# Acquired tastes



## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

I've heard that people find some singers to be 'acquired tastes'. At first, one may not particularly like a singer and then later on come to really enjoy listening to them. I'd be interested to find out people's experiences of this.

For me, it was Cecilia Bartoli. At first, I couldn't stand her timbre or her... 'unorthodox', shall we say, coloratura technique! But I have come to appreciate her artistry and musicality, her passion and dedication, as well as what I now think of as a very beautiful voice.

I also used to find Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Marilyn Horne tricky to put up with, but now I admire them greatly.

Maria Callas is another singer to whom I have not generally enjoyed listening. Some of her early recordings are wonderful, but there is something about her voice that disturbs me, to be honest.

Thoughts and ideas?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

BaronScarpia said:


> Maria Callas .... there is something about her voice that disturbs me, to be honest.


She may have been pleased about that! In some of her roles, what she has to sing should disturb the listener.

Many people will never get to like her voice - she remains a very controversial performer --- even 50 years after her heyday you can still come across vitriolic attack and counter attack (eg on You-tube). I find her singing powerful and very, very moving in many instances, but Mrs Hermit refuses to have her voice in the house (hence the well-used headphones!)


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Very true... her Lady Macbeth is awe-inspiringly perturbing - and that's how she intended it, I hope, given the nature of the role.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

I don't think it's necessary to acquire every taste - we're all different - but it's a good thing to appreciate why other people like a particular thing. (This thread really is about more than opera singers).

On the Maria Callas point, Casta Diva or Vissi d'arte will convince most, at least as to why so many adore her voice. But of course most singers have their high point in particular roles at a particular time of their life. Thankfully, in recordings we can pick and choose. For example, I'll take early Pavarotti recordings but not the later ones, same for Joan Sutherland I guess.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Jon Vickers. At first I couldn't stand his tone. It was just rather bizarre and ugly to my ears. Then I heard him and _Tristan_, and I started to give him a second chance. I soon fell in love with his singing of everything, from _Pagliacci_ to the Verdi Requiem to _Carmen_, to a lovely CD of Italian Arias. His Recondita Armonia in particular is wonderful and unique. He really gets into the soul of his characters, his interpretations overwhelming. He's a force of nature with a peculiarly beautiful voice and outstanding musicianship.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Oddly enough many of the controversial voices (Callas, Gobbi, Vickers) I fell in love with at first listen. It was the more conventionally beautiful voices it took me a while to appreciate. I always loved Schwarzkopf too, and she too was (still is) controversial, though it's not usually the beauty of her voice that is disputed.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Headphone Hermit said:


> She may have been pleased about that! In some of her roles, what she has to sing should disturb the listener.
> 
> Many people will never get to like her voice - she remains a very controversial performer --- even 50 years after her heyday you can still come across vitriolic attack and counter attack (eg on You-tube). I find her singing powerful and very, very moving in many instances, but Mrs Hermit refuses to have her voice in the house (hence the well-used headphones!)


Good for Mrs.Hermit !!
My unfavourite is the awful Peter Pears.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Oddly enough many of the controversial voices (Callas, Gobbi, Vickers) I fell in love with at first listen. It was the more conventionally beautiful voices it took me a while to appreciate. I always loved Schwarzkopf too, and she too was (still is) controversial, though it's not usually the beauty of her voice that is disputed.


I first heard Callas at age 17 in the EMI _Cavalleria_ and _Pagliacci_ and was immediately captivated, Vickers in the Leinsdorf _Walkure_ (loved him), Gobbi in the first Callas _Tosca_ (ditto). At that age I didn't know anything about singing except whether it was effective in the musical-dramatic context. These people are, needless to say, effective! Can we preserve that "innocent ear," I wonder? If we can, despite later knowledge of what constitutes "correct" singing or "beautiful" sound (not that knowledge isn't important), we may find ourselves with fewer initial biases to overcome. As Callas said, "Art is more than beauty."

Change in my reaction to singers usually goes the other way. I liked Sutherland and Pavarotti at first, but now find myself uninterested in both of them except in their earliest recordings, when her style was clean and direct and her mouth able to form words, and he was attentive to the finer points of style, technique and taste. (Oops, sorry! This may not be the place to rag on things we dislike). Perhaps my oddest _acquired_ taste is Rosa Ponselle, universally considered one of the most magnificent voices in recorded history. For years I could hear the greatness but just didn't like the sound. Thank God I no longer have that problem! I think what did it for me was hearing the recordings of songs that were made in her home in 1954, when she was 57, in which her magnificent voice and artistry are irresistible.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> Woodduck: I liked Sutherland and Pavarotti at first, but now find myself uninterested in both of them except in their earliest recordings, when her style was clean and direct and her mouth able to form words, and he was attentive to the finer points of style, technique and taste.


Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. . . I'm only laughing out loud because that is _precisely_ my experience with Sutherland!



> Woodduck: Perhaps my oddest acquired taste is Rosa Ponselle, universally considered one of the most magnificent voices in recorded history. For years I could hear the greatness but just didn't like the sound. Thank God I no longer have that problem! I think what did it for me was hearing the recordings of songs that were made in her home in 1954, when she was 57, in which her magnificent voice and artistry are irresistible.


-- and that recording was made, what?-- like seventeen years _after_ she retired from stage; so I can only imagine what her voice sounded like in the twenties.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. . . I'm only laughing out loud because that is _precisely_ my experience with Sutherland!
> 
> -- and that recording was made, what?-- like seventeen years _after_ she retired from stage; so I can only imagine what her voice sounded like in the twenties.


Indeed. I suspect she sounded very much the same, at least from descriptions I've read. Tullio Serafin said that he had heard three vocal miracles in his life: Caruso, Ruffo, and Ponselle (I would have added Flagstad, but German opera wasn't Serafin's main thing). A few singers from the Golden Age who kept their voices into the 1940s and '50s give us our best understanding of just how the sounds of voices were altered by earlier recording technologies, allowing us to fill in to some degree with our imaginations the rich overtones that old recordings couldn't catch. The highest voices were hurt most - poor Melba and Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci sound like tuning forks or synthesizers! - but Ponselle's sound had such depth that it came across surprisingly well. You may know that Callas considered her the greatest of all sopranos, and asked her for lessons when her own voice was going. Ponselle declined.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Indeed. I suspect she sounded very much the same, at least from descriptions I've read. Tullio Serafin said that he had heard three vocal miracles in his life: Caruso, Ruffo, and Ponselle (I would have added Flagstad, but German opera wasn't Serafin's main thing). A few singers from the Golden Age who kept their voices into the 1940s and '50s give us our best understanding of just how the sounds of voices were altered by earlier recording technologies, allowing us to fill in to some degree with our imaginations the rich overtones that old recordings couldn't catch. The highest voices were hurt most - poor Melba and Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci sound like tuning forks or synthesizers! - but Ponselle's sound had such depth that it came across surprisingly well. You may know that Callas considered her the greatest of all sopranos, and asked her for lessons when her own voice was going. Ponselle declined.


--
I didn't know that about Callas-- thanks.

_Brava_ Ponselle!-- for her dark-great voice.

And_ bravissima _Divina!-- for always being willing to learn from everyone and everything; the consummate artist, always perfecting her craft.


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

I'm afraid my initial impressions of singers' voices don't change with additional exposure. I've certainly tried, in at least some cases, to listen again and see if I can hear what these singers' admirers are hearing. I may find one particular role in which I like him/her, but my overall reaction remains unaltered.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAuer said:


> I'm afraid my initial impressions of singers' voices don't change with additional exposure. I've certainly tried, in at least some cases, to listen again and see if I can hear what these singers' admirers are hearing. I may find one particular role in which I like him/her, but my overall reaction remains unaltered.


And does that difficulty in overcoming a distaste for certain voices annoy you as it does me? There are voices I've had an aversion to for decades and it keeps me from enjoying, or wanting to own, some otherwise desirable recordings. One example that's been bugging me lately: a lot of recently released and acclaimed Wagner recorded live in the '50s is made very trying for me by the dramatic sopranos of that decade between Flagstad and Nilsson - namely, Martha Modl and Astrid Varnay, neither of whose voices fall gratefully on my ear. They sing the lead parts, alas, and the attempt to appreciate their artistry despite their ungainly voices is a three-hour trial I prefer to avoid.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

MAuer said:


> I'm afraid my initial impressions of singers' voices don't change with additional exposure. I've certainly tried, in at least some cases, to listen again and see if I can hear what these singers' admirers are hearing. I may find one particular role in which I like him/her, but my overall reaction remains unaltered.


I'm like you - I have tried and tried to like singers that others rave about but I think I'm too much of an emotional listener or that to work.

The only exception is Philippe Jaroussky. I find the particular timbre of his voice far less viscerally appealing than say, Andreas Scholl, but his sheer artistry has won me over.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

> Woodduck: _I liked Sutherland at first...when her style was clean and direct and her mouth able to form words_


I find that really surprising - her diction was 'mushy' and everything, but, as Antonio Salieri (or at least his librettist) said, _Prima la musica e poi le parole_! To me, none of her faults matter when compared against the incredible sound she produced. Out of interest, does anyone know why her diction went from the comparatively crystal-clear enunciation she had in the 50s and 60s to what it became? I believe that her singing technique made it difficult to sing certain sounds, but why should that have changed?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> And does that difficulty in overcoming a distaste for certain voices annoy you as it does me? There are voices I've had an aversion to for decades and it keeps me from enjoying, or wanting to own, some otherwise desirable recordings. One example that's been bugging me lately: a lot of recently released and acclaimed Wagner recorded live in the '50s is made very trying for me by the dramatic sopranos of that decade between Flagstad and Nilsson - namely, Martha Modl and Astrid Varnay, neither of whose voices fall gratefully on my ear. They sing the lead parts, alas, and the attempt to appreciate their artistry despite their ungainly voices is a three-hour trial I prefer to avoid.


I must confess to liking Modl's Isolde with karajan better than Nilsson's with Bohm, despite the glory of the latter's instrument.
I think on that Bayreuth night in 1952 Modl became Isolde.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I must confess to liking Modl's Isolde with karajan better than Nilsson's with Bohm, despite the glory of the latter's instrument.
> I think on that Bayreuth night in 1952 Modl became Isolde.


---
I'll take an order of that '52 Bayreuth Karajan _Tristan_, but substituting a Dernesch for either a Modl or a Nilsson.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I must confess to liking Modl's Isolde with karajan better than Nilsson's with Bohm, despite the glory of the latter's instrument.
> I think on that Bayreuth night in 1952 Modl became Isolde.


I understand what you mean. I have the Modl/Vinay/Karajan _Tristan_, it is an exciting performance, and yet an hour of hearing MM squeezing her lungs through her throat is just too much for me. I have a kind of "sympathetic string" reaction in my body to the baffling physical process by which she produces her sound; it's not a peculiarity of timbre (which has to do with the sound's overtones) but sounds to this former singer like an anomaly in the muscular functions themselves, and it's tiring to hear. I certainly respect the fact that others won't react with the same antipathy. She was very audibly a fine artist, and reportedly a powerful actress in the theater. I'd love to have seen her - but for listening I need a voice that sounds freer. Me, I want the flood of glorious tone that was Flagstad on the Furtwangler recording. She wasn't the vocal actress that Modl (or even Nilsson) was, but she sings with authority and feeling, and with her perfect legato makes every bar sound like beautiful Romantic music, a fundamental aspect of this score that tends to get lost amid all the neurotic ranting and raving.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> You may know that Callas considered her the greatest of all sopranos, and asked her for lessons when her own voice was going. Ponselle declined.


I heard that the other way round. Legge suggested to Callas that she go to Ponselle, but Callas snapped back, "No way. She started out with better material than me!"

But yes Callas revered Ponselle.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BaronScarpia said:


> I find that really surprising - her diction was 'mushy' and everything, but, as Antonio Salieri (or at least his librettist) said, _Prima la musica e poi le parole_! To me, none of her faults matter when compared against the incredible sound she produced. Out of interest, does anyone know why her diction went from the comparatively crystal-clear enunciation she had in the 50s and 60s to what it became? I believe that her singing technique made it difficult to sing certain sounds, but why should that have changed?


Singing isn't just vocalizing. Composers set words for a reason. Plenty of people have a taste for Sutherland's dazzling vocal flights; occasionally I've enjoyed them myself. It just isn't all I want from opera or music in general. I don't think poor diction is musically irrelevant; the musical phrase is itself built on words and the sounds and rhythms of words, and if you can't project vowels and consonants you're actually weakening the music. Words can be gently caressed, fiercely clipped, furiously spat out. A great composer writes the music accordingly. A singer who marries fine tone-production with beautiful diction in the precise articulation of the musical line can speak with a variety, color, liveliness, intimacy and power unattainable to a mere maker of lovely sounds. Two favorite singers of mine, German soprano Elisabeth Grummer and Italian tenor Tito Schipa, reveal the exquisite beauty and sensuous pleasure of the sung word. Others - Lotte Lehmann, Maria Callas - show how an artist can virtually become the words as she utters them, and so open the doors of our minds to layers of meaning we couldn't have suspected were there.

I don't know what happened with Sutherland's diction. It was pretty clear at first (1950s) and then sometime in the 60s "Casta Diva" became "Cwwwstuh Dwwwvwuh." I gather she and Bonynge were conscious of the criticism she got and she made some effort to improve later on, maybe as she expanded her repertoire farther from its bel canto core; her Turandot is actually pretty well-articulated.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I heard that the other way round. Legge suggested to Callas that she go to Ponselle, but Callas snapped back, "No way. She started out with better material than me!"
> 
> But yes Callas revered Ponselle.


That sounds like the Callas we hear about, but somewhere I read that Callas actually placed a phone call to Ponselle, I think as she was preparing or considering her "comeback" concerts with di Stefano. Possibly both stories are true.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Singing isn't just vocalizing. Composers set words for a reason. Plenty of people have a taste for Sutherland's dazzling vocal flights; occasionally I've enjoyed them myself. It just isn't all I want from opera or music in general. I don't think poor diction is musically irrelevant; the musical phrase is itself built on words and the sounds and rhythms of words, and if you can't project vowels and consonants you're actually weakening the music. Words can be gently caressed, fiercely clipped, furiously spat out. A great composer writes the music accordingly. A singer who marries fine tone-production with beautiful diction in the precise articulation of the musical line can speak with a variety, color, liveliness, intimacy and power unattainable to a mere maker of lovely sounds. Two favorite singers of mine, German soprano Elisabeth Grummer and Italian tenor Tito Schipa, reveal the exquisite beauty and sensuous pleasure of the sung word. Others - Lotte Lehmann, Maria Callas - show how an artist can virtually become the words as she utters them, and so open the doors of our minds to layers of meaning we couldn't have suspected were there.
> 
> I don't know what happened with Sutherland's diction. It was pretty clear at first (1950s) and then sometime in the 60s "Casta Diva" became "Cwwwstuh Dwwwvwuh." I gather she and Bonynge were conscious of the criticism she got and she made some effort to improve later on, maybe as she expanded her repertoire farther from its bel canto core; her Turandot is actually pretty well-articulated.


I so agree with you, and I notice that natural diction seems to be getting worse. Taking as an example English speaking singers singing in English, I find it very hard to understand much of what they are singing nowadays, but if I listen to Kathleen Ferrier, say, I can understand pretty much every word, nor does it interfere with her legato or musical line. There seems no artificial attempt to articulate the words, just natural, unforced English. The same is true of Britten's recording of *The Turn of the Screw*. The fact that so many of the words come across might have something to do with the fact that the voices are further forward in the sound picture on this old mono recording, but again the singers seem to sing words without having to distort vowels and swallow consonants, as so many of them seem to do now.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Regarding Sutherland: She herself has said that she started to aim for a very "round" sound, which meant favoring the vowels over the consonants. I've also heard the claim that the change had something to do with her sinus surgery. I wonder if I'm the only one here who isn't that bothered by her diction, _provided I already know what the words in the libretto are_. I just have to do a little mental adjustment when listening to her, reminding myself that it's an exceptionally round sound, not a slender, precisely defined one. And like Woodduck, I find her diction in her 1970's recordings to be sharper than her diction in most of her 1960's recordings.

Back to the topic of acquired tastes: Callas is the only one that comes to mind. The very first time I heard her was when a local radio station played her recording of I PURITANI. She was singing "Son vergin vezzosa," and I thought to myself, "What an odd voice, and she sounds like she's singing sharp!" Then I checked her "Mad Scenes" album out of the library and thought her voice on that one sounded more ingratiating; I could hear a beauty in it, and I could definitely hear her genius. But I have to say, in all honesty, that I'm still not a _huge_ Callas fan, even though I do have and love a few of her recordings.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Bellinilover said:


> Regarding Sutherland: She herself has said that she started to aim for a very "round" sound, which meant favoring the vowels over the consonants. I've also heard the claim that the change had something to do with her sinus surgery. I wonder if I'm the only one here who isn't that bothered by her diction, _provided I already know what the words in the libretto are_. I just have to do a little mental adjustment when listening to her, reminding myself that it's an exceptionally round sound, not a slender, precisely defined one. And like Woodduck, I find her diction in her 1970's recordings to be sharper than her diction in most of her 1960's recordings.
> 
> Back to the topic of acquired tastes: Callas is the only one that comes to mind. The very first time I heard her was when a local radio station played her recording of I PURITANI. She was singing "Son vergin vezzosa," and I thought to myself, "What an odd voice, and she sounds like she's singing sharp!" Then I checked her "Mad Scenes" album out of the library and thought her voice on that one sounded more ingratiating; I could hear a beauty in it, and I could definitely hear her genius. But I have to say, in all honesty, that I'm still not a _huge_ Callas fan, even though I do have and love a few of her recordings.


In a way you put your finger on what I don't like about Sutherland. This attempt to go for a "round" sound, favouring the vowels and pretty much eliminating the consonants sounds completely unnatural to me, and gives her singing an artificiality that annoys me. In fact I find it much more consciously arty than anything Schwarzkopf ever did.

When I was a student I was the only one of my group of friends who enjoyed opera. One of the reasons they said they didn't like it, was that they didn't like the _artificiality_ (their words) of trained operatic voices. However when I played them Callas, they preferred her, because, to their ears, she sounded, as one of them put it, as if she was singing in her own voice. It may not be very well expressed, but I did sort of understand what they were driving at.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I so agree with you, and I notice that natural diction seems to be getting worse. Taking as an example English speaking singers singing in English, I find it very hard to understand much of what they are singing nowadays, but if I listen to Kathleen Ferrier, say, I can understand pretty much every word, nor does it interfere with her legato or musical line. There seems no artificial attempt to articulate the words, just natural, unforced English. The same is true of Britten's recording of *The Turn of the Screw*. The fact that so many of the words come across might have something to do with the fact that the voices are further forward in the sound picture on this old mono recording, but again the singers seem to sing words without having to distort vowels and swallow consonants, as so many of them seem to do now.


Yes! Absolutely! Listen to John McCormack sing in English. Every word, every letter clear, as if you were reading it off the page. This was what Schipa could do in Italian, so beautifully it brings tears to my eyes (excuse me a minute - where's my hanky?). I believe the handling of words to be an essential part of proper vocal training; bel canto must also mean bel parlo (scusi!). The old singers were trained to do it; the tone floated on the breath, and the words floated on the tone, neither interfering with the other. As you say, there's no apparent effort to articulate words, they just sit gently on the vocal stream like swallows on the breeze. In my recent chatting about singers this is a matter I hadn't been thinking much about, and I'm really grateful that it's come up here, as I think people often don't realize how satisfying clear diction in a singer can be. I actually suspect Pavarotti made the sensation he did not just because of thrilling high notes but because his beautifully clear Italian added much to the appeal of his singing.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> In my recent chatting about singers this is a matter I hadn't been thinking much about, and I'm really grateful that it's come up here, as I think people often don't realize how satisfying clear diction in a singer can be. I actually suspect Pavarotti made the sensation he did not just because of thrilling high notes but because his beautifully clear Italian added much to the appeal of his singing.


Funny you should bring that up. If you listen to the Bonynge recording of *La Fille du Regiment* it is to notice that Pavarotti's diction is so clear, you can hear how bad his French is, but with Sutherland, it's hard to catch what language she is singing.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

*GregMitchell:* I can appreciate what you say about Sutherland, even though I don't completely agree with it.

I love roundness in a voice -- but I also like incisiveness, which is why I've never quite been able to "get into" Leonard Warren's singing. I can hear he had a beautiful and huge voice, but to my ears it has always sounded...not "wobbly," perhaps, but "shuddery" or "sluggish." There's a certain lack of aclarity and firmness, so that while it's sometimes a touching sound it's never struck me as very "dramatic." I have similar feelings about Zinka Milanov and Leonie Rysaneck -- with them, too, there's a certain lack of what J.B. Steane would call a "firm grip." On the other hand, Sutherland's sound in its prime was rock-solid, and of course it always moved up and down the scale with the greatest of ease, yet at the same time there was that roundness that I like so much.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellinilover said:


> Regarding Sutherland: She herself has said that she started to aim for a very "round" sound, which meant favoring the vowels over the consonants.


The irony here is that it isn't just consonants, or even mainly consonants, that are the problem. Her vowels are often vague and hard to distinguish, and have sometimes made me unsure momentarily what language she's singing in. I think there's a fallacy inherent in trying to make one's sound "round," or any other shape, and to "favor" vowels, if that's what she claimed to be doing. A singer's stream of tone ought not to lose its continuity or quality regardless of what vowels or consonants are articulated on top of it. The voice-producing mechanism and the word-articulating muscles should function with complete independence, and when they don't both diction and vocal production suffer. It would seem that Sutherland and her hubby felt that protecting the former required some inactivation of the latter!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Bellinilover said:


> *GregMitchell:* I can appreciate what you say about Sutherland, even though I don't completely agree with it.
> 
> I love roundness in a voice -- but I also like incisiveness, which is why I've never quite been able to "get into" Leonard Warren's singing. I can hear he had a beautiful and huge voice, but to my ears it has always sounded...not "wobbly," perhaps, but "shuddery" or "sluggish." There's a certain lack of aclarity and firmness, so that while it's sometimes a touching sound it's never struck me as very "dramatic." I have similar feelings about Zinka Milanov and Leonie Rysaneck -- with them, too, there's a certain lack of what J.B. Steane would call a "firm grip." On the other hand, Sutherland's sound in its prime was rock-solid, and of course it always moved up and down the scale with the greatest of ease, yet at the same time there was that roundness that I like so much.


Don't get me wrong, I do, as I have often mentioned, appreciate her gifts, and I love her *Art of the Prima Donna* album, though, even here, a certain sameness of interpretation means I prefer to listen to it in bits, rather than in one sitting. This may be the reason her singing doesn't _speak_ to me the way others do. Even in her earlier days, when the diction was much better, I sometimes feel the words don't matter too much to her.

It's interesting too, don't you think, that Sutherland's middle register lost firmness before her upper register did, and in the later records this affects her _legato_. Take an aria like _Senza mamma_. Both Sutherland and Scotto recorded the role quite late in their careers, but whereas Scotto's singing of the opening lines of the aria emerges as one long line (the diction perfect by the way), Sutherland can no longer bind the line together and, though the words are far less clear, there is a little bulge in the tone on each note.

On the other hand, even in her very last recordings, when the voice is in tatters, Callas's _legato_ and sense of line never deserted her.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Marschallin Blair said:


> ---
> I'll take an order of that '52 Bayreuth Karajan _Tristan_, but substituting a Dernesch for either a Modl or a Nilsson.


I don't think Modl needs a substitute. When I got he recording I wax quite prepared for a 'squeezed' voice which people tended to complain of. But to me it's just hugely dramatic. Mind you, Dernesch was another critics belly ached about, nodding sagely (with hindsight) that she wax a raised mezzo. From the recordings I just cannot see why.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> Don't get me wrong, I do, as I have often mentioned, appreciate her gifts, and I love her *Art of the Prima Donna* album, though, even here, a certain sameness of interpretation means I prefer to listen to it in bits, rather than in one sitting. This may be the reason her singing doesn't _speak_ to me the way others do. Even in her earlier days, when the diction was much better, I sometimes feel the words don't matter too much to her.
> 
> It's interesting too, don't you think, that Sutherland's middle register lost firmness before her upper register did, and in the later records this affects her _legato_. Take an aria like _Senza mamma_. Both Sutherland and Scotto recorded the role quite late in their careers, but whereas Scotto's singing of the opening lines of the aria emerges as one long line (the diction perfect by the way), Sutherland can no longer bind the line together and, though the words are far less clear, there is a little bulge in the tone on each note.
> 
> On the other hand, even in her very last recordings, when the voice is in tatters, Callas's _legato_ and sense of line never deserted her.


Yeah, Sutherland's approach to interpretation was definitely sound-based, and I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that; I wouldn't want everyone to take that approach, but it suits some artists. I haven't heard the "Senza mamma," or any Sutherland recording later than 1973 (I PURITANI) -- unless you count the Met LUCIA video from about ten years after that, and I think I do recall that there her middle register was pretty opaque, though I did love her high notes and her overall performance. I always feel bad that I'm not able to get very excited about Warren, because he's generally considered the supreme American Verdi baritone, but on the oher hand I can't deny that my ear just responds much better to the others -- Tibbett, Merrill, MacNeil, Milnes and, in our own time, Quinn Kelsey.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

> *Woodduck*: Singing isn't just vocalizing. Composers set words for a reason. Plenty of people have a taste for Sutherland's dazzling vocal flights; occasionally I've enjoyed them myself. It just isn't all I want from opera or music in general. I don't think poor diction is musically irrelevant; the musical phrase is itself built on words and the sounds and rhythms of words, and if you can't project vowels and consonants you're actually weakening the music. Words can be gently caressed, fiercely clipped, furiously spat out. A great composer writes the music accordingly. A singer who marries fine tone-production with beautiful diction in the precise articulation of the musical line can speak with a variety, color, liveliness, intimacy and power unattainable to a mere maker of lovely sounds. Two favorite singers of mine, German soprano Elisabeth Grummer and Italian tenor Tito Schipa, reveal the exquisite beauty and sensuous pleasure of the sung word. Others - Lotte Lehmann, Maria Callas - show how an artist can virtually become the words as she utters them, and so open the doors of our minds to layers of meaning we couldn't have suspected were there.


I do agree with you, actually; a singer with a superlative sound and terrible diction is infinitely inferior to a singer with the same sound and sharp, pure, clear-cut diction. However, I would also say that having a beautiful , _round_ sound can be enough, provided the voice is expressive enough to convey the emotions that the interpreter, composer or director desires to communicate. On the other hand, opera is, in my opinion, the highest art-form, the culmination of the artistic representation of human emotion; it incorporates music, drama, dance, and, of course, language. Diction and enunciation are certainly of paramount importance, but not, I believe, as crucial as producing a graceful, elegant sound. Perhaps that is why I am not a Callas fan.



> *Bellinilover*: Regarding Sutherland: She herself has said that she started to aim for a very "round" sound, which meant favoring the vowels over the consonants. I've also heard the claim that the change had something to do with her sinus surgery. I wonder if I'm the only one here who isn't that bothered by her diction, provided I already know what the words in the libretto are. I just have to do a little mental adjustment when listening to her, reminding myself that it's an exceptionally round sound, not a slender, precisely defined one. And like Woodduck, I find her diction in her 1970's recordings to be sharper than her diction in most of her 1960's recordings.


Her technique emphasised the production of, as you say, a well-rounded, full sound; her husband actually encouraged her to let the vowels and consonants melt into a sort of endless, 'mushy' stream of vowels! This was, supposedly, in order to achieve a perfect legato. But, as I said to Woodduck, I think that sound alone, music without words, enough to convey emotion. Regarding her sinus surgery, she had it in 1959, just after the famous Lucia, but her diction did not get truly sloppy until the early sixties. Perhaps the 'adjustments' to the sinus took a little time to 'settle in', as it were.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Hmm, I still like the first voices I liked and not crazy about the first ones I wasn't crazy about.
Christoff, Callas, Schwarzkopf, De Los Angeles,Caballe, Janowtz, Gedda, Bjorling, Bergonzi.... loved them all from the first.
Sutherland, Pavarotti, Krauss, Bartolli...........not.
oh well.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> Jon Vickers. At first I couldn't stand his tone. It was just rather bizarre and ugly to my ears. Then I heard him and _Tristan_, and I started to give him a second chance. I soon fell in love with his singing of everything, from _Pagliacci_ to the Verdi Requiem to _Carmen_, to a lovely CD of Italian Arias. His Recondita Armonia in particular is wonderful and unique. He really gets into the soul of his characters, his interpretations overwhelming. He's a force of nature with a peculiarly beautiful voice and outstanding musicianship.


His Florestan under Karajan is amazing.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I am not nearly the voice and opera obsessed which many in this category seem to be, but I do love the voice, a lot of vocal rep, opera included, and as accompanist worked for many a young singer, just one side or the other of professional, and in a number of voice teacher's studios.

I think all here are familiar with the endless fine-haired discussions about this or that singer's vocal production techniques, and I find it at least amusing that so often Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Callas end up being cited as having all wrong to terrible vocal production, and not especially pretty voices.

What overrides mere 'beauty of voice' (I am not a bel canto fan) is the power of interpretation and the intelligence and power of the performer to communicate it. This is why, regardless of what people think of this singer's voice or another in particular goes by the wayside, and we do not stop hearing about Callas, Schwarzkopf or others like them.

Callas, quite through to near the end, colored every syllable of the text to import its full dramatic meaning, i.e. she was a consummate singing actress. There, 'verismo' ruled that sensibility, i.e. a manic near hysterical Violetta singing outside Alfredo's window is not going to be "all about a beautiful sound."

Kiri te Kanawa, until later when a regrettable wobble beyond acceptable vibrato began to more than mar her delivery, _had a voice like a velvet cushion, more than warm and welcoming to simply sink into without any other thought than sheer physical enjoyment._ Cosmetically, a gorgeous sound. Interpretively, not my idea of a high mark in singing.

The 'less than beautiful' voices are more than likely the ones it takes time for a keen fan not yet an aficionado to 'get their minds around.' Hans Hotter singing Der Winterreise is not at all primarily concerned with beauty of sound: instead, in that highest ideal of Lied singing, he is nearly talking to you alone, in a very personal and confidential sounding tone, sometimes near a grumble if appropriate to the text. Glorious voice? Maybe not. Glorious singing, I say absolutely.

There are the rare occurrences of the likes of a Régine Crespin or a Fritz Wunderlich, where interpretation of text is paramount while there is a sustained beauty of sound, and all seems effortless, but very rare that is.

Some singers have such a unique and incredible sound that any and all are attracted while overlooking diction, or dare I say, even the more leaden interpretations -- such is the power of such a sound.

What takes getting used to (with some prodding of an awareness of general high repute which we do not yet 'get') is often simply outside our expectations, and perhaps our already developed and somewhat set preferences. Like Verdi, I think the most important element is the convincing delivery of the text, with the timbrel quality and 'beauty of voice' coming in a far second. Too, I cannot help but be seduced by what I think of as 'beautiful sound.' Even in a history of many extremely fine singers, to have interpretive depth, communicative powers and beauty of sound all together in one performer is rare. (I never cared for Pavarotti because to me he was 'just sound,' -- a freakishly large and beautiful sound, but he could not act his way out of a paper bag, onstage or when singing a canzone, where his peer Placido Domingo could more than sing, and act

Before I have to start ducking objects hurled in my direction, this is all one guy's opinion.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

*BaronScarpia:* You took the words right out of my mouth with your reply to Woodduck; I couldn't agree more, and it's exactly how I feel when listening to Sutherland, _and_ it's probably also why I, like you, am not the biggest Callas fan.

I've thought of two other singers who were acquired tastes for me: Nicolai Gedda and Angela Gheorghiu. My first encounter with Gedda was on the Schippers recording of LA BOHEME from about 1963. I thought his style sounded somehow awkward and his diction too Germanic. However, I've recently come to appreciate him a lot, though I can't say I think he was ideally suited to Italian opera. With Gheorghiu, I thought at first that her voice sounded like it didn't have a "core" to it; I thought she sounded like a pushed-up mezzo, actually. But after more listening I came to like her voice; I now think that darker "underside" gives it drama while the higher notes have real purity and transluscence. Actually, it was reading J.B. Steane's essay on her in "Singers of the Century, Volume 3" that helped changed my mind.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BaronScarpia said:


> I do agree with you, actually; a singer with a superlative sound and terrible diction is infinitely inferior to a singer with the same sound and sharp, pure, clear-cut diction. However, I would also say that having a beautiful , _round_ sound can be enough, provided the voice is expressive enough to convey the emotions that the interpreter, composer or director desires to communicate.


I'm trying to think of a singer who fits your second category. No one comes to mind so far. All the ones I can think of who've been notably expressive have been quite attentive to words and to putting them across. You couldn't be thinking of anyone who also excels in song recitals, where words are critical. I'm not up on all the latest singers, so maybe there are some among them with mediocre diction and great expressive power? Forgive me for being skeptical. It isn't that I think it's illegitimate to enjoy the sound of a voice for its own sake. I just think that such singing is not something that serious singers ought to settle for, much less pursue - and that if they do they necessarily limit their ability to realize the expressive potential of what they are singing. Whether we can enjoy listening to them anyway doesn't change that.

There is vocal music in which the words really don't matter much, or in which there are no words at all. I love Rachmaninov's _Vocalise_, which I don't recall Sutherland ever singing, and I was delighted by her recording of Gliere's _Concerto for Soprano._ I've also enjoyed some of her lighthearted stuff; she did an album of operetta, which not everyone likes but which I enjoyed way back when. She also does an amazing job with some Baroque fireworks like Handel's _Let the Bright Seraphim_, which just knocked my socks off even though I couldn't get all the words. Despite my normally severe tone on this subject, I really am open to having fun with the likes of Joan! Occasionally.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

I know you will disagree with me, but I personally find Joan Sutherland's voice to be incredibly evocative, and, as we all know, her diction was often bad. Another example is the German soprano Simone Kermes, whom I listen to quite frequently. Her diction in Italian is often terrible, and her rendition of _When I am laid in earth_ was barely understandable (in terms of the words she was singing). Yet I find her voice to be richly-coloured, vivid and passionately expressive.

Anna Netrebko, despite her faults (including bad diction) is a great singer whom I like very much. Her voice is powerful (not just in volume, but also emotionally) and moving, yet she often sounds like her mouth is full of marbles!


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

*BaronScarpia:* I agree with you. I've always heard a sincerity in Sutherland's sound. And you and I aren't the only ones -- the late tenor Jerry Hadley said the same thing. Something else I've always noticed is that Sutherland's ways of high notes are themselves expressive. There are some examples on "The Art of the Prima Donna" -- the end of "Vien, diletto," the end of Amina's aria from LA SONNAMBULA, and the end of the Jewel Song from FAUST. Also, on her first TRAVIATA recording her "fervido" in the Brindisi really does suggest burning, a fever. There are many other examples, but I can't list them all here.

I agree about Netrebko, too.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BaronScarpia said:


> I know you will disagree with me, but I personally find Joan Sutherland's voice to be incredibly evocative, and, as we all know, her diction was often bad. Another example is the German soprano Simone Kermes, whom I listen to quite frequently. Her diction in Italian is often terrible, and her rendition of _When I am laid in earth_ was barely understandable (in terms of the words she was singing). Yet I find her voice to be richly-coloured, vivid and passionately expressive.
> 
> Anna Netrebko, despite her faults (including bad diction) is a great singer whom I like very much. Her voice is powerful (not just in volume, but also emotionally) and moving, yet she often sounds like her mouth is full of marbles!


That Kermes clip is indeed beautiful. I can hear the words just fine, though, despite her slight accent; she isn't slurring or swallowing them, merely pronouncing them very delicately close to the microphone, in much the way popular singing is miked. I find it hard to imagine this almost whispered rendition coming across in the same way in the theater, where I suspect she would have to project a bit more. I've heard her in some Vivaldi, and didn't notice a lack of attention to words; in fact it's pretty hard to sing recitatives without such attention. We're also talking about florid baroque music, where the words tend to repeat over and over and the main emphasis is on vocal virtuosity; once you know what the aria is about, you just listen to the voice doing its tricks. Joan had that one down for sure! Netrebko? I'm not a big fan, though I've enjoyed her occasionally. I'm not moved emotionally by her voice as such, but then the sounds of different voices affect us differently. If you like her marbles and all, I say go for it!


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I'm trying to think of a singer who fits your second category. No one comes to mind so far. All the ones I can think of who've been notably expressive have been quite attentive to words and to putting them across. You couldn't be thinking of anyone who also excels in song recitals, where words are critical. I'm not up on all the latest singers, so maybe there are some among them with mediocre diction and great expressive power? Forgive me for being skeptical. It isn't that I think it's illegitimate to enjoy the sound of a voice for its own sake. I just think that such singing is not something that serious singers ought to settle for, much less pursue - and that if they do they necessarily limit their ability to realize the expressive potential of what they are singing. Whether we can enjoy listening to them anyway doesn't change that.
> 
> There is vocal music in which the words really don't matter much, or in which there are no words at all. I love Rachmaninov's _Vocalise_, which I don't recall Sutherland ever singing, and I was delighted by her recording of Gliere's _Concerto for Soprano._ I've also enjoyed some of her lighthearted stuff; she did an album of operetta, which not everyone likes but which I enjoyed way back when. She also does an amazing job with some Baroque fireworks like Handel's _Let the Bright Seraphim_, which just knocked my socks off even though I couldn't get all the words. Despite my normally severe tone on this subject, I really am open to having fun with the likes of Joan! Occasionally.


When Joan was _on_, which admittedly wasn't that often, in the fastest races of the outer stratosphere, she was pure Blackbird to everyone else's Foxbat.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Marschallin Blair said:


> When Joan was _on_, which admittedly wasn't that often, in the fastest races of the outer stratosphere, she was pure Blackbird to everyone else's Foxbat.


Exactly...

Pure who to everyone else's what??? 

No, never mind.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Okay, I'll admit it: I've finally acquired a taste for Roberto Alagna's voice since watching, via Youtube, his recent concert performance as Otello. He sings it extremely well (admittedly, before a microphone) and even manages to act it movingly within the constraints of the format. I think it may be time for me to have an Alagna reevaluation, though I suspect I'll end up liking him more in French opera than Italian.

However -- and I know he has many admirers, so I ask everyone here to bear with me -- one singer I've tried and tried to admire but simply can't is the baritone Leo Nucci. Others rave about him, but I literally can't stand his singing. With Alagna, the problem was that I thought he had a charmless stage presence and a pleasant yet bland timbre; with Nucci, I like the basic color of his voice but _strongly_ dislike the _way_ he sings. He always sounds to me like he's shouting on some pitch more or less above the correct one, and that "lifting up to notes" habit of his is, to me, the aural equivalent of being seasick. He's one taste I'm sure I'll never acquire.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

BaronScarpia said:


> For me, it was Cecilia Bartoli.


If you watch Cecilia sing, her face is making all sorts of contortions and her mouth is opening very wide. I watch other singers such as Frederica von Stade in Cenerentola and she is much calmer in singing and her mouth does not open near as much. It really appears as though Cecilia has to strain to get the sounds out.

I have seen something similar in guitar players (non-classical) where Gary Moore's face is contorting madly with emotions as he plays, but Darryl Trucks is very straight faced and unemotional.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Bartoli is, to my ears, something of a vocal duck billed platypus. like, she has this very light, flexible voice which can reach notes above high C....but with the vocal color of a contralto. it almost sounds like they're not supposed to go together XD


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Exactly...
> 
> Pure who to everyone else's what???
> 
> No, never mind.


Military aircraft, sir. Evidently Marschallin is a secret _Airfix_ modeller as well as being a model in so many other ways 
yes, I know Airfix didn't make a Foxbat, but I don't want to show that I know this - hahaha!


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Florestan said:


> If you watch Cecilia sing, her face is making all sorts of contortions and her mouth is opening very wide. I watch other singers such as Frederica von Stade in Cenerentola and she is much calmer in singing and her mouth does not open near as much. It really appears as though Cecilia has to strain to get the sounds out.
> 
> I have seen something similar in guitar players (non-classical) where Gary Moore's face is contorting madly with emotions as he plays, but Darryl Trucks is very straight faced and unemotional.





BalalaikaBoy said:


> Bartoli is, to my ears, something of a vocal duck billed platypus. like, she has this very light, flexible voice which can reach notes above high C....but with the vocal color of a contralto. it almost sounds like they're not supposed to go together XD


It appears that I was in one of my _phases_ when I wrote this... the more I learn about singing, the more I realise what little technique Cecilia Bartoli actually has 

No longer a fan!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Headphone Hermit said:


> She may have been pleased about that! In some of her roles, what she has to sing should disturb the listener.
> 
> Many people will never get to like her voice - she remains a very controversial performer --- even 50 years after her heyday you can still come across vitriolic attack and counter attack (eg on You-tube). I find her singing powerful staand very, very moving in many instances, but Mrs Hermit refuses to have her voice in the house (hence the well-used headphones!)


Whatever the innate timbre, Callas was one of the supreme actresses using mainly the voice. If the role called for her to be terrified, panicked, uneasy, or any of the spectrum of states of being and range of feelings, that, and often deathly accurate dramatic portrayals, is what still sets her apart from many other great singers. She colored _every note,_ rapid and florid to slow, with pinpoint accurate dramatic intent. That it is so palpable from a recording only, without seeing her, the theatrical setting, is another powerful testament to that remarkable ability in which she had the most superlative prowess.

I think a lot of opera / voice fans, even many an afficiando, are still very much about that timbre which appeals, fundamentally underlying any other criteria they may hold a singer to. I accept that, especially for voice, two singers of the identical fach are more individually distinct than one virtuoso instrumentalist compared to another, and that if they were playing 'identical instruments.'

We have to first take any singer from that base, a completely 'other' instrument than any another singer, then decide what you will about the rest. My musical demands are critically very high, but singers, one to the next, each has come to us with a brand new instrument not quite as familial related as actual instruments. Sometimes, what you have in mind and what a superb singer has can differ more than your preference for one violinist over another, unique as their tone production is.

You either listen enough past your personal preference to get the real goods, or you don't.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

*PeterB wrote:
*
_We have to first take any singer from that base, a completely 'other' instrument than any another singer, then decide what you will about the rest. My musical demands are critically very high, but singers, one to the next, each has come to us with a brand new instrument not quite as familial related as actual instruments. Sometimes, what you have in mind and what a superb singer has can differ more than your preference for one violinist over another, unique as their tone production is.

You either listen enough past your personal preference to get the real goods, or you don't.
_

What you're saying here (if I'm not mistaken) is that the human singing voice _is_ a human voice, and not a man-made instrument like the violin. This, I think, is exactly what many "vocal purists" (and by that I mean the obnoxious sort of "armchair vocal pedagogues" I'm sick of encountering on Youtube -- you know, the kind who love to point out everything that's "wrong" with this or that famous singer's technique) tend to forget. They seem to want every singing voice to sound like a norm or a standard -- like an "ideal" of a Verdi baritone, a coloratura soprano, a Heldentenor, etc. In this type of mindset, the gold standard would be an almost instrumental-like timbre that lacks recognizably human qualities, while any aspect of the voice that deviates from the imagined norm -- _what you and I would call a singer's individual vocal qualities_ (for example, that "bottled" middle register of Callas') -- becomes "evidence" not of a unique voice but of faulty technique.

Is this the type of thing you're referring to?


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Renee Fleming has been a bit of an acquired taste for me. honestly, her notes above high C are boring, but that lower register...omg! I love it!


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Renee Fleming has been a bit of an acquired taste for me. honestly, her notes above high C are boring, but that lower register...omg! I love it!


I'm guessing that the fullness she has in the low range is the reason her higher notes are "narrower" than the rest of her voice. Her voice doesn't open out at the top the way Joan Sutherland's does. But of course, Sutherland's chest register was by her own admission undeveloped.

It's interesting, because Fleming's voice was one I loved from the first, whereas it took me just a little longer to become the fan of Sutherland that I am today.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Bellinilover said:


> I'm guessing that the fullness she has in the low range is the reason her higher notes are "narrower" than the rest of her voice. Her voice doesn't open out at the top the way Joan Sutherland's does. But of course, Sutherland's chest register was by her own admission undeveloped.


precisely! it's not just the fullness though, Fleming's voice (especially in her later career) sits a bit lower than the average lyric soprano, to the point where she could probably cross over and do a decent job singing mezzo roles.

Sutherland's voice didn't just open up, it got BIGGER the higher up the scale she went. she could easily sing high lying passages, combining the natural brilliance of Lakme with the heroic weight of Turandot, all done effortlessly with perfect precision.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Renee Fleming has been a bit of an acquired taste for me. honestly, her notes above high C are boring, but that lower register...omg! I love it!


She's at the wrong end of her 50s but still an excellent and very technical singer. However, she makes some mad choices at times. In particular, bel canto. I remember a bel canto cd of hers winning a Grammy (not so mad after all huh?). Unbelievable. It was a glorified drinks coaster. Was the competition _that_ poor? :lol:
Too many lyric/dramatic sopranos think they're coloraturas.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Couac Addict said:


> She's at the wrong end of her 50s but still an excellent and very technical singer. However, she makes some mad choices at times. In particular, bel canto. I remember a bel canto cd of hers winning a Grammy (not so mad after all huh?). Unbelievable. It was a glorified drinks coaster. Was the competition _that_ poor? :lol:


yeah. she is not as bad as some other singers (ie: Renata Scotto continually insisting that she is a spinto soprano or Gruberova insisting that she has a dramatic voice...), but I wish she would sing repertoire that fit better with the core of her voice, where the sound is the richest and most natural. honestly, at this stage in her career, I would prefer her in _mezzo_ roles to bel canto.



> Too many lyric/dramatic sopranos think they're coloraturas.


bingo! that is precisely why I created this thread:
http://www.talkclassical.com/34290-what-dramatic-coloratura-soprano.html
just because a singer can some coloratura (as most singers, especially female, should be expected to) does not make one a coloratura soprano. the voice must have _natural_ and _effortless_ flexibility (this is, additionally, why I do not consider Maria Callas a coloratura soprano by any standard. to me, she is a deep, dark mezzo at her core with an ability to extend the voice upward through sheer voice of will. a marvelous sound to be sure, but not suited for coloratura roles).


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> (this is, additionally, why I do not consider Maria Callas a coloratura soprano by any standard. to me, she is a deep, dark mezzo at her core with an ability to extend the voice upward through sheer voice of will. a marvelous sound to be sure, but not suited for coloratura roles).


Considering that Callas fried her voice by her mid-late 30s, you would think that would be enough warning to other sopranos.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> yeah. she is not as bad as some other singers (ie: Renata Scotto continually insisting that she is a spinto soprano or Gruberova insisting that she has a dramatic voice...), but I wish she would sing repertoire that fit better with the core of her voice, where the sound is the richest and most natural. honestly, at this stage in her career, I would prefer her in _mezzo_ roles to bel canto.
> 
> bingo! that is precisely why I created this thread:
> http://www.talkclassical.com/34290-what-dramatic-coloratura-soprano.html
> just because a singer can some coloratura (as most singers, especially female, should be expected to) does not make one a coloratura soprano. the voice must have _natural_ and _effortless_ flexibility (this is, additionally, why I do not consider Maria Callas a coloratura soprano by any standard. to me, she is a deep, dark mezzo at her core with an ability to extend the voice upward through sheer voice of will. a marvelous sound to be sure, but not suited for coloratura roles).


This is absolute claptrap. Have you even heard her 1952 *Armida*? Sutherland would envy such ease and power in the coloratura at all extremes of her voice. Have you even listened, properly listened to her Norma in each and every one of her performances up until the second studio recording. The accuracy with which she sings the coloratura passages, allied to the power she gives them is absolutely breathtaking. Have you heard those free ringing top Ebs she sings in the Mad Scene from *I Puritani*? Have you heard what she does in the finale of *La Sonnambula*, where she sweeps up to a _forte_ Eb _in alt_ effects a _diminuendo_ on this stratospheric note then cascades down a two octave chromatic scale, all in one breath. You think this is the voice of a deep dark mezzo?

You seem to have got it into your head that coloratura means high soprano. It does not. _All_ voice ranges up to the late nineteenth century would be expected to sing florid passages with ease. That is what coloratura means. It has absolutely nothing to do with vocal range.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> Considering that Callas fried her voice by her mid-late 30s, you would think that would be enough warning to other sopranos.


A total over-simplification from someone who presumably only has a sketchy knowledge of Callas's work. Yes, her voice did fail her early, and there are hundreds of theories as to why. The extreme weight loss, the punishing schedule she put herself through, the intensity of each performance she gave; all these are touted as possible reasons why her voice let her down so early, and I guess we will never know the real reson. Mind you, considering she was singing Santuzza at the age of 15, it wasn't that short a career, and as Beverly Sills was once reported to have said, "Better 10 years like Callas, than twenty like anyone else!"


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> This is absolute claptrap. Have you even heard her 1952 *Armida*? Sutherland would envy such ease and power in the coloratura at all extremes of her voice. Have you even listened, properly listened to her Norma in each and every one of her performances up until the second studio recording. The accuracy with which she sings the coloratura passages, allied to the power she gives them is absolutely breathtaking.


Callas is the definitive Norma, I will give you that



> Have you heard those free ringing top Ebs she sings in the Mad Scene from *I Puritani*? Have you heard what she does in the finale of *La Sonnambula*, where she sweeps up to a _forte_ Eb _in alt_ effects a _diminuendo_ on this stratospheric note then cascades down a two octave chromatic scale, all in one breath.


these on the other hand sound weaker and seem to come from an unnatural place. in fact, Callas's lyric singing in general sounded unnatural to me. I much prefer her more dramatic work, as her lighter repertoire sounded like a size 16 foot trying to fit itself into a size 10 shoe.



> You think this is the voice of a deep dark mezzo?


sorta of. an assoluta is a voice which comes from a mezzo core and extends up to soprano and dips into the coloratura range



> You seem to have got it into your head that coloratura means high soprano. It does not. _All_ voice ranges up to the late nineteenth century would be expected to sing florid passages with ease. That is what coloratura means. It has absolutely nothing to do with vocal range.


I disagree vehemently, because this is precisely the mindset which has led to the absolute _butchery_ of coloratura singing by modern singers (with a few exceptions). coloratura is a technique which every singer should possess to some degree, but this does not make them a coloratura soprano, mezzo, bass, etc (though the only example of a true coloratura bass I can think of is Samuel Ramey. he is like the basses' answer to Joan Sutherland). there is a big difference between being able to sing a few coloratura passages and managing a role which requires extensive coloratura singing throughout the opera. there is a certain easy of flexibility which is the hallmark of a true coloratura voice, and it is not one which can be compensated for via technique (especially for heavier voices).


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Callas is the definitive Norma, I will give you that
> 
> these on the other hand sound weaker and seem to come from an unnatural place. in fact, Callas's lyric singing in general sounded unnatural to me. I much prefer her more dramatic work, as her lighter repertoire sounded like a size 16 foot trying to fit itself into a size 10 shoe.
> 
> ...


I disagree with just about everything you have to say.

Those Ebs in the *I Puritani* Mad Scene are monumental, free and easy, and twice the size of anything Sutherland ever sang. Absolutely nothing weak about them. And what bout the Eb she sings in the Triumphal Scene of *Aida* in two separate occasions in Mexico, held ringingly for several seconds over the orchestral postlude. It is absolutely massive. I can only conclude that you actually know very little of Callas's work, or have not heard that much of it.

I, on the other hand, have heard just about every live and studio recording she ever made. I'm sticking with my original riposte. Absolute claptrap!

And once and for all, can we get rid of this idea that coloratura only refers to high sopranos. It does not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloratura

You can bend the term to make it mean what you want it to mean as much as you like, but, I'm sorry, it just won't wash!


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I disagree with just about everything you have to say.
> 
> Those Ebs in the *I Puritani* Mad Scene are monumental, free and easy, and twice the size of anything Sutherland ever sang. Absolutely nothing weak about them. And what bout the Eb she sings in the Triumphal Scene of *Aida* in two separate occasions in Mexico, held ringingly for several seconds over the orchestral postlude. It is absolutely massive. I can only conclude that you actually know very little of Callas's work, or have not heard that much of it.
> 
> ...


Sustained and seconded.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I disagree vehemently, because this is precisely the mindset which has led to the absolute _butchery_ of coloratura singing by modern singers (with a few exceptions).


I'm not going to take a position on this because I don't care about modern singers  But have a 'like' for daring to venture into the lions' den that is the Callas fan club on here!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> I'm not going to take a position on this because I don't care about modern singers  But have a 'like' for daring to venture into the lions' den that is the Callas fan club on here!


Callas has been dead almost 40 years. That hardly makes her a modern singer.

And incidentally I have no problem with knowledgeable criticism.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Figleaf said:


> I'm not going to take a position on this because I don't care about modern singers  But have a 'like' for daring to venture into the lions' den that is the Callas fan club on here!


We're a 'fiendly'. . . whoops, I typed too fast-- that is to say: a "friendly" lot.

The sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws.

_;D_


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Callas has been dead almost 60 years. That hardly makes her a modern singer.
> 
> And incidentally I have no problem with knowledgeable criticism.


Wikipedia has her dying in September 77, one month after Elvis. You might want to fix that if it's wrong. I was 7 months old then, so my personal memories don't go back that far.

Balalaika referred to modern singers, you would have to ask him whether he meant Callas or those who are with us now. Both are modern compared to most of my favourites, who mostly belong in the pre electric era!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Bartoli is, to my ears, something of a vocal duck billed platypus. like, she has this very light, flexible voice which can reach notes above high C....but with the vocal color of a contralto. it almost sounds like they're not supposed to go together XD


But they do go together, and they are together, and Bartoli's is a remarkable and, to many, beautiful voice, even if her use of it drives some of us up a wall.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Callas has been dead almost 60 years. That hardly makes her a modern singer.
> And incidentally I have no problem with knowledgeable criticism.


So what does that say about 'modern singers' since they never even_ caught up _with Callas?

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-vaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

_DIV-INA._


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> But they do go together, and they are together, and Bartoli's is a remarkable and, to many, beautiful voice, even if her use of it drives some of us up a wall.


I love Woodduck; such the compulsive truth-teller, altar boy.

<Kiss.>


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> Wikipedia has her dying in September 77, one month after Elvis. You might want to fix that if it's wrong. I was 7 months old then, so my personal memories don't go back that far.
> 
> Balalaika referred to modern singers, you would have to ask him whether he meant Callas or those who are with us now. Both are modern compared to most of my favourites, who mostly belong in the pre electric era!


sorry typo. Now corrected. Still 37 years ago is still quite a long time. She last sang on the operatic stage in 1965. That's almost 50 years ago!


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Callas has been dead almost 40 years. That hardly makes her a modern singer.
> 
> And incidentally I have no problem with knowledgeable criticism.


Ah that's cleared that one up then. Being almost 40 years old is alarming enough, I'm not quite ready to be almost 60!

I remember arguing about the definition of a modern singer with somebody else after I had referred to Chaliapin as modern. I suppose you could say 'proto modern' or some such term for an artist whose style was unusual and original in their own time and whose influence has extended as far as our own time. I wouldn't necessarily see modernity or otherwise as a mere matter of death dates- ars longa vita brevis and all that! Defining a 'modern' singer might be a good topic for another thread.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> Ah that's cleared that one up then. Being almost 40 years old is alarming enough, I'm not quite ready to be almost 60!
> 
> I remember arguing about the definition of a modern singer with somebody else after I had referred to Chaliapin as modern. I suppose you could say 'proto modern' or some such term for an artist whose style was unusual and original in their own time and whose influence has extended as far as our own time. I wouldn't necessarily see modernity or otherwise as a mere matter of death dates- ars longa vita brevis and all that! Defining a 'modern' singer might be a good topic for another thread.


Oddly, when Callas came onto the scene she was not considered a modern singer. Modern singers in Italian opera were those versed in Puccini and the verismo. The good ones, Tebaldi for instance, had firm vocal production but little facility in florid music. Callas, it was felt, harked back to a different age, where a singer would be expected to sing both Norma and Brunnhilde, or even earlier, when Bellini wrote the roles of Norma and Amina for the same singer, Giuditta Pasta, to whom she was most often compared, though of course none of us have any idea what Pasta sounded like. This was going on contemporary descriptions of Pasta by writers such as Henry Chorley.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Oddly, when Callas came onto the scene she was not considered a modern singer. Modern singers in Italian opera were those versed in Puccini and the verismo. The good ones, Tebaldi for instance, had firm vocal production but little facility in florid music. Callas, it was felt, harked back to a different age, where a singer would be expected to sing both Norma and Brunnhilde, or even earlier, when Bellini wrote the roles of Norma and Amina for the same singer, Giuditta Pasta, to whom she was most often compared, though of course none of us have any idea what Pasta sounded like. This was going on contemporary descriptions of Pasta by writers such as Henry Chorley.


It's very tantalising to read descriptions of singers from before the recorded era, and try to imagine how they sounded. I like Henry Pleasants' book 'The Great Singers' which has quite a bit about Pasta. I suppose the closest we can get to her Norma (in terms of ancientness, if not necessarily similarity of style) would be Patti's record of Casta Diva. There at least, presumably, is part of an unbroken vocal tradition going back to Pasta's time. It's very frustrating, in listening to the earliest generation of recorded singers, not to be able to make the sort of direct comparisons with their predecessors which we normally take for granted when we're discussing singers of later generations. The trail just suddenly goes cold.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I disagree with just about everything you have to say.


I figured 



> Those Ebs in the *I Puritani* Mad Scene are monumental, free and easy, and *twice the size of anything Sutherland ever sang.*


um...nooooo
apart from having an overall larger voice than Callas, Sutherland's voice was at it's most resonant in the upper reaches. she would not have had a smaller sound than Callas above high C.



> Absolutely nothing weak about them. And what bout the Eb she sings in the Triumphal Scene of *Aida* in two separate occasions in Mexico, held ringingly for several seconds over the orchestral postlude. It is absolutely massive. I can only conclude that you actually know very little of Callas's work, or have not heard that much of it.


I will grant you this, early Callas was still very much a soprano, but the core of the voice was still not that of a coloratura soprano, and this shows in the high notes. that's not to say there is anything wrong with them. they are beautiful, but they are achieved via a very deliberate lightening of the voice (obviously, all coloratura singing involves some lightening of the voice, but in a voice like Sills, Sutherland or Moser, this lightening is much more effortless, and it shows in their singing). 
PS: voice type aside, her glissandos are *glorious* in Puritani!



> And once and for all, can we get rid of this idea that coloratura only refers to high sopranos. It does not.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloratura
> You can bend the term to make it mean what you want it to mean as much as you like, but, I'm sorry, it just won't wash!


I don't have to do much "bending"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloratura_soprano

@Figleaf 
by "modern" I mean within the last 20 years or so (of course, there are exceptions, such as June Anderson, how sang lovely coloratura). "current" might have been a more apt word.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I figured
> 
> um...nooooo
> apart from having an overall larger voice than Callas, Sutherland's voice was at it's most resonant in the upper reaches. she would not have had a smaller sound than Callas above high C.
> ...


You are so utterly and completely wrong on this I am beginning to laugh. Every contemporary review of Callas in those early days talks about the power of those notes above the stave. Unlike most sopranos who have to narrow the sound in order to get those notes above C, Callas's Ebs sounded exactly like her top Bs and Cs and were just as loud. Nobody had ever heard anything like it before. Used to light soubrettish singers tackling the roles of Elvira and Lucia, Callas was an absolute revolution.

I seriously doubt you have heard any of those early recordings, or maybe you listen but you don't hear.

I'd also suggest you get hold of her live recording of *Nabucco*. Abigaille is a role for a dramatic soprano with a coloratura technique, though very few dramatic sopranos have the necessary skills. Callas confounds its difficulties by sweeping up to a massive, free Eb _in alt_ in the duet with Nabucco, no different in size and quality from the role's many top Cs. Though you'd probably not hear that either.

And, incidentally, later in her career when she came to record Dalila's solos from *Samson et Dalila*, Legge says she had difficulty sustaining the low tessitura. She manages it with her usual skill, but there is no doubting the centre of the voice, even then, lay higher.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

I don't think I'm explaining myself well here. I'll respond later after I take a nap 
however, briefly


> I'd also suggest you get hold of her live recording of Nabucco. Abigaille is a role for a dramatic soprano with a coloratura technique, though very few dramatic sopranos have the necessary skills. Callas confounds its difficulties by sweeping up to a massive, free Eb in alt in the duet with Nabucco, no different in size and quality from the role's many top Cs. Though you'd probably not hear that either.


this recording is, to my ears, the exception (ie, the one where she REALLY sounds like a dramatic coloratura soprano). and yes, you are right, the Eb here is magnificent. one of my favorite duets in fact


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I don't think I'm explaining myself well here. I'll respond later after I take a nap
> however, briefly
> 
> this recording is, to my ears, the exception (ie, the one where she REALLY sounds like a dramatic coloratura soprano). and yes, you are right, the Eb here is magnificent. one of my favorite duets in fact


Maybe you are not explaining yourself properly, no.

Anyway ultimately why does it matter? Callas was a supremely gifted and talented artist who was able to bring her huge vocal range and her wide palette of vocal colours to a large amount of different works. Furthermore, she was able to render those scores with a great deal more accuracy than singers with richer, more centrally positioned voice.

You may not think she was a coloratura soprano, but her coloratura technique was second to none, her command of trills, scale passages, gruppetti, all those little graces taught to her by her teacher Elvida de Hidalgo, absolutely phenomenal, and a good deal better than a singer like Caballe, who also sang many bel canto roles.

I assume you know that Bellini wrote Norma and Amina in *La Sonnanbula* for the same singer, Giuditta Pasta. When Callas came on the scene, she rescued *Norma* from the grip of ill-equipped lyric-dramatic singers like Milanov and Cigna, who glossed over its coloratura demands, and Amina from the doll-like soubrettes who used it to show off their high notes and flexibility, giving Amina back her human dimension. Her Lucia was considered revolutionary long before Sutherland sang it at Covent Garden, for the opera gained a tragic force few even suspected was there. There is a story of Toti Dal Monte visiting Callas in her dressing room after a performance of the opera, tears streaming down her face, and confessing that until then she had no idea of the opera's power.

So in the end, your erroneous assumption that Callas was a deep dark mezzo matters not one whiff. It does not alter the fact that she was one of the greatest opera singers of the post-war period, and to my mind the very greatest. Everything she did was at the service of music not at the service of her voice.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Maybe you are not explaining yourself properly, no.
> 
> Anyway ultimately why does it matter? Callas was a supremely gifted and talented artist who was able to bring her huge vocal range and her wide palette of vocal colours to a large amount of different works. Furthermore, she was able to render those scores with a great deal more accuracy than singers with richer, more centrally positioned voice.
> 
> ...


I think Greg just penned a Requiem for someone recently burried. . . and I thought_ Berlioz_ had talent.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> stuff


yeah, this is getting pointless. anyway, I can compromise and say that Callas was more of a spinto/dramatic soprano rather than a mezzo, but you *never* convince me that her coloratura or notes above high C could match Sutherland, cuz...just...no


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Ooh, things have gotten heated in my absence! I will just say that I understand what BalalaikaBoy is saying about Callas having too big a voice for coloratura roles. I still do prefer Callas in Verdi and Puccini (and Norma, of course), but I have grown to enjoy her as Amina, Lucia and the like. Singers are so often typecast very early on in their careers; I like the fact that Callas could transcend the 'boundaries' of the different voice types.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> Ooh, things have gotten heated in my absence! I will just say that I understand what BalalaikaBoy is saying about Callas having too big a voice for coloratura roles. I still do prefer Callas in Verdi and Puccini (and Norma, of course), but I have grown to enjoy her as Amina, Lucia and the like. Singers are so often typecast very early on in their careers; I like the fact that Callas could transcend the 'boundaries' of the different voice types.


And of course, as I pointed out, Norma and Amina were written for the same singer. It was much later down the line that Norma was allocated to big dramatic voices, who couldn't cope with the coloratura, and Amina to light soubrettish coloratura sopranos.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> And of course, as I pointed out, Norma and Amina were written for the same singer. It was much later down the line that Norma was allocated to big dramatic voices, who couldn't cope with the coloratura, and Amina to light soubrettish coloratura sopranos.


Then there's only _One_ who could do it all.

-- Better ten years Callas than thirty years anyone else.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> And of course, as I pointed out, Norma and Amina were written for the same singer. It was much later down the line that Norma was allocated to big dramatic voices, who couldn't cope with the coloratura, and Amina to light soubrettish coloratura sopranos.


But I think Pasta had one of those 'big dramatic voices' - descriptions of it seem similar to those of Callas's, in fact.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> But I think Pasta had one of those 'big dramatic voices' - descriptions of it seem similar to those of Callas's, in fact.


Well it may have been a dramatic voice, but, like all singers of her generation, she would have had a full command of fioriture, gruppetti, scale passages and all the vocal graces that were considered necessary back then. Many of the big voices who sang Norma later (Milanov, Cigna) simply didn't have the vocal skills to do the role justice, which is why Callas was such a revelation, though those with longer memories may well have remembered Ponselle.

On the other hand, Amina, like Lucia di Lammermoor, was taken over by light colourless coloraturas, who used the role to show off their flexibility and high notes, which wasn't Bellini's intention at all. Actually his favourite Amina was Malibran, for whom he made several downward transpositions. I assume that is the version Bartoli sang when she recorded it (not a version I enjoy). It would also have been the version Von Stade sang when she sang the role at Covent Garden some years ago. I didn't see her in it, but I would imagine it suited her very well.


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## Autumn Leaves (Jan 3, 2014)

I don't know myself now how it had been, but I didn't like Heinz Zednik for a long time. I thought his voice and acting manner odd and disharmonious. It was after watching the Met's 1990 Das Rheingold recording with him as Mime that I changed my opinion.



BaronScarpia said:


> For me, it was Cecilia Bartoli. At first, I couldn't stand her timbre or her... 'unorthodox', shall we say, coloratura technique! But I have come to appreciate her artistry and musicality, her passion and dedication, as well as what I now think of as a very beautiful voice.


So one can come to admire Bartoli… I'll have to listen more to her recordings. Her singing in the 1999 Marriage of Figaro was for me… well, I would have stopped listening at the very beginning had it not been for Terfel, Croft and (sic!) Zednik.


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