is capable of, and this requires recognition of the differing limitations and potential of certain groups of voices with similar characteristics.

The problem is that such characteristics change with age. Unfortunately freakishly consistent voices like Pavarotti and Nilsson are rare exceptions, not the rule. Listen to the voice of a woman of 20 vs a woman of 30, 40 and 50 and this will be readily apparent. Why then would we expect singers to stay within the same category over the course of a 30-40 year career? examples abound
- Eva Podles morphing from a bright, spitfire coloratura mezzo to a smokey, heavy contralto after her first pregnancy
- Sherill Milnes beginning his career as, by his own admission, a "thin, nasally tenor" (or something to that effect)
- Christine Goerke suddenly moving from lyric coloratura soprano down to dramatic soprano in her early 30s
- either as the result of vocal strain or natural progression, Asrid Varnay moved more and more from soprano to mezzo soprano rep throughout the second leg of her career

One could say this is "just semantics", "putting people into boxes", etc, but....if it means addressing underlying problems in how singers manage their careers and their voices, is that merely a matter of semantics? I would argue that, if anything, the music world would benefit from greater rather than lesser emphasis on technicalities, provided they are readily applicable to real-world choices. When one looks at the vast majority of unsexy detail-pounding that already goes into semesters of music theory, learning to site read and endless repetitions of musical scales throughout a singer's career, I believe it shortsighted to dismiss such a topic so readily.

imo, several other singers had significant transformations as well, and few seem to handle it proficiently. some singers I suspect had vastly different between the beginning and ends of their career are:
- Jessye Norman began her career as a soprano, there is virtually nothing soprano left in the voice today, but a chocolaty dramatic mezzo (maybe even contralto)
- I heard Dimtri Hvorostovsky live in Chicago around 2 years ago. I was impressed many aspects of that performance (almost immediately following a bout with treatment for throat cancer), but omg....those LOW NOTES! I'd suspected for awhile that his tone, even for a dramatic baritone, was almost exaggeratedly dark, and that his high notes seemed pushed and unnatural, but after listening to him live, those suspicions were confirmed: clearly a bass-baritone in disguise.
- Joan Sutherland overstayed her time in the coloratura spotlight, or at least joyful, virginal ingenues of the standard bel canto rep. the voice by the mid 70s had developed more depth, weight, a more somber timbre. as much as I love her, I think she got lazy toward the end of the year when she should have done a bit of retraining and added some spinto/dramatic rep to her arsenal. What little we have of her in more dramatic rep like Oberon, Turandot and Idomeneo is spectacular, and I feel like her last 15 years or so would have been even more astounding had she moved closer to this sort of rep being the norm.
- last but not least (although perhaps the most obvious), late-career Callas was about as coloratura as Robert Merrill was tenor. The voice has become wobbly and shriek-y on anything above an A, while the middle register possessed the color and consistency of nutella and the chest register sounded dam near like a dramatic tenor.

Could you please tell me when Hvorostovsky had treatment for a bout with throat cancer? Two years ago he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain cancer--the most deadly kind. I never heard anything about his throat cancer treatments too.
He was not actually known for being a bass baritone that I'd ever heard. His baritone voice was not a powerful one. Sometimes he tended to push it when singing at the Met (But a more burnished and beautiful sound it would have been hard to find!).

 

Could you please tell me when Hvorostovsky had treatment for a bout with throat cancer? Two years ago he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain cancer--the most deadly kind. I never heard anything about his throat cancer treatments too.

thank you for correcting me

He was not actually known for being a bass baritone that I'd ever heard.

I know, that's my opinion, but it's not a common one.

His baritone voice was not a powerful one. Sometimes he tended to push it when singing at the Met (But a more burnished and beautiful sound it would have been hard to find!).

I don't think it was pushed because his voice wasn't powerful enough. I think it was pushed because it wasn't high enough.

 

I don't know what Hvorostovsky might have sung that showcased amazing low notes, but he was certainly a baritone (not a genuine Verdi one though).

Also, has anyone else noticed the correlation between overly dark voices & lack of projection??

But it was indeed a very attractive voice.

 

I don't know what Hvorostovsky might have sung that showcased amazing low notes, but he was certainly a baritone (not a genuine Verdi one though).

He sung mostly Russian romantic music at the concert I went to. I don't remember any of the pieces specifically

Also, has anyone else noticed the correlation between overly dark voices & lack of projection??

overtones carry far more readily than undertones.

But it was indeed a very attractive voice.

absolutely! <3

 

I wonder what fach encompasses Isolde, Norma, Medea, Lady Macbeth, Butterfly and the Barbiere Rosina? Just idle curiosity.

 

Well off the top I know Isolde is a hoch dramatischer sopran, but I think Norma defies the fach system lol. They usually want a dramatic soprano or big lyric for Lady M & Butterfly. The others I'm not too sure.

 

I can see how a list of singers of a certain general type could come in handy when a management is in a bind and needs to cast a part quickly. Our common vocal categories - "dramatic soprano," "lyric soprano," "coloratura soprano," etc. - are a convenient shorthand, and if you have to get a loud-voiced soprano or a tweetie-bird in a hurry you can use such lists to (hopefully) avoid major casting snafus. But to get the best available singer for a part (which ought, obviously, to be your goal), you're going to have to be familiar with the work of individual singers, and labels won't help you.

I haven't been able to find out who invented the fach system, but it doesn't surprise me that it seems to have originated in Germany. I may be stereotyping here, but I can't imagine the Italians being an*l enough to think it up.

 

Duplicate post.....

 

Is this not easily solved? You find out what easily attainable range a singer has and you classify that range as whatever you choose to call it to be. So for instance a male singer can hit a C above the stave without sounding as if he is struggling and you can classify him as a, I don't know, say leggero tenor. But if he can still hit that B or C with some real stentorian heft then he would be a real "heldentenor". So we have a little problem here. Pavarotti hitting the high Cs in La Fille du Regiment wouldn't be at all the same voice as Melchior doing it in Lohengrin where B is I think as high as it goes. I think you need to think in terms of what a voice sounds at ease in. Some singers will hit those high notes but they won't sound comfortable so as far as I am concerned that is not their true range. I may be being a tad bit simplistic but that's my opinion so suck it up fans!:lol:

 

Proper details on the 25 Fach voice classifications before arguing for or against the system:
http://choirly.com/voice-types-fach-system/

Evaluations are based on the following vocal characteristics:

range - the notes your body can produce
weight - light voices, bright and agile; heavy voices, powerful, rich, and darker
size - the amount of sound you can produce and your voice's dramatic effect
tessitura - part of the range which is most comfortable to sing
timbre or color - unique voice quality and texture
transition points - points where you change from chest, to middle, to head register
vocal registers - how extended each register is
speech level - speaking range
physical characteristics - height and build
age and experience

These could be very helpful in order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of one's voice without placing anyone in a box.

 

Proper details on the 25 Fach voice classifications before arguing for or against the system:

Thanks for the link Larkenfield, but I don't necessarily agree with their classifications either because they're leaving some out. For instance, wikipedia lists over 30...

 

While there have been a few great artists who succeeded in specialising in a limited repertoire e.g. Schipa and Kraus - it seems to me that versatility has been a far greater factor in the success of Sutherland, Pavarotti, Domingo, Leontyne Price etc etc

In fact, the explanations for vocal decline based on singing outside a particular fach seem pretty suspect to me.

If we take Giuseppe di Stefano as an example, much is made of him singing heavier parts through the 1950s with the corresponding theory that he was singing outside his fach and causing harm to his voice. Critics can point to his Otello, Rienzi, Hoffmann and accuse him of hubris.

Although this seems commonsensical, his career was much more complex than that.

The aforementioned dramatic-tenor parts were in short runs and not repeated. He was still singing in Lucia di Lammermoor, L'incoronazione di Poppea(!), Elisir d'amore and Boheme, albeit less frequently, late into the 1960s/early seventies.

I don't subscribe to the idea that because his technique was problematic that singing 'lighter' roles would have been an answer. It seems implausible to me that anyone listening to his Almaviva, Arturo or Nemorino would think that by rights he should have been a bel-canto specialist?

It is worth mentioning that di Stefano was still singing Arturo in I Puritani as late as 1956 - i.e. after runs at La Scala in Cavalleria Rusticana and Forza del Destino. Yes, he sang the lyrical Nadir in Pecheurs de Perles in July 1953 but he was also singing Enzo in La Gioconda that month. His very best years are criss-crossed with examples of similar adaptability.

It seems to me, rather than looking at fach-flouting (?) as an automatic warning sign, as an intimation of problems to come, flouting these rather artificial categories should instead be seen as not only ok but positive: it was the lifeblood of his career, and the aforementioned careers which exceeded his in longevity.

 

While there have been a few great artists who succeeded in specialising in a limited repertoire e.g. Schipa and Kraus - it seems to me that versatility has been a far greater factor in the success of Sutherland, Pavarotti, Domingo, Leontyne Price etc etc

In fact, the explanations for vocal decline based on singing outside a particular fach seem pretty suspect to me.

It seems to me, rather than looking at fach-flouting (?) as an automatic warning sign, as an intimation of problems to come, flouting these rather artificial categories should instead be seen as not only ok but positive: it was the lifeblood of [Di Stefano's] career, and the aforementioned careers which exceeded his in longevity.

Versatility is not only not the exception among great singers; it's the rule. Most singers of sufficient technical accomplishment should be able to sing roles quite variable in their requirements, and most want to. Likewise, most roles can be sung effectively by very different singers. Carmen sung by Supervia, De los Angeles, Price, and Callas is quite a different experience in each case, but all are effective and their renderings are valid despite the fact that the singers are generally assigned to different fachs.

It's just common sense that a singer shouldn't push his voice beyond its capacity. Instances of this usually involve taking on parts that ask for too much sustained power, too extreme a tessitura, or both. A large, heavy voice might also get into trouble trying to do roles too light, although human psychology is more likely to favor the former problem. Consulting one's "fach" may help to avoid such mistakes, but it may also be unnecessarily limiting. Ultimately you have to try singing the music to know how it feels, and when you know that, it doesn't matter what fach anyone assigns to you.

 

Senesino who was the first to sing the title role in Giulio Cesare was considered a contralto castrato.

N.

 

I thought it would be interesting to go back to the OP and reconsider the question that was posed at the beginning of the thread.

It was suggested that as singers' voices change throughout their careers, then they should also change fach.

It seems to me that that is what the fach system does do, which makes sense for a system designed for use by theatres and agents. Whilst there are always exceptions, most voices develop in the same way as a singer ages and become somewhat darker and fuller. However, singers normally don't change voice type as they age. If you have a system of 30 categories such as the German fach model, then singers are going to move through different fachs (this is inevitable in a system where some categories only have as few as 2 roles).

I am interested in how we can categorise voices best to help teachers and students. Whilst an open mind is necessary during study, it is also useful to have an idea of where you are going and which roles a student can start with, which they should avoid and which should be left for now, but are likely to be future roles. All singers should be prepared to sing outside their category, but most of their roles should be within their category. If most of their roles are in categories that are wildly different to their voice category then they could end up damaging the voice.

I wouldn't limit categories solely to the six voice types, but the 25-30 fachs is too prescriptive to be useful to singers. Whilst a voice changes I wouldn't expect most singers to change voice category in my system of 14 categories over their career, but I would expect them to sing roles at the heavier end of their category that they weren't ready for previously. Taking Sutherland as an example I would class her a spinto (or middle or medium soprano if you don't like the term 'spinto'), that she had a high extension, the flexibility to sing coloratura and the volume of a dramatic soprano is neither here nor there. Therefore had she moved from bel canto to what are normally considered spinto roles I would have seen it as a natural development of the voice within her category.

N.

 

Piggybacking from The Conte's list, how about categories as simple as this?

Lyric Soprano
Dramatic Soprano
Lyric Mezzo
Dramatic Mezzo
Contralto
Lyric Tenor
Dramatic Tenor
Lyric Baritone
Dramatic Baritone
Bass Baritone
Lyric Bass
Dramatic Bass

I think I covered everyone & every role...

 

A noble effort. But if the fach system is to serve its purpose of guiding casting by opera managements, I'll have to suggest a few additions. 1. We need to specify skill in coloratura for all vocal ranges. Most singers are not up to the demands of Rossini and other bel canto roles, or of certain coloratura specialty roles such as Lakme or Zerlina. 2. The heldentenor (basically, Tannhauser, Tristan, Siegmund and Siegfried) really is a bit different from the dramatic tenor in needing not only great power and endurance but a full-bodied lower range and the ability to sing for long periods around the passaggio. 3. Contraltos should surely be differentiated like other range categories. Kathleen Ferrier (see story above) was a very different singer from Ewa Podles.