# Is there a darker voice then Ada Crossley’s??



## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Listen to this amazing recording-





Does anyone know of a darker female voice in the history of recorded vocals?

Only now found out about her. She is phenomenal!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Honestly, I'm not sure her voice is darker than some other contraltos. On recordings of that vintage timbre is a little hard to judge. What I _do_ find peculiar about her is her vibrato, which is just a quick and not entirely consistent trembling, suggesting at times the bleating quality known as "caprino." It's preferable to the big throb of many other singers (especially nowadays), but it makes me suspect some muscular inhibition in the vocal mechanism. "Pure" voices were preferred back then; Schumann-Heink and Patti, for example, had very narrow vibratos, but theirs didn't puzzle me or give me the same uncomfortable feeling.

I looked this up to enlarge my sense of Crossley's singing:


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

I see what you mean about the vibrato, sometimes not even and in the recording you posted sometimes it is fast but not narrow enough while still not even. From what I know this is probably connected to poor use or weak muscles that are in charge of the stamina amongst other things.




But Listening to this recording- I cannot be but mesmerized by her dark color. Maybe it's just me but I feel like it is darker then Schumann-Heink's. 
Did you Adelina Patti?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Try this on for size


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Honestly, I'm not sure her voice is darker than some other contraltos. On recordings of that vintage timbre is a little hard to judge. What I _do_ find peculiar about her is her vibrato, which is just a quick and not entirely consistent trembling, suggesting at times the bleating quality known as "caprino." It's preferable to the big throb of many other singers (especially nowadays), but it makes me suspect some muscular inhibition in the vocal mechanism. "Pure" voices were preferred back then; Schumann-Heink and Patti, for example, had very narrow vibratos, but theirs didn't puzzle me or give me the same uncomfortable feeling.
> 
> I looked this up to enlarge my sense of Crossley's singing:


I think of this as the "early romantic" style, though it plainly continued through the romantic era, and examples of it survived into the early age of recording. Purity of tone, elegant but delicate phrasing, and a rapid but shallow vibrato, often used sparingly, are some of the hallmarks. My theory is that the age of recording, and ultra-large venues, where projection and intensity became paramount, largely put an end to it.

Adelina Patti is probably a leading example for whom recordings survive, though Ada Crossley seems to be another good one. On the violin, Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953) is a leading example, a late product of the pre-recording era.

Compare Crossley with Adolphe Hennebains (1862-1914), a leading flutist of his day who worked with Landowska, Cortot, Enescu, Thibaud, and the singers Louise Grandjean and Alice Verlet. The Hennebains style of flute playing for the most part rapidly disappeared after the 1920s, with one major exception.

Jean-Pierre Rampal's main teacher, his father Joseph, was a Hennebains student. Ironically, throughout his career, though praised for his purity of tone, elegance and phenomenal technique, Rampal's playing often was criticized as shallow, superficial, one dimensional, and not sufficiently emotionally compelling, especially in baroque, classical and early romantic repertoire. To me this is a demonstration of how we have come to reject the early romantic approach as a matter of course. But we rediscover it from time to time, as with Ada Crossley.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> I think of this as the "early romantic" style, though it plainly continued through the romantic era, and examples of it survived into the early age of recording. Purity of tone, elegant but delicate phrasing, and a rapid but shallow vibrato, often used sparingly, are some of the hallmarks. *My theory is that the age of recording, and ultra-large venues, where projection and intensity became paramount, largely put an end to it.*


I think the change in singing style early in the 20th century was necessitated primarily by changes in music itself, specifically the later works of Wagner and Verdi, and then Strauss, Puccini and verismo.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I think the change in singing style early in the 20th century was necessitated primarily by changes in music itself, specifically the later works of Wagner and Verdi, and then Strauss, Puccini and verismo.


Yes. As the venues and audiences got larger, the instruments got louder, and the orchestras got larger, beginning back in the mid-19th century, the music also became larger scale in many ways. I think it's a chicken or egg kind of question as to which caused which, as each trend contributed to the other. Attending a Mozart opera at the cavernous Met, and various similar experiences, has really brought home to me how pre-late romantic music was smaller scale and designed for smaller venues. Pre-1850 instruments tend to be different, too -- sweeter sounding and less powerful and resonant, with the piano being the leading example.

But I also think the rising importance of recording, with electric microphones, high fidelity recording and broadcast radio beginning in the 1920s, made a big difference in music generally and singing in particular, classical and otherwise.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes.  As the venues and audiences got larger, the instruments got louder, and the orchestras got larger, beginning back in the mid-19th century, the music also became larger scale in many ways. I think it's a chicken or egg kind of question as to which caused which, as each trend contributed to the other. Attending a Mozart opera at the cavernous Met, and various similar experiences, has really brought home to me how pre-late romantic music was smaller scale and designed for smaller venues. Pre-1850 instruments tend to be different, too -- sweeter sounding and less powerful and resonant, with the piano being the leading example.
> 
> But I also think the rising importance of recording, with electric microphones, high fidelity recording and broadcast radio beginning in the 1920s, made a big difference in music generally and singing in particular, classical and otherwise.


It's safe to say that larger auditoriums do make the use of larger musical forces practical and will thus encourage the production of works employing such forces. But there were more fundamental aesthetic motives for Beethoven to expand the Classical symphony into an "Eroica" or a Ninth. The aspirations of the Romantic imagination, as seen in the conceptions of Berlioz and Wagner, were ultimately neither created nor constrained by considerations of acoustics and audience size. The Romantics' reach for the infinite and the ineffable was certainly not driven by such practical considerations, even if the composers for practical reasons had to take such considerations into account.

But isn't this generalized talk of bigger orchestras and halls obfuscating the question at hand, which is about changes in style we think we're hearing in singers around 1900, in the early years of recording? We actually don't know exactly how people sang in earlier periods, but we are told that Baroque operas were sung by voices of great power belonging to singers of prodigious lung capacity. We also know that public opera houses built in the 18th century were not intimate spaces made for small parties of aristocrats. Here's a short but useful article:

https://petersenvoicestudio.com/2017/01/06/historical-perspectives-the-opera-house-size-myth-part-i/

La Scala, e.g., was built to accommodate 3000 people during the lifetime of Mozart. It stands to reason that singers were expected to make a powerful impression in such a space, and if the acoustics are good there is no reason why they shouldn't (ancient Greek amphitheaters being a perfect illustration of this).

The development of vocal technique and style in the centuries before recording is an area of some controversy. But however Giuditta Pasta sang Norma in the 3000-seat La Scala in 1831, I think it's safe to say that her vocal capacity and expressive effect were not determined by the size and acoustics of the venue. Arguments about weaker instruments and smaller auditoriums would seem mostly rationalizations of modern notions of "authenticity," and serve as an excuse for the emaciated sounds produced by too many singers specializing in pre-Romantic repertoire. But the castrati used to engage in competitions with trumpets.

Finally, I doubt that recordings had anything to do with changes in singing in the early years. They may, however, have had the effect, ultimately, of making singers and other musicians more cautious - both more fastidious ("correct") and less spontaneous and interesting. In any case, that's what I hear.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Operasinger said:


> Listen to this amazing recording-
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Is that a yodel at 0:56?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Yes, but don't forget, the larger and louder the orchestra, the louder the singer must be to be heard over it. When experienced musicians with no opera experience go to their first live performance, the first thing they often remark on is how loud the singers are. Of course, they are unaccustomed to unamplified singing, especially in a large auditorium.

I've been to La Scala, built in 1780 to replace something smaller, and with a capacity of 2,030, 1,987 after recent renovations. I've also been to the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, which was built, burned down, and rebuilt four times between 1780 and 1856, each time significantly larger than the earlier version, current capacity 1,780. (The Bolshoi actually looks like a larger space, but perhaps doesn't go as high?) The Musikverein in Vienna opened in 1870 with a capacity of 2,854, and Carnegie Hall in 1891 with a capacity of 2,804. It looks like the latest trend is slightly the other way, as the Berlin Philharmonie seats "only" 2,440 and the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles seats only 2,265. The increasing size of these halls from the late 18th to the late 19th century came with a corresponding increase in the size of orchestras. While this is only one of many factors in the development of western music over this period, it is a significant factor.

But the impact of recording and broadcasting on all music performance, which you are right has been gradual, cannot in my opinion be overestimated.

From a web site called "Retrospective Music", and admittedly a bit of an over-simplification: "Baroque orchestras had from 10 to 30 players, primarily strings. ... Classical orchestras used 30 to 60 players in four sections: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. ... Romantic orchestras had as many as 100 players or more, and featured greater use of brass and percussion. ... Modern orchestras are a bit smaller than in the Romantic Era."


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

I think we have to be really careful when generalizing with such a paucity of hard evidence. There are some discernible trends: vibrato has definitely slowed and widened; dramatic voices today are "darker" but hollower while lyric voices are "lighter" but more insipid and with less squillo; style today is less spontaneous and fluid, with less legato, portamento and rubato. All these things seems generally true, though there are exceptions and all that.

Beyond that, I think we have to be very careful. Taking Melba and Patti as examples of "early modern style" is a problem because they are both coloratura sopranos, the lightest and smallest voice type, and the recordings of Patti were made well past her prime. Melba's teacher's students all had a distinct sound, even from other sopranos born in the 1860s, which means that they aren't necessarily evidence of common vocal technique of the time. Crossley was a contralto, true. Furthermore, there is also contradictory evidence.

Francesco Navarini, born 1855. I doubt his technique was influenced by recording.




As you can hear, it's a huge voice, though well controlled, with a vibrato and coloring (as far as can be determined through the recording) that would not be out of place in the 1950s.

Hermann Winkelmann, born 1849.




Sounds indistinguishable to me from any number of tenors recorded in the 19teens who were born in the 1880s and 1890s.

Battistini (b. 1856) would be another example. Although we think of his style as 19th century, his vocal production, though much more natural, free, and secure than most singers who followed, did not show any unusually quick or shallow vibrato from a 20th century listener's perspective.

One should also consider the students of Antonio Cotogni (b. 1831), who include De Luca, Stracciari, Donarelli, Lazzari, and Basiola (who was said to have obsessively copied Cotogni's technique and style), and he coached singers like Battistini, Gigli, and Ruffo. The first thing to notice about this group is that they are a distinct: De Luca is an utterly refined 19th century stylist, while Stracciari is a refined but gigantic verismo voice. Lazzari would not be out of place in the 50s either.

Furthermore, many old sopranos have focused but highly penetrating voices that I can't imagine were trained with a smaller sound in mind. Here Blanche Arral (b. 1864) demonstrates a piercing (but beautiful) sound with full chest on bottom.





Lilli Lehmann, who was acclaimed in roles across the spectrum (remember that _Melba_ was a famous Aida in her day, but so were much larger voiced singers -- presumably they could both be heard over similar orchestras) and trained Geraldine Farrar.









Felia Litvinne (b. 1860, studied with Victor Maurel and Pauline Viardot) demonstrates that same piercing tone, but in an overall larger voice than Arral, but again with full chest.

I suppose if we're taking the 1860s as the transition point (but neither verismo nor recording existed then, and Wagner's operas were new, so why a transition?), we could say that these are examples of the beginning of late romantic style, but I'm just not convinced we can make any sure claims.

As for before the recorded era, Woodduck is correct that voices were said to be very powerful and dramatic. Instruments weren't as loud and theaters weren't generally as big, but we don't know what they would have considered a normal relationship between voice and orchestra. We know these singers trained their chest voices, and the result of that is a powerful sound, that's just how the mechanism works. Ultimately, though, I think we can't really know what we want to, which is exactly what they sounded like. I just think there's reason to believe it's more complicated than the usual story of "small, light, agile voices, refined but not dramatic" turn into "huge behemoth voices lacking in elegance" that (often) HIP fans want to push because it supposedly legitimates their insipid vocals. 19th and 18th century vocalists may have been more elegant, but I'm not convinced they had small voices.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vivalagentenuova said:


> As for before the recorded era, Woodduck is correct that voices were said to be very powerful and dramatic. Instruments weren't as loud and theaters weren't generally as big, but we don't know what they would have considered a normal relationship between voice and orchestra. *We know these singers trained their chest voices, and the result of that is a powerful sound, that's just how the mechanism works.* Ultimately, though, I think we can't really know what we want to, which is exactly what they sounded like. I just think there's reason to believe it's more complicated than the usual story of "small, light, agile voices, refined but not dramatic" turn into "huge behemoth voices lacking in elegance" that (often) HIP fans want to push because it supposedly legitimates their insipid vocals. *19th and 18th century vocalists may have been more elegant, but I'm not convinced they had small voices.*


Neither am I. A well-trained voice is a powerful voice, and the human vocal mechanism has not changed since the ancient Greeks spoke/declaimed/sang their dramas in the open air. My guess is that the great singers of Handel's or Bellini's day would be heard quite satisfactorily at the Met.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

So much to think about after reading and listening to your comments here, thanks!

When I used the word dark to describe Crossley’s voice I wasn’t trying to say that she was using more head voice then other singers of her time. I feel like her color in general no matter to the technique that she is using is just dark.

When I started this thread I was starting to think that maybe at the turn of the century there was a change in style in general but after reading Vivalagentenouva’s post I think it’s only the style of teaching specific to Marchesi (also was Crossley’s teacher). The students of her that I heard in recordings so far, had a different approach to how they start their pitch, and their phrasing and legato is different then other singers of the same time. At list that’s what I hear.

It is so true that all the mechanism was there since forever. And also I’m thinking how people where living in communities, without phones megaphones and so on…. I really believe that the vast majority of people before 1930-40 had naturally bigger chest voice cause they had to use it all the time throughout their life. And so any starting point of any singing student was to get to the teacher with tons of chest voice and maybe sometimes even no head voice at all and this is the perspective of which they also wrote all of their singing instructions books. 
I would be very surprised if it somehow turn out that earlier on in 1800 or earlier people where less loud in general and in singing. I’m sure they were much louder, in general, then us today. 
This means naturally better starting point for developing the voice and following a naturally better path for gaining the best kind of operatic singing.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I think we have to be really careful when generalizing with such a paucity of hard evidence.


I agree re the importance of evidence, and there is hard historical evidence, some of which I've cited in this and other threads here, such as design of instruments and the scoring for and size of ensembles, though of course no contemporary recordings, of classical and early romantic instrumental and vocal styles prevalent circa 1750-1850. That does not mean romantic styles that prevailed later didn't have roots and precedents pre-1850, or that the early romantic style I've described did not persist well after 1850.

Listen to Thibaud play the Kreutzer sonata with Cortot in 1929. Heifetz and Milstein already were big international stars. Who would play it this way today? And what major star making solo recordings sings like Ada Crossley today? There would be hoots of derision, here included.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Operasinger said:


> It is so true that all the mechanism was there since forever. And also *I'm thinking how people where living in communities, without phones megaphones and so on…. I really believe that the vast majority of people before 1930-40 had naturally bigger chest voice cause they had to use it all the time throughout their life.* And so any starting point of any singing student was to get to the teacher with tons of chest voice and maybe sometimes even no head voice at all and this is the perspective of which they also wrote all of their singing instructions books.
> *I would be very surprised if it somehow turn out that earlier on in 1800 or earlier people where less loud in general and in singing. I'm sure they were much louder, in general, then us today. *
> This means naturally better starting point for developing the voice and following a naturally better path for gaining the best kind of operatic singing.


Interesting. I've never thought of it this way.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

nina foresti said:


> Try this on for size


Thanks Nina! Yes I learned about Yma Sumac from my first voice teacher back when I was a teenager she gave me a cd of Sumac and Muzio and a few others. What made wanna sing opera so much


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> Interesting. I've never thought of it this way.


At one point I was determined to prove this and was looking for old street sound recordings…. The oldest I could find was this from NY in the 1920s….
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/10/22/239870539/the-sounds-of-new-york-city-circa-1920

Lots and lots of fine chest voice all around for men and women :tiphat:


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Operasinger said:


> It is so true that all the mechanism was there since forever. And also I'm thinking how people where living in communities, without phones megaphones and so on…. I really believe that the vast majority of people before 1930-40 had naturally bigger chest voice cause they had to use it all the time throughout their life. And so any starting point of any singing student was to get to the teacher with tons of chest voice and maybe sometimes even no head voice at all and this is the perspective of which they also wrote all of their singing instructions books.
> I would be very surprised if it somehow turn out that earlier on in 1800 or earlier people where less loud in general and in singing. I'm sure they were much louder, in general, then us today.
> This means naturally better starting point for developing the voice and following a naturally better path for gaining the best kind of operatic singing.


I think this is an excellent point. One of the first things I notice in any old recording of people speaking, particularly trained speakers like actors or announcers, is the superb clarity of their voices. You really can hear every word distinctly. The soft toned NPR reporter is a very modern sound.

On Crossley's sound, I agree that she has a lot of falsetto in her sound. I think female singers of the early recorded period did incorporate more falsetto into their sound than singers of say, the 1950s. But they were coordinated properly. Melba always has strong chest on the bottom, and so did almost all singers of that era. This is part of why I prefer early 20th century female singers to mid 20th century. If you listen to young Flagstad and then Nilsson, Nilsson (despite many reservations I have about her) was able to produce a piercing, striking tone life Flagstad, but Flagstad not only had even greater security and power but more warmth. I suspect that warmth comes from some secret falsetto coordination that they were able to do that is completely lost, and was even mostly lost by the mid 20th century. Tebaldi has it a little bit, especially early on, but Fuchs, Flagstad, Leider, Traubel, Leisner, Austral, Litvinne, Onegin, Kirkby-Lunn, and so many more had it, but it disappeared somewhere in the 1940s or 50s, and is almost completely lost now. Somehow we got from there to today, where female voices are falsetto dominant or mixed so that it produces a very ugly, hollow, dark sound. I refer to that old contralto sound as "purple" sound, because it sounds so resonant but soft, which fits my subjective impression of the color purple, but mostly because I associate it with singers who I discovered through Lebendige Vergangenheit CDs that had purple covers. 








These singers also have marvelous falsetto coordination.



fluteman said:


> That does not mean romantic styles that prevailed later didn't have roots and precedents pre-1850, or that the early romantic style I've described did not persist well after 1850.


Agreed, and I would add that vocal styles were likely much more heterogeneous before air travel and recordings, which is one of the reasons I'm hesitant to call someone like Crossley "early romantic" style, though Navarini (who uses plenty of 19th century stylistic devices like portamento etc) has just as much right to that term.



fluteman said:


> I agree re the importance of evidence, and there is hard historical evidence, some of which I've cited in this and other threads here, such as design of instruments and the scoring for and size of ensembles, though of course no contemporary recordings, of classical and early romantic instrumental and vocal styles prevalent circa 1750-1850.


I agree about that evidence, but I'm not comfortable concluding from that that earlier voices lacked squillo/power whatever you want to call it. In fact, the penetrating power associated with real squillo and the advantages of fully developed registers would make it easier for singers to adjust their power to the venue and orchestra at hand.



fluteman said:


> And what major star making solo recordings sings like Ada Crossley today? There would be hoots of derision, here included.


Totally agree there! I'm not trying to argue there's been no change -- in fact, probably most of my 500 something posts have been about how voices have changed since the early 20th century. I'm not saying that there's no difference between Ada Crossley and her contemporaries and today -- far from it! There's all the difference in the world, and we have tons of evidence from the recorded period to specify those changes. I'm arguing that we shouldn't generalize from a crop of smaller voices (though I doubt that Melba sounded small at all in the big Met, where she sang up to five times a week for years) singers who didn't use much vibrato to all pre-1890s singers, and that we should be hesitant about concluding that opera voices have become "bigger" over time. That may be true, but opera voices have many qualities and the language to describe them is hard to define, so we should be careful. I would agree that voices have grown less cultivated, less refined, less flexible, and more unwieldy, that vibrato amplitude has increased and frequency decreased on average. I would point to singers like Battistini and Lehmann, though, to say you can have both a big, powerful voice, and supreme flexibility, spontaneity, and vocal refinement.

btw, I love old instrumental recordings as well. Renee Chemet playing Saint-Saens Introduction et Rondo opened up old violin recordings to me, and it is indeed a very different world.



Woodduck said:


> My guess is that the great singers of Handel's or Bellini's day would be heard quite satisfactorily at the Met.


Agreed.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

> I suspect that warmth comes from some secret falsetto coordination that they were able to do that is completely lost, and was even mostly lost by the mid 20th century. Tebaldi has it a little bit, especially early on, but Fuchs, Flagstad, Leider, Traubel, Leisner, Austral, Litvinne, Onegin, Kirkby-Lunn, and so many more had it, but it disappeared somewhere in the 1940s or 50s, and is almost completely lost now.


Yes. That's what happens when you have the chest voice practiced and developed then you can hear it's ingredient (the clarity) in the entire range. And then how much dark or bright the sound is, is a matter of style and artistic choice. But also a metter of practice. One would sing the Louise aria with much less darkness in the high notes then the aria of Ariadne which then you would strive to the darkness of Flagstad.

But I make a difference between this kind of play on dark-bright, and another kind which is the color of someone's voice. That is something that is in a whole let's say to me I hear Crossley's color as brown, when she sings she passes through a bunch of different shades of brown (in the dark-bright, chest-head realm) but in general she has a specific unique kind of color to her voice that is unique to her and is different then any other person's in the world. And I think each of us have it.
And in her specific case I think it also very very dark color .
Anyway that's how I perceive it..


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I would agree that voices have grown less cultivated, less refined, less flexible, and more unwieldy, that vibrato amplitude has increased and frequency decreased on average.


Yes. And what most likely is the main underlying cause of those trends? What is the biggest difference between now and the 19th century or earlier when it comes to music? Technology is the most obvious answer. Electricity, amplification, and recording. I didn't mean to suggest vocalists were somehow weaker or less skilled in the pre-recording era. That seems very unlikely. But I don't entirely buy the "nobody knows how to sing anymore" idea either. A different portfolio of skills is required in the modern era.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

pianozach said:


> Is that a yodel at 0:56?


Most likely. The technique between yodeling and well developed chest voice isn't that different (in fact, most cultures have sung that way in chest voice throughout recorded history). The main difference is that yodelers exaggerate the disconnect between the registers and opera singers gradually reduce chest voice participation and increase head voice participation. Mediocre opera singers try to "switch" between chest and head voice as if they represent concrete locations within the voice (bad singers just...don't develop one or the other at all), but in actuality, the chest voice and head voice are simply different muscles that give a different quality to the sound. As you go higher or lower, it's easier to let one set of be dominant over the other, but good singers maintain some level of participation from both throughout their range.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes. And what most likely is the main underlying cause of those trends? *What is the biggest difference between now and the 19th century or earlier when it comes to music? Technology is the most obvious answer. Electricity, amplification, and recording.*


In what way would amplification and recording result in less refinement and subtlety and bigger vibratos? I don't see the causality. If anything, amplification and recording would seem to encourage subtlety and refinement by providing a medium of greater intimacy than the acoustics of a large hall. Operatic singing evolved to fill live spaces, and is arguably poorly suited to the microphone. That's why popular singers like Bing Crosby crooned with half their vocal capacity. There's just no need for a voice's full resonance. An exact parallel to this can be observed in movies; in early talkies people spoke resonantly and distinctly, as if they were acting onstage, but they soon realized that the microphone made that kind of projection unnecessary. Nowadays there's a lot of portentous whispering for dramatic effect, which frankly annoys the hell out of me.

I'd also suggest that there are many differences between the world of 1850 and the world of 1950, much less 2021. Values and sensibilities change, but on a more concrete level music itself changed enormously. Beyond a sound basic vocal technique, the vocal skills and qualities needed for Mozart and Bellini are not identical to those required by Wagner or Puccini. It's generally understood that the raw, even crude, emotiveness of _verismo_ brought about a change in vocal style, and we can actually hear that change in comparing the early and late recordings of a single singer, Enrico Caruso.



> I didn't mean to suggest vocalists were somehow weaker or less skilled in the pre-recording era. That seems very unlikely. But I don't entirely buy the "nobody knows how to sing anymore" idea either. A different portfolio of skills is required *in the modern era.*


I would replace the words "in the modern era" with the words "by modern music."

I don't think most of us believe, quite, that "nobody knows how to sing anymore," but some good things have been lost, and its pretty hard, listening to the "big stars" on the current operatic stage, not to hear a continuing decline, even within the lifetimes of some of us. It's no accident that most of the opera recordings most of us consider classics date back fifty years or more.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes. And what most likely is the main underlying cause of those trends? What is the biggest difference between now and the 19th century or earlier when it comes to music? Technology is the most obvious answer. Electricity, amplification, and recording. I didn't mean to suggest vocalists were somehow weaker or less skilled in the pre-recording era. That seems very unlikely. But I don't entirely buy the "nobody knows how to sing anymore" idea either. A different portfolio of skills is required in the modern era.


disclaimer: My answer to this is a broad cultural critique. I don't think it's inherently political, but either way, it's probably a bit controversial. Still, I think it's a relevant response to what you're saying here, and imo, an issue that needs to be talked about more.

I don't want to be the "back in my day" guy (I'm only 30. Most of the greats were dead by the time I was born), but I think it goes further. It's not simply a matter of "modern singers don't know how to use their voices correctly". It's a matter of modern _people_ don't know who to use their voices correctly". To my ears, modern people talk kind of like teenagers. It feels strained, tight, a little whiny, as if they've taken the singing style of a teenage pop singer and imitated aspects of it within their speaking voice. Women are increasingly incorporating a kind of Kim Kardashian-esque vocal fry, while men speak in this kind of soft spoken, unassertive tone that lacks body or confidence. In both cases, there is a level of feigned weakness, unconsciously employed as a means of being more relatable, looking more compassionate or trying to avoid a growing culture of tall poppy syndrome.

If you want a counter-example where you can find healthier, more confident sounding voices: blue collar workers. If opera has gone out of its way to sound artificially "classy" and pop music has gone out of its way to sound artificially juvenile, blue collar workers have done neither (I realize I just compared genres of music to a career type, but bear with me). Blue collar works typically have to work outside, call over long distances and be heard over loud construction equipment. As a result, combined with the more unrestrained manners often associated with that class, you end up with people who use their voices more similarly to how our ancestors would have. Voices that carry easily without strain.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ The upper economic classes, working in quiet rooms rather than fields and construction sites, or not having to work at all, have probably always been more soft-spoken than the lower classes. I don't think that's any sort of political hot potato. I'm not sure about the remainder of your value-laden analysis, but I think I'll ignore it except to concur that vocal fry is irritating, especially among broadcasters, who should emulate their distinguished predecessors and talk so that I can understand them from the next room.


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## Solitudine (Aug 6, 2021)

Clara Butt and Jeanne Gerville-Reache.

The two singers had the darkest contralto voice in the recording, They should also be the biggest voice of all contralto.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> ^^^ The upper economic classes, working in quiet rooms rather than fields and construction sites, or not having to work at all, have probably always been more soft-spoken than the lower classes.


I don't doubt that, but I do doubt the matter of degree. Still, many aristocrat courts throughout history have engaged in a ostentatious sort of self-infantilization, so it's entirely possible I would feel differently at, say, the gardens of Versailles, the imperial court of Heian Japan or the harems of Mehmed the Great.

I am routinely amazed at people's willing to deliberately act in as undignified a manner as possible in order to get ahead. It's not that I buy into all the notions of honor, chivalry or bushido of former centuries, but imo, there was enough of it in the air that most people at least needed to _pretend_ to have some. As the point of this little tangent is a speculation as to how people used to speak/use their voice in the past, even pretending to sound more courageous or honorable makes a difference.



> I don't think that's any sort of political hot potato. I'm not sure about the remainder of your value-laden analysis, but I think I'll ignore it except to concur that vocal fry is irritating, especially among broadcasters, who should emulate their distinguished predecessors and talk so that I can understand them from the next room.


no argument there.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

anyway, sorry for the tangent.



Solitudine said:


> Clara Butt and Jeanne Gerville-Reache.
> 
> The two singers had the darkest contralto voice in the recording, They should also be the biggest voice of all contralto.


^this. Ernastine Schumann-Heinke makes the cut too.

While she doesn't have the best technique imo, I would nominate Nathalie Stutzman among modern singers.

side note: in general, yes a deeper voice does tend to correlate with a bigger voice (that is, if we're assuming the person in question is actually a true bass/contralto to begin and not pushing their voice down)


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Solitudine said:


> Clara Butt and Jeanne Gerville-Reache.
> 
> The two singers had the darkest contralto voice in the recording, They should also be the biggest voice of all contralto.


Thank you for that!! And I agree.. their color is at list as dark as Crossley's, and also with greater technique. I still love her unique color though :angel:

Clara Butt is so amazing…


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> To my ears, modern people talk kind of like teenagers. It feels strained, tight, a little whiny, as if they've taken the singing style of a teenage pop singer and imitated aspects of it within their speaking voice. Women are increasingly incorporating a kind of Kim Kardashian-esque vocal fry, while men speak in this kind of soft spoken, unassertive tone that lacks body or confidence. In both cases, there is a level of feigned weakness, unconsciously employed as a means of being more relatable, looking more compassionate or trying to avoid a growing culture of tall poppy syndrome.


The way I've been explaining to myself this big change in general speaking voice, beside the change in life style that made it unnecessary to use the chest voice so much as it used to be. 
I'm thinking of those old first videos that were made. Those old streets videos or just the beginning of visual capturing. I'm not sure what is the history of the mirror. But my point is that you can see so clearly in those videos how people react to this capture to their insecurities jumps out in most cases. And I'm projecting this also to the sound recording the capture of the voice. Also, what was said here before about how singers became much less spontaneous when recordings came along. 
This is a great generalization but I think maybe as humans met with their own visual and auditory reflections there might have been some kind of shift in perspective of how we think of our own behavior.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> In what way would amplification and recording result in less refinement and subtlety and bigger vibratos? I don't see the causality. If anything, amplification and recording would seem to encourage subtlety and refinement by providing a medium of greater intimacy than the acoustics of a large hall. Operatic singing evolved to fill live spaces, and is arguably poorly suited to the microphone. That's why popular singers like Bing Crosby crooned with half their vocal capacity. There's just no need for a voice's full resonance. An exact parallel to this can be observed in movies; in early talkies people spoke resonantly and distinctly, as if they were acting onstage, but they soon realized that the microphone made that kind of projection unnecessary. Nowadays there's a lot of portentous whispering for dramatic effect, which frankly annoys the hell out of me.
> 
> I'd also suggest that there are many differences between the world of 1850 and the world of 1950, much less 2021. Values and sensibilities change, but on a more concrete level music itself changed enormously. Beyond a sound basic vocal technique, the vocal skills and qualities needed for Mozart and Bellini are not identical to those required by Wagner or Puccini. It's generally understood that the raw, even crude, emotiveness of _verismo_ brought about a change in vocal style, and we can actually hear that change in comparing the early and late recordings of a single singer, Enrico Caruso.
> 
> ...


Well, I can't really answer your questions, as I very much disagree that there is less subtlety and refinement in singing today than in earlier eras. What has happened is, a tradition of grand opera that held sway from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries has largely disappeared, except as an historical, i.e., classical, tradition. Various forms of what you dismissively refer to as "modern music" have replaced it. Music itself has changed enormously, as you say, but even more than you suggest. The ground you stand on in making these pronouncements has crumbled away.

Your value judgments regarding singing all seem to be made within the context of that particular musical tradition, without acknowledging that the tradition itself is past its time. And those who take on the task of creating a museum to preserve this historical tradition have the disadvantage of having to appeal as much as possible to modern audiences at large, who unlike you and your fellow expert opera buffs here, don't necessarily appreciate the "true", or appropriately "refined and subtle" techniques used by the greatest practitioners in the era when the grand opera tradition existed. Hence the shenanigans of the Peter Gelbs of the world, and others who sacrilegiously modernize grand opera to your contempt and disgust.

Edit: I hope you see I'm not being 100 percent serious here. Only about 70 percent. ;-)


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

fluteman said:


> Well, I can't really answer your questions, as I very much disagree that there is less subtlety and refinement in singing today than in earlier eras. What has happened is, a tradition of grand opera that held sway from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries has largely disappeared, except as an historical, i.e., classical, tradition. Various forms of what you dismissively refer to as "modern music" have replaced it. Music itself has changed enormously, as you say, but even more than you suggest. The ground you stand on in making these pronouncements has crumbled away.
> 
> Your value judgments regarding singing all seem to be made within the context of that particular musical tradition, without acknowledging that the tradition itself is past its time. *And those who take on the task of creating a museum to preserve this historical tradition have the disadvantage of having to appeal as much as possible to modern audiences at large, who unlike you and your fellow expert opera buffs here, don't necessarily appreciate the "true", or appropriately "refined and subtle" techniques used by the greatest practitioners in the era when the grand opera tradition existed.* Hence the shenanigans of the Peter Gelbs of the world, and others who sacrilegiously modernize grand opera to your contempt and disgust.


The thing is- in my experience, people who have no connection to opera at all, when they listen to an old recording - the crazy coloratura, a long note sustained forever, a sudden change in color- all this "sticks" that all those great singers used to do, they catch the breath of anyone who's listening to it, they see it as out-worldly as if the singer has superpowers (which they kind of do).

You don't need to be an expert to hear and acknowledge this very clear triumphant moments.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't understand your post #30, fluteman. I asked a specific question - "In what way would amplification and recording result in less refinement and subtlety and bigger vibratos?" I thought this question was addressing your idea of what you call the early Romantic style, and it was an attempt to ferret out how you thought recording led to the disappearance of that style. I'm now more confused about your views than ever.



fluteman said:


> I very much disagree that there is less subtlety and refinement in singing today than in earlier eras.


What, then, did you mean in post #5:



> I think of this [the singing style of Ada Crossley and Adelina Patti] as the "early romantic" style, though it plainly continued through the romantic era, and examples of it survived into the early age of recording. Purity of tone, elegant but delicate phrasing...
> 
> [T]hroughout his career, though praised for his purity of tone, elegance and phenomenal technique, Rampal's playing often was criticized as shallow, superficial, one dimensional, and not sufficiently emotionally compelling, especially in baroque, classical and early romantic repertoire. To me this is a demonstration of how we have come to reject the early romantic approach as a matter of course.


You seem to be saying that the "early Romantic style" was pure in tone, elegant, delicate, emotionally compelling, and not shallow, superficial or one-dimensional, but not as big, muscular or aggressive as later ways of singing and playing. That sure sounds like a description of a style that might also be characterized as subtle and refined, among other things. Or am I not understanding? What, exactly, _does_ distinguish the "early Romantic style" - and, for that matter, was there really one such style, and how do we know what it was like, since we weren't around to hear early Romantic musicians perform? Was Liszt's manner of playing the piano elegant and delicate, or were those just elements in his arsenal?



> What has happened is, a tradition of grand opera that held sway from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries has largely disappeared, except as an historical, i.e., classical, tradition. Various forms of what you dismissively refer to as "modern music" have replaced it. Music itself has changed enormously, as you say, but even more than you suggest. The ground you stand on in making these pronouncements has crumbled away.


What pronouncements? What "ground" has "crumbled away"? My only statement about "modern music" is that it requires, in your words, a "different portfolio of skills." That seems self-evident. How is it dismissive?



> Your value judgments regarding singing all seem to be made within the context of that particular musical tradition, without acknowledging that the tradition itself is past its time.


Well, we're talking in this thread precisely about a "particular musical tradition," that of operatic singing. People still sing operas composed between 1600 and 2021, and so the tradition of vocal pedagogy that developed for the purpose of singing opera is still alive. Naturally it has undergone some change over the centuries, though the fundamentals of vocal production remain the same. The question is: how has the tradition evolved? If you think the whole tradition ought to be dead, you aren't going to see that any time soon.



> And those who take on the task of creating a museum to preserve this historical tradition have the disadvantage of having to appeal as much as possible to modern audiences at large, who unlike you and your fellow expert opera buffs here, don't necessarily appreciate the "true", or appropriately "refined and subtle" techniques used by the greatest practitioners in the era when the grand opera tradition existed.


It goes without saying that the performing arts aim to please audiences. But you do seem to be presupposing a certain conception of what sort of singing can do that, and to be assuming that the way opera is currently sung will give present-day audiences the maximum possible pleasure. What basis do you have for concluding this? The most pertinent question here might be: where do you think opera audiences derive their ideas of what singing should sound like? What determines people's musical tastes and expectations? Isn't it primarily what they hear when music is presented to them?



> Hence the shenanigans of the Peter Gelbs of the world, and others who sacrilegiously modernize grand opera to your contempt and disgust.


I feel no contempt toward the present state of operatic singing, merely a sense of loss. I do have contempt for people who screw around with great works of art in ways that undermine their intrinsic nature. But that isn't the same issue as the current state of vocal pedagogy or style of musical execution. We have many admirable operatic artists today for whom opera is very much a living art form and who work hard to do justice to the great music it contains. Why would I feel contempt for them, even though I might find their efforts falling short of what I know the human voice is capable of?

Returning to the point of contention with which this post began: _IS_ there less subtlety and refinement in singing today than in earlier eras? Here are a few of my favorite examples of singing from the first two decades of the 20th century. I'll make no arguments concerning vocal technique, style or interpretation - many such have been made elsewhere on this forum - but I invite comparisons with singers working today, or at any time within the last fifty years.

Mattia Battistini - Ideale (Tosti) 




Adelina Patti - Voi che sapete (Mozart) (recorded 1905, when Patti was 62) 




Enrico Caruso - Una furtiva lagrima (Donizetti) 




Pasquale Amato - Eri tu (Verdi) 




Pol Plancon - Vi ravviso (Bellini) 




I would only ask: if modern audiences were exposed to such singing, would they be oblivious to the vocal skills and musical creativity they were hearing, or might they wonder why their heretofore favorite singers didn't do things like this?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Operasinger said:


> The thing is- in my experience, people who have no connection to opera at all, when they listen to an old recording - the crazy coloratura, a long note sustained forever, a sudden change in color- all this "sticks" that all those great singers used to do, they catch the breath of anyone who's listening to it, they see it as out-worldly as if the singer has superpowers (which they kind of do).
> 
> You don't need to be an expert to hear and acknowledge this very clear triumphant moments.


My experience, and it is pretty extensive, is exactly the opposite. The opera fans I know (not counting the handful of expert buffs who travel to Ring cycles) have dvds and go to simulcasts in movie theaters (one of Gelb's big initiatives). They aren't even attending the operas in person except perhaps on rare occasions, and they certainly don't listen to the historic singers of the 78 era. It is an entirely different experience from that when the western opera tradition was alive and active.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I would only ask: if modern audiences were exposed to such singing, would they be oblivious to the vocal skills and musical creativity they were hearing, or might they wonder why their heretofore favorite singers didn't do things like this?


I don't think they "would be" obvious, I think they are oblivious. The elephant in the room here is, the grand opera tradition that you and Operasinger (and I) prize so highly is gone. If people still wanted it, it would still be here. If people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here. But, save for a few devoted connoisseurs, they do not.

The point I was trying to make about Rampal was not that what I've called the "early romantic" style, recognizable as a significant part of the foundation of his own style, was superior or inferior to anything modern, or all that was going on in the 19th century (I suspect it already was being overtaken by other approaches by the early 19th century), but that it reflects cultural values of the pre-modern, pre-recording, pre-amplified, not always earsplittingly loud and in your face the way things usually are today (to me, anyway), era. In fact, it can be traced in his own lineage directly back to Jean-Louis Tulou (1796-1865), a musical conservative in his own day.

And the irony is, this aspect of his playing earned him heavy criticism his entire career, even as he reached classical superstardom. Too superficial. Not emotional enough. What nonsense. But it shows that people listen to music with modern ears, in the context of their culture as it is in their own lifetimes. For better or worse. What you call "loss" is really the inevitable and never-ending evolution of cultural values.

You don't seem to see or hear it that way. I guess that's why the fact that today we dismiss Ada Crossley as antiquated and odd-sounding is more significant to me than it is to you.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

fluteman said:


> My experience, and it is pretty extensive, is exactly the opposite. The opera fans I know (not counting the handful of expert buffs who travel to Ring cycles) have dvds and go to simulcasts in movie theaters (one of Gelb's big initiatives). They aren't even attending the operas in person except perhaps on rare occasions, and they certainly don't listen to the historic singers of the 78 era. It is an entirely different experience from that when the western opera tradition was alive and active.


I also had the same experience when it comes to fans of opera of today. Meaning people who go to watch performances in the movie theater or in live nowadays.
The experiences I was describing before happened with people who are not familiar with the art form.

When you have institutions all over the world, academics and basically everyone saying that this X kind of vocal sound is operatic singing, then that sound would be seen as operatic singing period. And people who are not familiar with the art form at all and exposed to it for the first time- in my experience, they sometimes like it and sometimes really dislike it. (I don't want to say it is inferior to the older sound, it is just a very specific sound and it is very different from the old sound and doesn't not allow the singer to accomplish some of the phenomenal accomplishments that are possible with the old sound).

Then when you take the one who likes the modern sound and listen to it regularly and introduce to them operatic singing that is much louder much clearer and stronger - it would take an adjustment in their perspective in order to appreciate it. It can sound in the beginning much too screamish or loud and so on.

But Again when giving the chance of listening to people who are completely disconnected and unfamiliar with the art form- they are captured by the super power kind of singing. I once saw the reaction of a 10 year old to the famous video of Nilsson' concert performance of Vissi d'arte. The girl gasped as Nilsson held the high notes in great diminuendo to pp in the end…. Totally hypnotizing!



> I don't think they "would be" obvious, I think they are oblivious. The elephant in the room here is, the grand opera tradition that you and Operasinger (and I) prize so highly is gone. If people still wanted it, it would still be here. If people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here. But, save for a few devoted connoisseurs, they do not.


It is not gone! It is kept alive, for now, through the amazing work of all those people who upload their old collections of recordings to YouTube. People who know about it's existence do want it. How many times I've read the line "if someone would only sing like that today… " I think and hope that more and more modern singers are thriving to find that sound again. I know I do. And I also know it is possible.
This forum is not to be dismissed. It does have power and it has great meaning to the world of opera. Even if it doesn't seem like that right now.
I've found this forum just recently and already learned so much from all of you here. Each time any of you post a recording of someone you love - another step towards understanding better the full abilities of the singing mechanism is made possible.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> I don't think they "would be" obvious, I think they are oblivious. The elephant in the room here is, the grand opera tradition that you and Operasinger (and I) prize so highly is gone. If people still wanted it, it would still be here. * If people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here.* But, save for a few devoted connoisseurs, they do not.
> 
> The point I was trying to make about Rampal was not that what I've called the "early romantic" style, recognizable as a significant part of the foundation of his own style, was superior or inferior to anything modern, or all that was going on in the 19th century (I suspect it already was being overtaken by other approaches by the early 19th century), but that it reflects cultural values of the pre-modern, pre-recording, pre-amplified, not always earsplittingly loud and in your face the way things usually are today (to me, anyway), era. In fact, it can be traced in his own lineage directly back to Jean-Louis Tulou (1796-1865), a musical conservative in his own day.
> 
> ...


I can hardly disagree with you that culture changes and that some things are not as they were. But what comes after the simple acknowledgement of this? Is there a correct response to discerning differences between past and present? You seem to be taking exception to my, or our, or someone's, reactions upon hearing the changes in singing between 1900 and today. Why? What's wrong with my, our, or anyone else's reactions to what I/we/they hear?

Maybe your seeming objection lies here: you believe that the changes in cultural values you find represented by the changes in singing don't constitute an actual loss of anything truly valuable but are merely being "called" a loss by me and others. Is this what we're arguing about? Are you just staunchly defending the subjectivity of values against anyone who presumes to say that one thing can be superior to another? If so, I don't want to engage with that argument. It bores me. But I know - and I think you know too - that some singers have superior vocal skills, and that those singers can use those skills in the service of musical expression at a level beyond the capabilities of other singers. That is not a subjective matter, and changes in the culture can't prevent anyone from discerning such differences if they're interested. Style changes - Callas did not sing like Patti - but the skills that enable styles to exist and find full expression are still available to singers determined to cultivate them, and still audible to those capable of hearing what they make possible.

Your statement that "if people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here" seems to me a virtual tautology, a genuine case of "chicken/egg." It might just be equally accurate to say that if that kind of singing were still here people would want it. I would suggest that when a modern singer does produce a pure, refined, unwobbly sound, employ the full strength of her vocal registers, play with rubato, and shade her phrases with colorations of timbre and dynamic variety, she is acclaimed for it. Will every listener hear or care about these refinements, which some of us would simply call artistry? Of course not. But - not to put too fine a point on it - who the hell cares? For whom do classical singers spend years cultivating their vocal and musical skills? The deaf?

I'm sure you're right in observing that most operagoers don't listen to 78 rpm recordings of Tetrazzini and Schipa, and even on this forum there are those who can't get through the sound of acoustic recordings to hear and understand the remarkable voices that lie partly concealed within them. We can be sympathetic to that (unless those listeners insist that there's really nothing we can conclude about the singing we hear, and that we're just a bunch of old fogeys imagining things). But my guess is that it's the recording quality, more than any "antiquated" qualities in the singing, that's the impediment to enjoyment. For those who can listen through the distortions imposed by recording horns, shellac and cactus needles, the exhibitions we've been bequeathed of well-trained voices operating at the limits of their powers have been and always will be a revelation, to be treasured all the more as planet Earth - or at least the bit of it I live on - goes up in flames.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Viva, you are the best Internet poster I have ever come across. Thank you for your wonderful examples over the years! Somehow I had never heard of Navarini! I love expanding my collection of pre-1860-born singers, though most of the old basses I find are French. I tend not to like Italian basses (I find they overdarken), but this one is irreproachable. The recording does sound suspiciously clear for 1907, though...it's much clearer than all of the hundreds of recordings I have from the 1920s.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

I am going to, at my own peril, wade into the discussion of why modern singing is so different (or bad). I think, like many others, that the invention and popularization of the microphone was the original death knell of powerful, efficient, and consistent singing. I think that the differences between extremely popular singers of the twenties, like John McCormack and Al Jolson, and of the thirties, like Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday, show exactly what we already know and would expect if we didn't know: breathier singing (less firm adduction of the vocal folds), a more speech-like rhythm, and quieter, more intimate performances with a lower tessitura and range.

Classical music is not immune to popular influence. Great classical singers have always performed popular music, from Patti to Kaufmann (who is great by modern acclaim, to be clear). Very few people have ever grown up singing classical repertoire, which is designed for the adult voice, and as the years go on, the percentage of children willingly listening to classical singing has become negligible. Growing up with popular styles enabled by technology of amplification must needs have an effect on the development of the muscular coordination needed to phonate in extremes of volume, duration, and flexibility. But even before we look at the coordination and abilities, the shift in acceptable styles is already jarringly fast.

Hans Duhan singing Morgengruss: 




Fritz Wunderlich singing Morgengruss: 




Can there be any doubt regarding which of these two gentlemen was born after the invention of the microphone? I actually think Wunderlich is a much better singer than Duhan, but the overwhelming modernity of that second recording is unmissable. There are many breathy tones, almost inaudibly light tones, and occasional straight tones. These differences are present throughout their two respective full recordings of this song cycle. I do NOT think that that is a positive development whatsoever, but it can still be defended as a stylistic choice (or foible) at this point. Woodduck, at least in the past, has also pointed out the massive social upheaval that swept the Western world after WWII. I am not qualified or unoccupied enough to give a detailed run down on how and why, but I agree broadly that new artistic standards took hold in the wake of this war, compounding the issues brought on by microphone-style singing. Often, you can hear the same singer take a more crooning-influenced approach compared to his or her prewar style.

Hotter, Der Lindenbaum, 1942: 




Hotter, Der Lindenbaum, 1954: 




The difference here is relatively subtle, and Hotter had a soft, crooning Lieder style even in 42, but I hear a clear difference. 42, even allowing for the compression of the inferior recording technology, is firmer and just generally more projected, and this difference holds over the duration of these two recorded song cycles.

Woodduck asked how a softer, crooning style would lead to less refinement and wider, slower vibrati. Well, spending your whole life both speaking and singing quietly trains your circumlaryngeal muscles to prefer a certain coordination, one that favors quiet, understated phonation. Such a configuration is outstandingly inappropriate for declamation, and its presence causes a host of undesirable muscular tensions in would-be singers. Undesirable muscular tensions lead to less flexible and efficient voices. Less flexible and efficient voices are simply not technically capable of many of the stylistic refinements that characterized previous ages. Undesirable muscular tensions create slow, wide vibrati as well. Even in the olden days, when singers like Melba and Patti were wobble-less into their sixties, there were third- and fourth-rate singers who had wobbles because of their inefficient technique. Stiff, tight muscles from excessive time in a mechanically unfavorable position end up causing injuries and becoming very difficult to loosen. Observe the overwhelming amount of upper-cross syndrome and general anterior rotation of shoulders, neck, and upper back, plus tight hamstrings and posterior pelvic tilt we have today, all thanks to our unnatural seated-before-a-screen posture.

Ruffo and Tibbett had late-career (or mid-career, if you want to be judgmental) vocal breakdowns characterized by halting or slowed vibrato, as did Paul Franz to a much smaller extent, and Miguel Fleta had wobbles nearly throughout his career. Duhan as well had a faster vibrato in his pre-song-cycle recordings. Of course, these are first- or second-rate singers, and these issues are mostly late-career ones. In fact, most wobbles back in the day sound like nothing compared to today's, but of course the older singers did not grow up with amplified singing present everywhere. I apologize for not furnishing proper examples of bad singers wobbling back in the day, but they are never famous singers with careers, and I can't find any right now. In fact, a detailed discussion of wobbling that does a much better job than my divagations can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/21/magazine/vocal-burnout-at-the-opera.html To conclude: wobbles come from bad, tight singing. When it's time to get real real loud, those tight muscles fight back extra hard, and you get a horrific wobble.

Broadly, I believe this affected society as a whole and led to atrophied or miscalibrated throat muscles, coupled with a cultural breakdown that Vivalagentenuova has pointed out before that has cut off and destroyed our connection to the aural tradition of stage singing. This cultural breakdown probably has something to do with the post-WWII societal shakeup, rapid urbanization, generational wartime PTSD, increased living standards, faster transportation, whatever is making us lose testosterone on average (it's true and documented), and various other cultural transformations. For whatever possibly inscrutable reason, we now also have a fundamentally different idea of what good singing SHOULD sound like, even in classical music.

The death of female chest voice, of male supported mezza voce, of general vocal agility, of clarity, etc. is all partially attributable to deliberate technical choices. This has been discussed to death here, though, so I will move on.

I have specifically mentioned the Western world, because the societal shakeup has been much slower in the East. The singers behind the Iron Curtain have broadly been much better and more conservative than those in the West, and now we are seeing a Korean takeover. While they are not up to prewar standards, Soviet singers like Gennadij Pishchaev, Janis Zabers, Vladislav P'javko (pre-wobbles), Aleksandr Vedernikov, and even Vladimir Atlantov showed a level not generally attained by modern Western singers. Even if you take exception with the very top, the trend in German houses has unmistakably been to hire singers from the East.

For illustrative purposes, here is an absolutely EXPLOSIVE P'javko in 1974, right when Del Monaco and Corelli were retiring: 




Of course, the former Eastern Bloc states have been, broadly speaking, culturally homogenized now. To go back to popular culture, the decline in singing of high quality is still very, very visible in this sphere as well. Good singing requires the coordination to produce loud, chesty sounds: good singing is loud a lot of the time. Generations trained to never be loud have lost the ability to sing well, period. Country once had singers like Rex Allen, who could yodel and sing low Cs and was generally an unbelievably beautiful singer. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang hymns with a broadly classical vocal configuration. Later on, it had Mickey Newbury, who combined a classically trained voice with country affectations, but he could still sing full-bodied tones from A2 to A4, with consistent vibrato. Today, country has nobody, and I mean NOBODY, like that.

The seventies and 80s had a number of rock frontmen with soaring, powerful voices, but they are nowhere to be found now. Bands like Kansas, Orleans, and Journey are a relic. I am not saying that there are no good singers in popular music, but they rarely appear in the top-100, and if they do, it's when they're not using their voices healthily. By classical standards, Lady Gaga and Matthew Bellamy of Muse can sing well, for example. But listening to the radio now compared to in the 50s and 60s is truly night and day. Just turn on an oldies station and listen to the general vocal production. Most of the singers had some level of classical training, and it shows.

Look at Soul, Gospel, and R&B. Nobody sings like Sam Cooke anymore--even Marvin Gaye started his career with a lot more chest voice and declamation but quickly shifted into a much headier crooning style, which has absolutely dominated through Donny Hathaway, Luther Vandross, R. Kelly, Ne-Yo, up to today. Gospel groups no longer sound like this: 





or this: 




Because they cannot. Non-classical stage work is just as deeply affected. Compare Gordon Macrae and Robert Goulet to: 




So when you have singers who grow up listening to almost anybody born after 1930, which everybody does, how can you expect them to suddenly change a lifetime's worth of aesthetic acculturation and vocal habits via a few years of inefficient teaching by teachers who themselves generally fail to emulate or even value prewar singers? Especially considering that most of the student's singing experience will have been in popular music in mic'd musicals or mic'd karaoke bars? The world was radically different for someone like Patti, who grew up singing unamplified in salons and churches and mostly sang hymns and Stephen Foster songs. Even once a singer realizes all I've written, it's generally too late.

And if someone grows up listening to classical singing, it's almost invariably relatively recent recordings, which are just not any good at all. People for whatever reason (the ability to see them live?) have a strong bias for new things when it comes to music, and this effect is strongly compounded by the fact that music before the 50s has quite bad playback quality. People grow up with a certain generation of music, as if recordings didn't let you listen to whatever era in the past 120 years you want, and they stick with it, generally. The biggest Beatles fans are pushing 70, and the biggest Ariana Grande fans are between 10 and 20.

Now, when people get up and sing in public, they are told that they're really talented and have such a pretty voice if they sing very breathily with rasp, fry, and an artificial, distorted version of a Black accent from somewhere between Mississippi and Jamaica. If you take a normal person, sit him down, and have him listen to the very best recording that Heinrich Schlusnus ever made, he will simply not like it at all.

And to clarify, when I talk about "good singing," I mean the ability to consistently sing both long and short notes both loudly and quietly, with consistent, even, fast vibrato over a roughly two-octave scale, without a radical difference from the top note to the bottom note, in tune, and with agility. These characteristics were present in popular singers in the past. They are not today. Modern popular music producers and audiences do not seem to look for these qualities, but I refuse to budge from them because they are based on the physiological construction and capabilities of the human being. Anyone with a solid ability to fulfill these demands can succeed in popular and classical varieties.

Tino Rossi, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Muslim Magomaev, and Aurelian Andreescu used to be chart-toppers in their native countries. They were wildly popular, but they still sang in a quasi-traditional style. They would never make it today. Two of the most popular and well-paid singers in the history of the United States are John McCormack and Nelson Eddy. Can you imagine that today? Losing that aural culture, a loss occasioned by technology and general cultural shift, has been fatal to singing standards.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I had a big jock from my Toastmaster's club tell me he hated my opera speeches when he first joined the club but after being exposed over and over to them over a number of years had come to enjoy them and I heavily play singers from the 78 era... Flagstad, Tetrazinni, Ponselle, Traubel, early Callas,etc. People in the club tend to really enjoy them and only a couple are opera fans. I have gotten 10 people from two clubs to attend opera with me from my talks. I think people unfamiliar with the art form can come to enjoy not only opera but the early sound if they are exposed to it in a creative way. They would normally never think to listen to this, but come to enjoy it if they are creatively introduced to it. I am sad to say most younger people will only be exposed to opera if a 9 year old sings O Mio Bambino Caro from America's Got Talent these days. I must say I was not always successful. I did try to play early Callas high notes from Armida for a young snowboarder jock I was seeing and he said, " Please turn that off!" He listened to rap so I think he was unfamiliar with what real music sounded like;-)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I had a big jock from my Toastmaster's club tell me he hated my opera speeches when he first joined the club but after being exposed over and over to them over a number of years had come to enjoy them and I heavily play singers from the 78 era... Flagstad, Tetrazinni, Ponselle, Traubel, early Callas,etc. People in the club tend to really enjoy them and only a couple are opera fans. I have gotten 10 people from two clubs to attend opera with me from my talks. I think people unfamiliar with the art form can come to enjoy not only opera but the early sound if they are exposed to it in a creative way. They would normally never think to listen to this, but come to enjoy it if they are creatively introduced to it. I am sad to say most younger people will only be exposed to opera if a 9 year old sings O Mio Bambino Caro from America's Got Talent these days. I must say I was not always successful. I did try to play early Callas high notes from Armida for a young snowboarder jock I was seeing and he said, " Please turn that off!" He listened to rap so I think he was unfamiliar with what real music sounded like;-)


It's terrific that you're able to arouse interest in opera with your talks. I would question, though, the choice of Callas high notes as anyone's introduction to singing. They aren't even the best introduction to Callas.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

PaulFranz said:


> https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/21/magazine/vocal-burnout-at-the-opera.html


This is possibly the best thing I've read on the current state of singing. Thanks.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It's terrific that you're able to arouse interest in opera with your talks. I would question, though, the choice of Callas high notes as anyone's introduction to singing. They aren't even the best introduction to Callas.


I find her high D's from the big theme and variations aria from Armida to be truly sensational in the 52 version, much more so than the 54 version after the weight loss. In general your qualifying statement is on the money though. The last high note may be my favorite high note of all time.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It's terrific that you're able to arouse interest in opera with your talks. I would question, though, the choice of Callas high notes as anyone's introduction to singing. They aren't even the best introduction to Callas.


I would normally agree with you. but her high notes in *Armida* _are_ stupendous (as is the size and fulidity of her voice in coloratura), and then of course there is that incredible high Eb in the Mexico *Aida* of 1951, one of the most thrilling notes I have ever heard. The one at the end of the Mad Scene from *I Puritani* of 1949 is also a stunner.

But even in her earlier career, high notes could emerge as strident, even if she hadn't yet developed a wobble on them.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> This is possibly the best thing I've read on the current state of singing. Thanks.


And it's from 35 years ago...


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Having read the Crutchfield article I can't even imagine a music critic at a major publication today who has that level of encyclopedic knowledge of singers, recordings, and opera history. It's exceptional. And correct.



PaulFranz said:


> If you take a normal person, sit him down, and have him listen to the very best recording that Heinrich Schlusnus ever made, he will simply not like it at all.


Yes, probably. I have found, though, that repeated exposure along with a kind of gentle empiricism -- helping people to notice the sorts of things that they do with their voices, discriminate between different tone qualities, etc., but not in an overly technical way -- can produce a big change in appreciation of old recordings. I teach a lot of traditional culture to teenagers as a high school teacher and generally the initial reaction is "wtf", or boredom, or outright laughter. But, once you deactivate that first response by gently encouraging them to become reflective, things begin to shift you can connect whatever it is you're teaching to their lives in ways that give them an opening to become involved. It's discouragingly slow and difficult work sometimes, but it can be successful.



Paul Franz said:


> I do NOT think that that is a positive development whatsoever, but it can still be defended as a stylistic choice (or foible) at this point.


And indeed it is defended that way. The blanket excuse for bad singing now is that it either more "musical" or "historically accurate", both of which I seriously dispute. (And I just can never wrap my head around the obsession with historical accuracy that a) totally fails to take into account the best source of evidence for historical singing styles and sounds available, the recorded legacy of the early 20th century, and b) has absolutely nothing to say about utterly anachronistic productions, such that we have critical editions scores played on original instruments sung by straight tones tiny voices church tenors set in some sci-fi dystopia.) Wunderlich had a good voice but he's barely using it here. I found it strained and rather boring, whereas though I had to strain to listen to him through the noise, I found Duhan natural and interesting.



Woodduck said:


> Style changes - Callas did not sing like Patti - but the skills that enable styles to exist and find full expression are still available to singers determined to cultivate them, and still audible to those capable of hearing what they make possible.
> 
> Your statement that "if people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here" seems to me a virtual tautology, a genuine case of "chicken/egg." It might just be equally accurate to say that if that kind of singing were still here people would want it.


Beautifully put, as usual.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I teach a lot of traditional culture to teenagers as a high school teacher and generally the initial reaction is "wtf", or boredom, or outright laughter. But, once you deactivate that first response by gently encouraging them to become reflective, things begin to shift you can connect whatever it is you're teaching to their lives in ways that give them an opening to become involved. It's discouragingly slow and difficult work sometimes, but it can be successful.


It's admirable what you're doing!

Partly because of the conversation here I posted a recording of my singing to this forum - would love it if you'll give it a listen! 
I hope this is not completely inappropriate - Will delete if it is!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Operasinger said:


> This forum is not to be dismissed. It does have power and it has great meaning to the world of opera. Even if it doesn't seem like that right now.
> I've found this forum just recently and already learned so much from all of you here. Each time any of you post a recording of someone you love - another step towards understanding better the full abilities of the singing mechanism is made possible.


Alas, much as I enjoy this forum and the wonderful contributions here by so many, it is to be dismissed, in the sense I am talking about. The very fact that this forum exists means a handful of devoted connoisseurs from all over the world (mostly the English-speaking world, but elsewhere too -- I had a very interesting discussion here with someone from China) need a specialized forum like this, just as there are forums for people who raise rare orchids or keep exotic pets, to connect with each other.

What mystifies me most of all is Woodduck's, and now apparently Oeprasinger's, repeated comments that if only all those ordinary Joes and Janes on the street were able to hear those scratchy 78s from 1908, they would be transformed into fans of the greatness of opera stars long gone.

Well, they are able to hear nearly all of them for free, with one click of a mouse on youtube. But it is a statistical fact that almost none of them click.

I would fear for the future of opera, even in the short term, if the majority of those in power shared the attitudes expressed here. But if anything, to me the majority of those in power go too far in the other direction in their efforts to rework classical opera into modern entertainment.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I had a wonderful musical experience with young people yesterday. I went to a memorial and they had a great band of kids who looked to be just out of high school. In a day when most multicultural teens are steeped in the non musical rap culture these kids were beautifully playing quality jazz standards. I spoke with them and all had been in jazz orchestras in high school. These did not exist when I was in school. Here cultural education like Viva spoke of is working. They used to take kids to the opera in high school but I think they have given up on that. I wish Seattle Schools would let me do talks on opera to kids but that won't fly these days. I think I could get through to some with my enthusiasm. Oh, well.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Having read the Crutchfield article I can't even imagine a music critic at a major publication today who has that level of encyclopedic knowledge of singers, recordings, and opera history. It's exceptional. And correct.
> 
> Yes, probably. I have found, though, that repeated exposure along with a kind of gentle empiricism -- helping people to notice the sorts of things that they do with their voices, discriminate between different tone qualities, etc., but not in an overly technical way -- can produce a big change in appreciation of old recordings. I teach a lot of traditional culture to teenagers as a high school teacher and generally the initial reaction is "wtf", or boredom, or outright laughter. But, once you deactivate that first response by gently encouraging them to become reflective, things begin to shift you can connect whatever it is you're teaching to their lives in ways that give them an opening to become involved. It's discouragingly slow and difficult work sometimes, but it can be successful.
> 
> ...


I love knowing this about you. I used to have a friend who taught in public high school here. Every year he would play the movie of Elektra with Rysanek and Varnay to his literature students over two days. He was a great communicator and the students were absolutely riveted especially since most of them exist in a state of heightened emotions similar to the characters in the opera. No, this is not Golden Age singing like we are discussing in this thread, but it shows how relevant opera can be to a new young crowd when the groundwork is laid. I have introduced opera singers from the pre 1940's period to modern non opera audiences and they were very impressed with the singers when you lead them to the water, so to speak.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> What mystifies me most of all is Woodduck's, and now apparently Oeprasinger's, repeated comments that if only all those ordinary Joes and Janes on the street were able to hear those scratchy 78s from 1908, they would be transformed into fans of the greatness of opera stars long gone.


Well damn! I didn't realize I had offered an opinion on the musical perceptiveness of Janes and Joes on the street. I did offer the suggestion that if _opera audiences_ were to be treated to singing as good as Battistini's, Ruffo's, Caruso's, Schipa's, Gigli's, Schumann-Heink's, Ponselle's, Tetrazzini's, etc. etc., they might very well find that they like it. Isn't that what I said, or something to that effect? Let's see. In post #32 I said:

_"I would only ask: if *modern audiences* were exposed to such singing, would they be oblivious to the vocal skills and musical creativity they were hearing, or might they wonder why their heretofore favorite singers didn't do things like this?"_

And in post #38 I wrote:
_
"Your statement that "if people still wanted the kind of singing you and Operasinger (and I) value, it would still be here" seems to me a virtual tautology, a genuine case of "chicken/egg." It might just be equally accurate to say that if that kind of singing were still here people would want it. I would suggest that when a modern singer does produce a pure, refined, unwobbly sound, employ the full strength of her vocal registers, play with rubato, and shade her phrases with colorations of timbre and dynamic variety, she is acclaimed for it. *Will every listener hear or care about these refinements, which some of us would simply call artistry? Of course not.* *But - not to put too fine a point on it - who the hell cares? For whom do classical singers spend years cultivating their vocal and musical skills? The deaf?"*_

I will now explicitly include among the (effectively) deaf the Janes and Joes on the street. I was not, am not, and will not be, talking about them.

You will now please put on a tall conical cap and go sit on a stool in the corner of the classroom.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Well damn! I didn't realize I had offered an opinion on the musical perceptiveness of Janes and Joes on the street. I did offer the suggestion that if _opera audiences_ were to be treated to singing as good as Battistini's, Ruffo's, Caruso's, Schipa's, Gigli's, Schumann-Heink's, Ponselle's, Tetrazzini's, etc. etc., they might very well find that they like it. Isn't that what I said, or something to that effect? Let's see. In post #32 I said:
> 
> _"I would only ask: if *modern audiences* were exposed to such singing, would they be oblivious to the vocal skills and musical creativity they were hearing, or might they wonder why their heretofore favorite singers didn't do things like this?"_
> 
> ...


Now, now, don't get abusive. I'm on your side. The Thill and Ponselle side, let's say. But I can't ignore my real-world experience in selling classical music concerts to those, young, old and in between, sufficiently interested to actually consider attending such a thing, and spend money for tickets. I didn't mean "Joes and Janes" as a put down. An unfortunate choice of words, I'm sorry.

I've greatly enjoyed the posts here from teachers who have succeeded in introducing their students to the grand opera tradition. If only every school had one of you! But I can't accept the defeatist, and I think unnecessary, attitude you and a few others express when you sigh and say how "sad" it is that there are no longer great opera singers these days who can compare to the stars of the distant past. The thing is, this is a tradition that flourished from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but that has passed its time on center stage for nearly 100 years now. We have to accept that general ideas about music have changed in our society, especially (in my opinion) as we have shifted from all-acoustic live music to electric, amplified, recorded, edited, broadcast, downloaded and streamed music. There are other reasons for the changes too.

To me, that doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and say "how sad." We can accept adjustments in performance traditions if it helps convince today's audience there is something there worthwhile for them. Some of them will look into the old 78s, but we should maintain a broader audience than that. Respectfully, I don't think this opinion makes me a dunce.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Just finished writing a long comment here and it got completely erased…
So the gist of it is that singers have tools they're using. And the manner of which they are using it can only be modern, current, we can't try to make our selves as if we grew up in the 1870.
But the tools that are being used right now (generally) in the operatic world are only a few out of many more that the old singers used to have.

So if anyone who is *not* listening regularly to modern opera performances would have the chance to listen to singers who are using *all* of the tools that the human body allow has to have, and they will do it in a modern manner, they will use their own modern artistry. Then the listeners will be touched and will be engaged, in general much more, I believe then now.

I just had the pleasure of singing, the other day, in a local church with a choir, another soloist and an organ. It was my first performance in front of live people in-person since the end of January 2020. And so it was the first time I sang live while not shying away from all those older tools I've been working on. The kind of reactions I got from people who came to me to say stuff like "I can't believe how your voice is so strong/loud yet you are so small" (physically.. and I'm not that small..) "your voice sounded like a bell" "you where loud but you didn't had that kind of heavy vibrato I dislike", and so on, just for example. 
And I still don't truly employ all that I can in order to create truly phenomenal performance, I'm only at the start here. 
So yes I think it's very possible to mesmerize, engage and draw tears /laughter from any person on this planet through opera. And also singers have been doing that all through this time even when using only small amount of those tools but the more of those tools we employ the easier it would be to capture just anyone on the street.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Operasinger said:


> Just finished writing a long comment here and it got completely erased…
> So the gist of it is that singers have tools they're using. And the manner of which they are using it can only be modern, current, we can't try to make our selves as if we grew up in the 1870.
> But the tools that are being used right now (generally) in the operatic world are only a few out of many more that the old singers used to have.
> 
> ...


I wish I was there to hear that. As an amateur singer, I've had the chance to work close up with some impressive pros, including but not limited to some alumni of Westminster Choir College, a well-known conservatory in my part of the world, so I don't accept the idea that fine singing is a lost art. These people have a thorough training in and understanding of all aspects of vocal technique. I quickly learned that much like a musical instrument, one must work several hours a day, seven days a week even just to rise above beginner level. Alas, I didn't have time for that.

The art of singing is not dead, though the requirements of the music industry have changed. I don't see any reason to dismiss today's general public as "deaf". True, classical grand opera is not the main interest even of most of those who are willing to attend an occasional production. But there are some stars today able to draw an audience to opera, and that is what matters.

Not many years ago, after some particularly dubious performances of the National Anthem at some televised major sports events here in the US, David Letterman invited Renee Fleming to his show and had her sing it. The studio audience, and I'm sure the TV audience, immediately understood the difference between her rendition and what they had been hearing at these sports events. I'm sure some of them investigated her work further as a result. That is a victory for opera, and the classical music tradition generally.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Now, now, don't get abusive.


You misrepresented completely a view I worked hard to make clear. I hardly think it's abusive to razz you about your evident duncery (is that a word? It should be.) I have also never denied that, as you say, "we can accept adjustments in performance traditions if it helps convince today's audience there is something there worthwhile for them." In post #36 I said:

_"Style changes - Callas did not sing like Patti - but the skills that enable styles to exist and find full expression are still available to singers determined to cultivate them, and still audible to those capable of hearing what they make possible."_



> I'm on your side. The Thill and Ponselle side, let's say.


Well, it sure doesn't look that way when you seem not to be hearing what I'm saying.



> But I can't ignore my real-world experience in selling classical music concerts to those, young, old and in between, sufficiently interested to actually consider attending such a thing, and spend money for tickets. I didn't mean "Joes and Janes" as a put down. An unfortunate choice of words, I'm sorry.


It doesn't matter about Jane and Joe on the street. This conversation - I thought - is about operatic singing, and Jane and Joe are not the voice teachers, singers, directors or impresarios responsible for perpetuating the art form. That happy couple may at some point find their way into an opera house, where they are more than welcome, and those who do make opera should certainly want to treat them to the best singing possible.



> I've greatly enjoyed the posts here from teachers who have succeeded in introducing their students to the grand opera tradition. If only every school had one of you! But I can't accept the defeatist, and I think unnecessary, attitude you and a few others express when you sigh and say how "sad" it is that there are no longer great opera singers these days who can compare to the stars of the distant past.


How anyone can listen to some of the mediocre-to-awful singing that lately emanates from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, and then put on a recording of Jussi Bjorling and Bidu Sayao singing the same music in a Met performance from the 1940s (or, hell, even Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming from the 1980s), and not feel sad, is beyond me. Perhaps I should just shut up and not share my sadness with others here?



> The thing is, this is a tradition that flourished from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but that has passed its time on center stage for nearly 100 years now. We have to accept that general ideas about music have changed in our society, especially (in my opinion) as we have shifted from all-acoustic live music to electric, amplified, recorded, edited, broadcast, downloaded and streamed music.


I still don't see how any of these technological developments necessitate that we must have Deborah Voigt croaking her way through Brunnhilde (I think she may have quit doing that now, thankfully; today we have Christine Goerke, who is at least listenable, below high "A" anyway).



> There are other reasons for the changes too.


Agreed.



> We can accept adjustments in performance traditions if it helps convince today's audience there is something there worthwhile for them. Some of them will look into the old 78s, but we should maintain a broader audience than that. Respectfully, I don't think this opinion makes me a dunce.


I agree. That opinion is not duncery. Just please understand what I actually say and don't attribute attitudes to me, or worry about my presumed attitudes at all. I do plan to go on listening critically to singers and sticking up for what I think is good. OK with you?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Not many years ago, after some particularly dubious performances of the National Anthem at some televised major sports events here in the US, David Letterman invited Renee Fleming to his show and had her sing it. The studio audience, and I'm sure the TV audience, immediately understood the difference between her rendition and what they had been hearing at these sports events. I'm sure some of them investigated her work further as a result. That is a victory for opera, and the classical music tradition generally.


If Jane and Joe understood why Renee Fleming was better than Beyoncee, why are you so resistant to the idea that opera audiences might find Aureliano Pertile better than Piotr Beczala if they had the opportunity to hear him?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You misrepresented completely a view I worked hard to make clear. I hardly think it's abusive to razz you about your evident duncery (is that a word? It should be.) I have also never denied that, as you say, "we can accept adjustments in performance traditions if it helps convince today's audience there is something there worthwhile for them." In post #36 I said:
> 
> _"Style changes - Callas did not sing like Patti - but the skills that enable styles to exist and find full expression are still available to singers determined to cultivate them, and still audible to those capable of hearing what they make possible."_
> 
> ...


Yes, it's OK with me if you consider today's Metropolitan Opera "mediocre to awful", Deborah Voigt a "croaker", and so forth. I disagree. However, you are welcome to your opinions, and I certainly wouldn't call you a dunce for having them.

However, I'd suggest you consider that if people have different opinions about music than you, they are not necessarily dunces, or "deaf", in fact, their opinions are not necessarily less worthwhile than your own. Moreover (and this was a separate point I was trying to make, not directly related to your posts), performers don't have the luxury of dictating what audiences ought to hear, they only can work with what audiences actually hear, and how they vote with their money in buying tickets and filling seats (or buying CDs, or streaming, etc.) Railing against 'dunces' or 'deaf' audiences is unproductive and unwise in any era, or in any genre of music.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> If Jane and Joe understood why Renee Fleming was better than Beyoncee, why are you so resistant to the idea that opera audiences might find Aureliano Pertile better than Piotr Beczala if they had the opportunity to hear him?


I think it extremely likely that audiences would far prefer a live Pertile to a live Beczała (one of my least favorite singers of all time, I must say), but all we have now of the tradition, culture, and society that produced Pertile are the recordings these singers left behind. I believe that we need far, far more cultural momentum than can be effected by hoping the odd singer who emulates the greats will be recognized by the 99% of teachers, audience members, impresari, donors, and students who today primarily listen to post-Pavarotti recordings (if they listen to any classical recordings at all!) and live Met telemassacres.

As a culture, we need to start listening to and appreciating pre-60s recordings. They need to have enough cachet and acceptance to find their way into Spotify playlists, background music in restaurants, TV-show soundtracks, etc. You have acknowledged that the playback quality of these recordings is a problem for many, but I should like to put especial emphasis on just how devastating that problem is. Most people will immediately shut off a recording with audible noise, and this includes all the working classical singers I've met. Most of them barely listen to classical singing at all, and when they do it's just a sample of modern artists to get an interpretive feel for the rôle. Modern Western society, and this goes double or triple for the arts community, also has a strong liberal, progressivist bent that discourages looking to and valuing past achievements. Basic attitudinal dispositions and biases are always important, and it's no coincidence that we see a higher proportion of conservatism and reactionism in the population that values these antiquated recordings.

Assuming that these hegemonic politico-social values continue, people need active encouragement and explicit instruction in order to glean something useful from the earliest recordings. It took me the better part of a decade to become comfortable with recordings before the late 1930s, and I had very little preexisting bias against them. I simply did not know how to mentally compensate for the missing frequencies. A possibly even greater problem was that I had little traditional vocal culture/education. Taking classical singing lessons really doesn't get one much closer to the goal. I did not understand how to listen to voices outside of my voice type, and I did not understand the variety of styles and voices that could appear within a single category.

Because of factors like this, when I first listened to Titta Ruffo, I heard a tenore corto with little to recommend him. Ruffo was definitely quite high for a baritone, but he was one of the darkest and loudest baritone voices ever. I heard absolutely none of this darkness, partially because of the recording, and partially because I had a distorted mental picture of what the baritone voice ought to sound like (extreme overdarkened yawn-growl). I had to spend thousands of hours listening, reading, listening, singing, practicing, reading music, comparing, etc. before my mind started to accept the sounds my ears were giving it. I'm still learning how to listen to female voices.

Nobody ever taught me any of this. Nobody held my hand and explained anything. I had to trudge through mountains of misinformation, forum posts, and "scientific" studies before an understanding crystallized, and you know what helped me the most? Youtube channels like GeneralRadames and in particular ThisIsOpera, although I cannot condone many of their conclusions when it comes to technique or specific singers. At least I was finally being given something concrete to listen for, as opposed to the typical "wow such a velvety sound!" or "they don't sing like this anymore!"

But in the absence of such explicit instruction, most people tend to throw their hands up and declare that no useful information can be acquired through listening to an Escalaïs or a Plançon. Many people who say this are pushed into digging in their heels because the tenor of projects like ThisIsOpera puts them immediately on the defensive. In my experience, defensive people are extraordinarily dishonest reasoners. I suspect that overly aggressive enthusiasts of bygone singing (like me) have influenced DavidA's profoundly antagonistic and unintellectual stance on the topic.

So what I hope for is some kind of cultural movement where people more patient and less extreme than I take on the burden of explicit listening instruction so that future fans need not be shut-in nerds in order to discover and revel in this vocal glory. The ultimate hope, of course, is that this inspires modern singers to develop or rework their technique so that the tradition becomes living again, but I try not to hope too many steps at a time.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> How anyone can listen to some of the* mediocre-to-awful singing that lately emanates from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera*, and then put on a recording of Jussi Bjorling and Bidu Sayao singing the same music in a Met performance from the 1940s (or, hell, even Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming from the 1980s), *and not feel sad*, is beyond me. Perhaps I should just shut up and not share my sadness with others here?


You mean like this, right? This is very sad indeed. So much singing here is out of tune and they don't bother "hide" that in the snippets.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

PaulFranz said:


> So what I hope for is some kind of cultural movement where people more patient and less extreme than I take on the burden of explicit listening instruction so that future fans need not be shut-in nerds in order to discover and revel in this vocal glory. The ultimate hope, of course, is that this inspires modern singers to develop or rework their technique so that the tradition becomes living again, but I try not to hope too many steps at a time.


Your post, though perhaps well meaning, seems so misguided in so many ways, and on so many levels, that I won't even attempt to respond, with two exceptions. First, don't you think it a little odd that even professional classical singers, never mind the vast majority of opera listeners whom you dismiss in passing in a single sentence (listeners to "post-Pavarotti singers" and "live Met telemassacres") can't even begin to hear what your golden amateur ears have revealed to you? (And I say "perhaps" because you can resist blaming "liberal progressives" for the current deplorable -- to you -- state of music. Strange how political agendas so often seem to underlie positions like yours.)

Second -- Do you really think it is that hard to recognize great singing merely because it comes from recordings of the distant past? Jazz enthusiasts have no trouble recognizing the greatness of Bessie Smith (1894-1937). I once heard her on my local jazz public radio station with my six-year old daughter in the room (or car, more likely) and told my daughter this was the famous Bessie Smith, a great American jazz singer. Months later, we were in a local restaurant where the owner is a classic blues and jazz enthusiast and pipes that music into the restaurant from a boom box cassette player. My daughter suddenly piped up, "That's the famous lady jazz singer!" And it unmistakably was.

Finally, when it comes to great opera singers of the past, for me there is none greater than Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996). Her technique and musicality make other more famous sopranos sound like weak and clumsy beginning students. But as an African-American (also part Native American), she was barred from the American opera stage. (Edit: An alumna of Westminster Choir College, that I mentioned above). Somehow, her name never seems to come up in all these discussions about the superiority of opera singers of way back when. Why not get all of her recordings (there aren't that many, alas, but enough), use your golden ears and put her head-to-head against your favorite white European sopranos? Here she is in 1940, singing Dupuis le jour:


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Second -- Do you really think it is that hard to recognize great singing merely because it comes from recordings of the distant past?


Actually, for many listeners, it's not easy, and for some it's impossible. I know many fans of opera and singing, many of them quite knowledgeable, who don't have the patience or inclination to listen past surface noise and other limitations of electrical and (especially) acoustic recordings. And far too many critics, some of them writing for serious publications, are utterly clueless about what singers and singing sounded like before 1950.

This might have been understandable 20 or so years ago - so many recordings of important historic singers were unavailable, or only available in poor transfers, or in better transfers that were too expensive for most people. But now in the era of YouTube and streaming services, there is no excuse for such naivete.

Maynor was indeed a magnificent singer who deserved (and still deserves) greater fame; she was a revelation for me when I first heard her records 30 or so years ago (recommended to me by a much older, more experienced, and less jaded lover of the vocal art).


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

wkasimer said:


> Actually, for many listeners, it's not easy, and for some it's impossible. I know many fans of opera and singing, many of them quite knowledgeable, who don't have the patience or inclination to listen past surface noise and other limitations of electrical and (especially) acoustic recordings. And far too many critics, some of them writing for serious publications, are utterly clueless about what singers and singing sounded like before 1950.
> 
> This might have been understandable 20 or so years ago - so many recordings of important historic singers were unavailable, or only available in poor transfers, or in better transfers that were too expensive for most people. But now in the era of YouTube and streaming services, there is no excuse for such naivete.
> 
> Maynor was indeed a magnificent singer who deserved (and still deserves) greater fame; she was a revelation for me when I first heard her records 30 or so years ago (recommended to me by a much older, more experienced, and less jaded lover of the vocal art).


Well, unlike some here, I make no claim of "golden ears", but the moment I happened to hear Maynor's (late 1940s?) rendition of Der hirt auf dem felsen, arguably Schubert's greatest, and certainly his most technically demanding, song, I knew I was listening to a rendition well above and beyond anything I'd ever heard. My previous favorite version, that of Elly Ameling, suddenly sounded strained, her range limitations and her sometimes thin sound, revealed.

Many great opera stars of recent years have had a beautiful tone and great musicality, but a lighter, smaller voice than what I suspect many of you retro fans are looking for. Kathleen Battle comes to mind. But that is nothing new. Jussi Bjorling had a superb, beautiful tone but reportedly it lacked the weight to come across in the big roles on stage. I read his famous Verdi Requiem with Reiner required much work from the recording engineers.

I suspect, much as some of you here don't want to hear it, that the domination of recordings over live performance that has evolved throughout the music industry has a lot to do with the kind of singing we hear today. But even today, there is Saioa Hernandez, for example, a student of Montserrat Caballe who very much evokes her great teacher, in my opinion. Yes, she probably is an exception to the rule of what prevails today. Why not enjoy her work now while she is still in her prime rather than complaining once she reaches 60, as with Deborah Voigt?


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

I don't believe that the vast majority of opera listeners or professionals don't realize that there's something wrong. The Princeton study that showed that actually a strong majority of opera professionals (impresarios, critics, agents, and company managers) believe that big voices are disappearing and declining in quality. So I'm not as pessimistic about the ability of people to understand that there's a problem as Paul Franz is. The thing is that even if people in the business do recognize that there's a problem, they can't come out and say it, because it's like saying, "Our opera company can't find any great singers." They'd go out of business. A lot of people are invested for their livelihood and self-image in opera as it stands, and that means that even if they realize things are wrong, they don't necessarily do or say anything about it.

Some people have clearly recognized a problem and stated it, though. From the Princeton study:


> We have interviewed more than 135 leading opera professionals... current and retired singers, conductors, impresarios, casting directors, consultants, coaches, accompanists, vocal teachers, academic administrators, critics, scholars, and agents at the very highest levels in 10 countries.... Almost all respondents agree on _timing_. They date the decline in Verdi singing to somewhere areound 1970-1980, plus or minus a decade, with the decline in Wagner singing somewhat earlier. When asked what modern singers lack, most respondents point to a dearth of basic vocal capacity and technique: the absence of comfort across a sufficiently wide range, dynamic and melodic flexibility, an appropriately warm and dark timbre, and a large and penetrating enough voice to project in a major house.


Now there are are qualifiers: they think Rossini singing has gotten better (I don't agree), and they think that such singing hasn't declined on average, just that there are no greats (again, I only half agree). But it's still evidence that people at the top of the opera world know there's a problem. It's not just some connoisseurs in their basements.

The Rosa Ponselle Foundation stopped its young artist competition because they couldn't find anybody who deserved their grants.


> "Regrettably, over the years we have found a decline in the training of opera singers," says Miss Duke, in announcing the foundation's decision to suspend its vocal competition. "The talent has simply not progressed enough to merit continued competition."


Thomas Hampson, international opera star, clearly recognizes that singers of the past had advantages. I don't agree with everything he says, but the point is clear:


> Pre-1960, what they all had was this phenomenal sense of messa di voce, this swelling and expanding and bringing back the tone....
> But what I do marvel at is this seamless vowel-to-vowel movement that Battistini has, which was part of a tradition that every one of them lived and believed in....
> 
> This is a hell of a voice - immediately this incredible power, which is what I miss most today. We've gotten away from it. You get a much darker center, and this ringing freedom at the top that can only be released. But not barked! It's all sung - every word of it. That takes such strength....
> ...


Of course, there are some people, as Hampson says, who try to be deliberately ignorant of operatic tradition:


> I ask Hampson why today's singers should listen to old recordings. "To some people it's anathema," he says. "They think you shouldn't, because God help you if you imitate - which I find absurd, truly absurd. It's like someone who wants to write doesn't read, or if you want to play basketball, don't buy any tapes of Michael Jordan because you might jump! Of course you shouldn't just imitate. But many times I've tried out things I've heard, because they make sense.


Famous Verdi-baritone and voice teacher Joseph Shore on opera recently. Again I don't agree with everything he says, and he does bemoan spreading ignorance about the great vocal tradition:





Anecdotally, there are lots and lots of people on YT who say: where have the singers gone? Many of them claim to have heard great singers of the past live and say the current crop don't measure up. Of course it's not great evidence, but it's hard to find a golden age electric recording on YT without someone saying: "Where are these singers now?" "Why don't they sing like this anymore" "Amazing, nobody today comes close".

Among the people I know who don't think there's been a decline, again totally anecdotal, are generally people who have never listened to historic recordings or who have some kind of direct investment in the current generation of singers: they work with them as teachers or colleagues. It's understandably hard for them to think that they are terrible. But it's just obvious there are no Corellis or Del Monacos, let alone Carusos or Melchiors. If I'm wrong, show me the singer who sings like them. Nobody ever can.



> (And I say "perhaps" because you can resist blaming "liberal progressives" for the current deplorable -- to you -- state of music. Strange how political agendas so often seem to underlie positions like yours.)


I don't agree with every position PaulFranz has taken, but I agree with the underlying thrust of his arguments that singing has radically declined, that there has been a decline in many major art forms, and that we are experiencing serious cultural problems, in many cases attributable to wrongheaded ideologies. I'm a lefty. I just don't think it serves the working classes to stick them in godawful prison like buildings they hate because Modernism or whatever. I think capitalism and communism are the two ideologies most destructive to culture. There are leftist traditions that go back before Marx, and great leftists who rejected Marxism, Leninism, and all the ridiculous elitist "leftism" of the last 70 years that despises the working class even as it sanctimoniously speaks in their name. Anyway, we can take it over to the Politics and Religion forum is you want to continue that part of the discussion, but I've already posted a lot of my views over there. The point is that a serious critique of modern culture can, in fact should, come from a left perspective.



> Why not get all of her recordings (there aren't that many, alas, but enough), use your golden ears and put her head-to-head against your favorite white European sopranos?


She's very good. She was obviously wrongly denied her career. But does that fact make Flagstad any less great?



> But as an African-American (also part Native American), she was barred from the American opera stage... Somehow, her name never seems to come up in all these discussions about the superiority of opera singers of way back when.


So we're racist because we don't frequently reference a particular singer? That seems to be the implication you're making. It's silly. Hina Spani rarely seems to come up in discussions of the superiority of opera singers from the past, and that's mostly because she's not very well known, even though many here now agree she was better than many much better known singers. Maynor is not especially well known in part because of the horrible injustice that was perpetrated against her -- does that make the people who don't know her because of it complicit in the injustice? Of course not. I've heard of Maynor before, but I hear hundred of singers per month because I'm always looking for new ones. Sometimes I hear a singer, go "meh" and rediscover them two years later and go "What was I thinking???" I hear lots of singers I really like but don't listen to all the time or refrence to make my arguments, and Maynor is one. So what?

Overall I'd say that people in opera who've been around know there's a problem. There is may be increasing ignorance of historical performance quality and records, but it's hard to say without a systematic study. It's not just a couple cranks with 78s who think singing has declined and modern ears aren't hopeless.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

> So we're racist because we don't frequently reference a particular singer? That seems to be the implication you're making. It's silly


.

I agree that it's silly, but I'm not sure that was the implication.

There are a lot of singers who never get mentioned on TC for a variety of reasons. Forums on music that are conducted in English tend to be USA-centric, recordings-centric, opera-centric, and particularly Metropolitan-centric. So a singer like Maynor, who didn't sing on opera stages, didn't make a lot of records, and was largely a recitalist, is going to be unfamiliar to most people here. There are also lots of singers who are virtually unknown only because they didn't sing in America, like Margarete Hallin, Boris Gmyrya, or Virgilius Noreika, just to pick three at random (look 'em up if you don't know them). Or Igor Gorin, who was mostly a recitalist and concert singer, who had one of the great baritone voices of the 20th century, but didn't make opera a major component of his career. As I said, there are countless singers who are rarely or never mentioned here.


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## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

PaulFranz said:


> The ultimate hope, of course, is that this inspires modern singers to develop or rework their technique so that the tradition becomes living again, but I try not to hope too many steps at a time.


I wanted to say that I've very much enjoyed the things you've had to say in this thread, as well as the posts of some of my faves like Woodduck, Viva, and others. I've had a remarkably similar listening/learning experience, except where you learned the most from the YouTube channels you mentioned, I learned the most right here from the aforementioned posters.

Most importantly, your ultimate hope is happening in me and I can assure you that my impact will be felt. Keep hope alive!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

wkasimer said:


> .
> 
> I agree that it's silly, but I'm not sure that was the implication.
> 
> There are a lot of singers who never get mentioned on TC for a variety of reasons. Forums on music that are conducted in English tend to be USA-centric, recordings-centric, opera-centric, and particularly Metropolitan-centric. So a singer like Maynor, who didn't sing on opera stages, didn't make a lot of records, and was largely a recitalist, is going to be unfamiliar to most people here. There are also lots of singers who are virtually unknown only because they didn't sing in America, like Margarete Hallin, Boris Gmyrya, or Virgilius Noreika, just to pick three at random (look 'em up if you don't know them). Or Igor Gorin, who was mostly a recitalist and concert singer, who had one of the great baritone voices of the 20th century, but didn't make opera a major component of his career. As I said, there are countless singers who are rarely or never mentioned here.


Yes, Maynor was denied a career due to racism, and doesn't get the respect and recognition she deserves because she was denied a career. That doesn't mean posters at TC are racist. At least I hope not.

But the larger point I've been trying to make here is that we're talking about a musical tradition that flourished from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but has faded from center stage today. Fewer singers are going to be willing to spend their careers mastering the specific technical requirements of a tradition that is no longer in great demand. The problem is not that singers no longer know how to sing, but that this particular cultural tradition is receding in importance.

I find it the height of irony that so many here at TC are so hostile at efforts to recreate 17th and early 18th century baroque music with original instruments and performance techniques, free from the encrustations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, yet cannot understand how a 19th century music performance tradition isn't faithfully preserved in the 21st. What opera needs is a HIP movement. Maybe by the end of this century we'll begin to see that. Those of us young enough to live that long, that is.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

> Finally, when it comes to great opera singers of the past, for me there is none greater than Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996). Her technique and musicality make other more famous sopranos sound like weak and clumsy beginning students. But as an African-American (also part Native American), she was barred from the American opera stage. (Edit: An alumna of Westminster Choir College, that I mentioned above). Somehow, her name never seems to come up in all these discussions about the superiority of opera singers of way back when. Why not get all of her recordings (there aren't that many, alas, but enough), use your golden ears and put her head-to-head against your favorite white European sopranos? Here she is in 1940, singing Dupuis le jour:


I definitely think we were being called racist in this paragraph. I see no other plausible interpretation of its thrust.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

fluteman said:


> What opera needs is a HIP movement.


Starting with smaller opera houses, smaller orchestras, and conductors who are devoted to opera and understand how to support singers.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

wkasimer said:


> Starting with smaller opera houses, smaller orchestras, and conductors who are devoted to opera and understand how to support singers.


It arguably would take this and more. All parts of the 'production line' need to be operating.

Reading sources like Rasponi's "The Last Prima Donnas" we read about teachers who knew what they were doing, repetiteurs who were experts, singers who studied for years and sang just what suited their voices. The singers only prospered because the environment - teachers, colleagues, management - worked with them.

It wasn't perfect, but the general impression I have is that they excelled at matching talent with their metier: voice not quite top-flight? be a comprimario and make a living. Getting on a bit? here's a tricky character part that is not too long but will benefit from your experience etc. Competition at every level was extreme.

Tito Gobbi's autobiography describes this perfectly as his career started in Rome - notably performing with Tullio Serafin - and Joan Sutherland's 'apprenticeship' at Covent Garden was a late example.

If we take that last example, I know that some people think the glory days at Covent Garden started with Solti's tenure, but I have sympathy reading about the earlier idea of an ensemble company. I think it was last advocated by Kubelik...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes, Maynor was denied a career due to racism, and doesn't get the respect and recognition she deserves because she was denied a career. That doesn't mean posters at TC are racist. At least I hope not.


I didn't think you were implying that.



> But the larger point I've been trying to make here is that we're talking about a musical tradition that flourished from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but has faded from center stage today. *Fewer singers are going to be willing to spend their careers mastering the specific technical requirements of a tradition that is no longer in great demand. The problem is not that singers no longer know how to sing, but that this particular cultural tradition is receding in importance.*


I remain baffled by this. "The specific technical requirements of a tradition" means nothing more or less than the vocal skills that classical singers have been training to acquire for some four hundred years. Ease of emission, resonance and power, clarity of the vowels, evenness of scale and integration of the registers, control of dynamics, agility... Singers normally train to acquire these abilities, and they do so because it enables them to perform difficult music well, just as acquiring a good technique enables a pianist to do justice to the music of a concerto by Mozart or Rachmaninoff. If our concert halls were filled with ham-fisted pianists and scratchy violinists, would we attribute it to the fading of a cultural tradition, or would we suspect there was something wrong with the way musicians were trained and advocate better pedagogical methods and higher standards in hiring? Would we just shrug our shoulders and say that Jane and Joe seem happy with what they're hearing, and that in the culture of our time youth and beauty matter more to potential audiences than playing in tune?



> I find it the height of irony that so many here at TC are so hostile at efforts to recreate 17th and early 18th century baroque music with original instruments and performance techniques, free from the encrustations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, yet cannot understand how a 19th century music performance tradition isn't faithfully preserved in the 21st. What opera needs is a HIP movement. Maybe by the end of this century we'll begin to see that. Those of us young enough to live that long, that is.


I've been arguing for an HIP movement for opera singing for a long time. In theory it would be much more solidly grounded than the HIP movement for Baroque music, since we have actual recorded evidence of how people sang 100 years ago. I don't think most people are hostile to HIP on principle. We merely have doubts about the authenticity of the product where singing is concerned.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

wkasimer said:


> Starting with smaller opera houses, smaller orchestras, and conductors who are devoted to opera and understand how to support singers.


OK, good luck with that. Judging from the ridicule even the most well-informed and capable efforts at HIP performance of baroque music are received here, I hate to think what some here in the TC brigade will think of that. Of course, what matters is what the general public thinks of it. I certainly would be interested. And it seems that Woodduck would be too. So at least the two of us will be in the audience. I'll be the one sitting in the corner with the pointy hat.



Woodduck said:


> I remain baffled by this. "The specific technical requirements of a tradition" means nothing more or less than the vocal skills that classical singers have been training to acquire for some four hundred years. Ease of emission, resonance and power, clarity of the vowels, evenness of scale and integration of the registers, control of dynamics, agility... Singers normally train to acquire these abilities, and they do so because it enables them to perform difficult music well, just as acquiring a good technique enables a pianist to do justice to the music of a concerto by Mozart or Rachmaninoff.


My choral director, a Westminster Choir College graduate, and successful song composer and arranger, explained to us why and how operatic singing is not the same as other genres of singing. Of course, the similarities in terms of the foundations of good vocal technique may be the same, but clearly the differences matter, as can be seen for example by the way some opera enthusiasts here dismiss the work of great singers in other genres, which he most certainly did not, and by the horrific attempts of some opera stars to do jazz or pop music. If none of that makes sense to you, you will have to remain baffled.


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## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

fluteman said:


> But the larger point I've been trying to make here is that we're talking about a musical tradition that flourished from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but has faded from center stage today. Fewer singers are going to be willing to spend their careers mastering the specific technical requirements of a tradition that is no longer in great demand. The problem is not that singers no longer know how to sing, but that this particular cultural tradition is receding in importance.


As an active professional singer who has dedicated himself to mastering the specific technical requirements of our lost singing traditions I can assure you that this is not the case. Singers do in fact 'no longer know how to sing'. All of the hallmarks of great singing that Woodduck listed are desired by modern singers, but unfortunately they don't know how to get there and the modern voice teacher doesn't know how to get them there. There are exceptions of course, but this has been my experience through the course of my career. If it wasn't for this forum I still wouldn't have a firm grasp on what makes for a great technique, and would be on stage darkening my sound as modern male voices do, developing a wobble, and never realizing the full potential of my voice.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Bonetan said:


> As an active professional singer who has dedicated himself to mastering the specific technical requirements of our lost singing traditions I can assure you that this is not the case. Singers do in fact 'no longer know how to sing'. All of the hallmarks of great singing that Woodduck listed are desired by modern singers, but unfortunately they don't know how to get there and the modern voice teacher doesn't know how to get them there. There are exceptions of course, but this has been my experience through the course of my career. If it wasn't for this forum I still wouldn't have a firm grasp on what makes for a great technique, and would be on stage darkening my sound as modern male voices do, developing a wobble, and never realizing the full potential of my voice.


So, modern singers and voice teachers are clueless, rather this forum is the key to learning proper vocal technique that they all lack. I'll pass that on, I know some who would be interested to learn that.


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## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

fluteman said:


> So, modern singers and voice teachers are clueless, rather this forum is the key to learning proper vocal technique that they all lack. I'll pass that on, I know some who would be interested to learn that.


The key is the knowledgeable individuals who frequent this forum, not the forum itself. I was fortunate to find them here. I hope they will continue to share their great knowledge and speak of lost singing traditions because as listeners we're all better for it. And I will say that compared to some of the posters here, modern singers and teachers (even those working at our most prominent houses) are indeed clueless, and I speak from experience.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> My choral director, a Westminster Choir College graduate, and successful song composer and arranger, explained to us why and how operatic singing is not the same as other genres of singing. Of course, the similarities in terms of the foundations of good vocal technique may be the same, but clearly the differences matter, as can be seen for example by the way some opera enthusiasts here dismiss the work of great singers in other genres, which he most certainly did not, and by the horrific attempts of some opera stars to do jazz or pop music. If none of that makes sense to you, you will have to remain baffled.


That makes perfect sense. It isn't what baffles me. What baffles me is your belief that a "fading cultural tradition" somehow justifies accepting the ubiquity of cumbersome, woofy, wobbly voices in opera. It's that sort of vocal sound that's precisely what many people, even classical music lovers, describe when they explain why they don't enjoy opera, and which can make people outside the classical music community laugh out loud and engage in grotesque caricatures of what they think opera is supposed to sound like. I played Elly Ameling's recording of Bach's "Jauchzet Gott" for a guy who said he liked Pavarotti but didn't like what he called the "female opera voice." He enjoyed it. Similarly, you related the experience of playing Renee Fleming for some people who immediately recognized the quality of her singing.

People can't know whether they like something if they can't experience it. Jane and Joe aren't totally clueless; they just lack exposure, and if we resign ourselves to a "changing culture," they'll never get exposed. Opera is not dead; like everything else in the modern world, it competes for attention with other things, and must necessarily be more of a "niche" interest than it once was. That new reality is no excuse for mediocrity. I'm sure that most singers don't set out thinking that they'll acquire only enough technique to meet the demands of Jane and Joe and a "modern cultural context." Most of them probably hope to sing as well as they're able to, and many of them - like Thomas Hampson quoted above in post #62 - would love to have the secrets of the greatest singers they hear on recordings of the past and, very occasionally, in the singing of the best of their contemporaries.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> That makes perfect sense. It isn't what baffles me. What baffles me is your belief that a "fading cultural tradition" somehow justifies accepting the ubiquity of cumbersome, woofy, wobbly voices in opera.


Nothing justifies bad operatic singing. But the fading of the grand opera tradition means that people. i.e. the audience, have become accustomed to hearing other styles of singing than even good opera singing, which still exists, in my opinion. Not that they are incapable of distinguishing good and bad opera singing, but that they prefer other styles of singing altogether. It is in this modern world that opera must compete for an audience. It is in this modern world that Andrea Bocelli has sold nearly 100 million records, and has even made a successful recording of the Verdi Requiem. There is no doubt that even in his youthful prime Bocelli lacked the power and weight of a great operatic tenor. But his lightweight voice is appealing to modern tastes.

Who knows, maybe some who hear Bocelli's Requiem will seek out those of Jussi Bjorling or Franco Corelli. I hope so. But there is no point in pretending that traditional opera can carry on as it did in 1880 while ignoring trends in modern tastes. If a HIP movement takes hold in opera, maybe you will see some progress in the direction you want. Meanwhile, I'm happy the traditional operas continue to be performed and even fully staged regardless of the 'bad' singing. Just as Bach survived a long period of less than accurate and faithful interpretations, so will the great operas.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> *That makes perfect sense. It isn't what baffles me. What baffles me is your belief that a "fading cultural tradition" somehow justifies accepting the ubiquity of cumbersome, woofy, wobbly voices in opera. It's that sort of vocal sound that's precisely what many people, even classical music lovers, describe when they explain why they don't enjoy opera, and which can make people outside the classical music community laugh out loud and engage in grotesque caricatures of what they think opera is supposed to sound like.* I played Elly Ameling's recording of Bach's "Jauchzet Gott" for a guy who said he liked Pavarotti but didn't like what he called the "female opera voice." He enjoyed it. Similarly, you related the experience of playing Renee Fleming for some people who immediately recognized the quality of her singing.
> 
> People can't know whether they like something if they can't experience it. Jane and Joe aren't totally clueless; they just lack exposure, and if we resign ourselves to a "changing culture," they'll never get exposed. Opera is not dead; like everything else in the modern world, it competes for attention with other things, and must necessarily be more of a "niche" interest than it once was. That new reality is no excuse for mediocrity. I'm sure that most singers don't set out thinking that they'll acquire only enough technique to meet the demands of Jane and Joe and a "modern cultural context." Most of them probably hope to sing as well as they're able to, and many of them - like Thomas Hampson quoted above in post #62 - would love to have the secrets of the greatest singers they hear on recordings of the past and, very occasionally, in the singing of the best of their contemporaries.


I love you. I just thought you should know that.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I love you. I just thought you should know that.


Now everyone else knows it too. I'd better change my phone number. People might think I'm easy.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Apparently anything that puts demands on your voice is a fading cultural tradition, because as I wrote earlier, this decline of vocalism is positively omnipresent. Earl Wrightson never sang any classical rep, but he had better classical technique than every working baritone alive today that I've heard.

Jimmy Roselli made his living as a jazz singer, but he also sang like this: 




and 




Sam Cooke started as a gospel singer, but he sang standards like this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nvpinU2i928xQpWDCuOA2Auu4v3Vvr1Lw

And choirs didn't use to encourage that white, puerile, straight-tone sound they all do now, which I'm sure is partly because everyone wobbles anyway. Compare this: 



 to this: 



.

The "evolution" involves every imaginable form of singing.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Now everyone else knows it too. I'd better change my phone number. People might think I'm easy.


nah, I already have your IP address, and boomers don't know how to change that. mwahahaha!


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

PaulFranz said:


> Apparently anything that puts demands on your voice is a fading cultural tradition, because as I wrote earlier, this decline of vocalism is positively omnipresent. Earl Wrightson never sang any classical rep, but he had better classical technique than every working baritone alive today that I've heard.
> 
> Jimmy Roselli made his living as a jazz singer, but he also sang like this:
> 
> ...


I'm stealing this. This is the best thread idea I've seen all year.


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Just wanna add- for all of you who love the old singing and you really have hopes about hearing this kind of singing from singers of our generation. Don’t just wait for an opera company or a marketing campaign to tell you- here’s a great singer you have to listen to if you haven’t yet. 
Because the singers who, at list right now, comes out with this kind of industry approval, most likely never gonna be what you’re looking for. 

I think Wooddok wrote before that if a singer do all this great stuff nowadays then she will be rewarded. That might happen, and also might not. The fact is that all of you here are used to listen to the old singing through the lenses of the old recording methods. That same way of singing sounds different in our new professionale recording methods and is still not being flattered by it.

If you want to help the current situation, actively search for singers of today who even partly sing this way. You hear someone who you recognize they’re trying to accomplish some stuff you appreciate- support them, acknowledge them. As audience you have even more power. 

We singers can’t do it alone.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

For me, Matthew White is our Great White Hope (lol).


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Nice! Really beautiful singing!


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