One of the major problems is in the so called 'early' stages, where teachers are so eager to get students to 'save their voices.' If they hear an 18 year old coming in with an already more dramatic sound than some of the faculty - because dramatic voices *can* start to bloom at around that age with proper training - they always assume they're 'trying to hard' and focus all of their efforts on getting the student to use less of their voice. The problem is, while an 18 year old dramatic voice may have glorious notes, dynamics are the absolute HARDEST thing to get right, especially for them, without constriction. So they are instructed to sing in a constricted manner, and the talent is just wasted.

I feel like the standard of singing would increase dramatically if teachers simply got away from this mentality that the voice should be 'controlled' first and free later, and into the mentality that it should be freed first!

Again nothing to disagree with here. I believe that there are fashions in opera as in any other sphere and these usually occur when a singer comes along who is clearly comfortable in a particular repertoire as for instance Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne for women together with Juan Diego Florez and Samuel Ramey for men in the coloratura repertoire. For most of the early 20th Century such singers did not exist mainly because the fashion was in the heavier repertoire of Verdi, verismo and Wagner. There is slightly less emphasis on these roles now. Nevertheless the cycle will in all probability repeat itself at some time.

History show us that having a weightier voice should not exclude the singer from the lighter repertoire. Examples would be Manuel Garcia Snr., Adolphe Nourrit, Fernando de Lucia, Pol Plancon, Hermann Jadlowker and indeed Ms Joan Sutherland herself. Of course the singer has to be trained to achieve this. For heavier voices this may take more time. I wonder how many teachers, schools and singers are willling to take this time, or indeed have the skills?

Jim

Indeed - Maria Callas and Corelli were living examples of HUGE voices who sang lighter rep.

Heavier voices just need to be approached from a standpoint that, if they are singing coordinated and free, it will SOUND like Puccini. Even 16 year olds are capable of making the sounds with the right training - the real effort comes in in training the muscles to sustain higher pitches for longer durations.

Some voices just have to sing dramatically first.

Hmm..I don't think that the fashion for opera has changed much..It's true that female coloratura singers such as Marilyn Horne or Joan Sutherland and male coloratura singers such as Samuel Ramey and Juan Diego Florez have influenced the tastes and preferences of the opera community through their work on stage but nothing much has changed..

I won't say that there's less emphasis on verismo, Verdi and Wagner. It's just that there are now other genres of opera that come into play in the opera house repertory..You may have performances of Cenerentola or L'Italiana in Algeri in the opera house every now and then but Rossini, Handel or Mozart can't sell as many tickets as Puccini, Verdi, verismo and so on..so Puccini, Verdi, Wagner and so on will continue to have a lot of weight in the opera world.

Anyway, I don't quite agree with what Jim or baritanist said..It's true that huge voices are able to sing light repertory once in a while but how long will they be able to sustain this light repertory? Isn't the best way for singers to keep their singing longevity singing what they're most comfortable with? I don't think huge voices can be comfortable with light repertory..

The great voices sang out of their fach frequently - often WAY out of their fach. When you're trained to your potential, what you're comfortable with increases.

I may get a lot of hell for my opinion on this, but here goes.

Is there a reason why people say 'they don't make em like they used to?'
I believe there is. Tenors, or opera singers in general for that matter, are not as good as they 'used to be'.

Is it because voices are getting worse? Are we devolving as a species in terms of vocal beauty? No. So what is it?

Here is what I am hearing in the singers of today.

They seem to be using a lot MORE effort, but producing a lot LESS sound. No one today knows how to sing sul fiato, - or 'float the voice on the breath' as I like to call it, since that's basically what it sounds like. Most voices sound constricted or pushed in some way or another. I do not hear a single tenor of today that posses a voice with a full range of overtones (chiaroscuro), either the voices are too bright, or artificially darkened (more the latter than the former).

You might say to me, "Well let's hear YOU do better!" Yes, I know I am a nothing, but one does not have to be a great singer himself to hear the flaws in another singer. When you've listened to great singers for years like I have, your ears become wired to recognize a good vocal technique. If the singer does not know how to produce his sound correctly, the result is a very uncomfortable sound to an experienced listener.

A quick example off the top of my head:
Giuseppe di Stefano had one of the most beautiful natural voices ever created as a tenor, I'm sure everyone will agree. But does his method of vocal production (particularly in his later career) not make you squirm in your seat? Because the voice was not properly placed, the singing in general is uncomfortable.
On the other hand Kurt Baum had an extremely unattractive voice - but his superior technique resulted in a sound that was 'comfortable' to listen to, albeit not particularly enjoyable.
I hope I'm making sense here.

I have never been truly satisfied in all my years of attending live opera, because I've never seen a live production where the singers were of the same caliber (technique wise) as those I listen to on recordings (yes I am young). (Yes there have been some great voices). I attended one of Carlo Bergonzi's masterclasses a few years ago, and the 80 year old man had a better vocal production than 100% of the students. Sure, the quality of his voice was no longer up to par with that of the youngsters, but his technique was far superior to that of the students.

There are some people who blame everything on 'terrible vocal instructors of today', but I don't think it is really their fault. It's mostly a general decrease in lack of interest, and there's nothing we can do about it. The tenors who were considered '2nd tier' 50 years ago were better than the 'world class' ones today.

Is it normal to cry when listening to singers of the past on recording? (and to think that what we hear on those 78rpms is 1/4 of what Caruso sounded like in the house!)

-Ted

That really isn't a popular opinion around these parts, but I do agree.

In all voice types, really, there's really just no AMAZING singing. Except for Dolora Zajick, that is. Hers is the most ringing voice I've heard from any singer in the past 20 years. I'd love to have the fortune to hear her live.

You can tell from her recordings that they just can't capture the full beauty and size of her voice, as opposed to other singers today that rely on recording enhancement to make their voices seem to have more squillo.

I think that the whole phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that there are hardly any teachers that know how to handle chest voice anymore. That is where proper squillo comes from, that is where voices get their presence and size. These are all things that voices of today are missing.

And this affects especially the tenors. Since chest is used for approximating the folds, and since teachers today usually don't work on chest correctly, they simply have to either constrict or go into a coordinated falsetto for the top notes - neither of which is very thrilling.

Hi Ted, I’m not going to give you “hell” because of your comment; your thought has been kicked around the Forum before. But I have to ask you: is this general decline in interest (in singing) responsible for you’re presence on G-T? Or rather the reason you are here? From where does the energy come that makes G-T as viable a web-site as it is, if not from an interest in, if not from a love of singing? Do you think we would be here if there were real teachers and we were really singing? We may, but I am pretty sure the “tone” would be different. We would be here to celebrate our successes; to celebrate our great teachers for showing us how to manifest our full heart in our “full” voice; to celebrate our recitals, our debuts and, yes, our lives. Instead we do what? We rant, and why? Because there are great teachers and great singing—I don’t think so. The converse is true. (I must say to the members I am aware that rants make up, maybe, 5% of the content G-T offers; but to that 5% I think the dearth of good teaching applies.) Imo, some of the negative energy spent here is spent because we can’t celebrate. I know where I would be if I had found a teacher in time to help me. Assuming you are a singer, Ted, where would you be? I hope I am not giving you too much hell.

I leave you with these words excerpted from “Da capo . . .” by Bruce Burroughs, Editor (1989-93), The Opera Quarterly, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1991. (I will post the entire article once I get permission to do so.)

"Singers—those immediate, intermediary vessels through which flow the profoundest messages composers of opera live to convey—stand between the composers and their eager hearers, who in turn long for the messages, long to be moved, enlightened, thrilled, renewed by the expression of real affect in sound. That longing is so primal that the most devoted acolytes, in the absence of genuinely meaningful expressive singing, of necessity listen right past the singer to the music itself, there to witness the inherent life and beauty and depth of feeling regardless of the particular utilitarian performance that might be transpiring at any given moment.

“The fixation on, or obsession with, the sound of a great human voice is nothing new. It's not going to go away, either, even if the voices themselves do. It cannot be squelched just because of a dearth of great sounds to latch onto with the heart. The heart will simply remember.”

Bob

Don Giovanni I do not believe that size of voice has any important bearing in terms of facility with colouratura except that heavier voices may take slightly longer to gain that facility. This is time that no one, apparantly, is prepared to give. Where I think there may be a difficulty, for the heavier voice, is that what we now consider colouratura roles also tend to have a higher tessitura in the voice. For a young singer this should not be a problem if properly trained. There is, however greater muscle energy used to maintain this tessitura which is not the case to the same extent in the lighter voiced singer.
As we get older, all athletic activities suffer from a reduction in muscle flexibility, strength and condition. We can slow it but not reverse it. This should mean that the heavier voiced singer will have more difficulty, over time, in sustaining the higher tessitura. Lighter tenors often do not lose their high notes as they get older whereas heavier voiced tenors often do.
I am very interested in baritanist's view on this.
Jim

Ted I do not think that the basic voice is getting worse. I do believe that it is, however, changing characteristics which my basic postulate in this thread. Voices are just as potentially beautiful now as then. Ambitions have however changed for singers, teachers and management and this has lead to the current situation which is practically planned obsolescence. To managements this does not matter as there is a conveyor belt of singers, undertrained, always coming along.

"Well let's hear YOU do better!" is never a valid argument. It is certrainly not an argument that I would use and my interest in debate with somebody who uses such drops immediately to zero. As an aside I was initially taught to swim and trained as a swimmer by someone who could not themselves swim.

I must, however, disagree with your last paragraph to some extent. The average standard of singer training in the past was, I agree, better. Nevertheless there are singers now who will rank with them as long as we do not exclude the singers who are not blessed with huge voices.

I attended 'Romeo et Juliette', Gounod recently, with Mr. Michael Spyres as Romeo. I have a note on it in 'New Tenors'. Not a big voice but a lot of potential. This is not yet a distinctive sound but that may simply be due to lack of familiarity.

Sometimes I think that when people are complaining about the lack of quality now they are often limiting this to big powerful voices. While I do not agree with the limiting I do accept that the bigger voice is not as well produced as it was.

Jim

It is generally true that lighter voices have greater ease and facility is the upper register, but I don't see why a heavy voice can't be flexible.

Of course, since a heavy voice singing high lyric repertoire would require an ENORMOUS amount of muscle activity, there's always the risk of overtaxing the muscles - as with any other muscle.

The rule of thumb is that singing one fach away from your true voice is OK, but two fachs is pushing it. There are challenges in different repertoire that are best dealt with certain voice types.

But then we have singers like Maria Callas and Lauri-Volpi who make me eat those words. It really is a case-by-case thing.

On reading some of my posts above elements of my grammer and systax are quite poor. I have no excuse except that I do not always have time to proof read my replies. On reconsideration I have decided to blame my keyboard.

I am very careful about using Maria Callas as an example in singing. She had a very dramatic early decline and, while many reasons are advanced, I feel her choice of repertoire and style of delivery were, at least to some extent, responsible for this.

While G. Lauri Volpi had a ringing voice in the upper register his middle and lower register was less powerful. I think that the term 'Heroic Tenor' describes his voice, which had no baritonal resonance, very well. I personally do not class him with the heavier voiced tenors. It is also true to say that he did not lose his upper register as he go older.

Jim

Her delivery, probably. Her choice of rep certainly not. She tended to take chest too high and was generally very 'aggressive' in her vocal production. She certainly was capable of singing both verismo and bel canto rep, it just all sounded dramatic - because hers was a dramatic voice.


His voice was hailed as monumentally large, and he was also appreciated for his interpretations of both dramatic and Rossini roles.

You know what I meant. These singers sang roles ranging the gamut, and that didn't really cause them any harm. Maria Callas declined for other reasons, as I mentioned.