# Did you ever find the operatic style of singing weird or unpleasant ?



## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

My love for operatic singing voice is an acquired taste, although acquired very early, at 7 years old. However, I still remember, that it sounded weird, maybe more funny than pretty when I first heard it. It is different from the good old kindergarten and elementary school singing voice :-D . Especially the female voices. I think it is the main reason some people avoid opera. Of course I love the operatic singing now, the "normal" way of producing voice feels diluted or like a diet meal which leaves one hungry. Still, what was your initial perception when you were small ? Some of you speak of "natural" voices, so maybe it never ever sounded weird to you.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

Yes I remember thinking vibrato sounded unnatural and weird when I was around the same age. I've never been trained as a singer and haven't sung anything aside from the odd choral work, so I have never been trained specifically in that technique and don't even sing with vibrato myself. I think young me would never have thought of producing vibrato at all. Needless to say, my views on this subject have since changed _immensely_. I can't speak to the technical benefits firsthand, but used judiciously, it is a good thing that can add expression, improve intonation, and improve projection over the orchestra. (Used too much and it's worse than useless at any of these things.) It's certainly not the only way to vocalize; anyone who has heard Peking opera can testify to that fact. But when you get used to it, it makes sense.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

It took me perhaps four decades or so to just "get used to" opera vocals. And I've been the resident Musical Director of an operetta repertoire company for almost 15 years.

I understood, from an early age, the "why" of that sound, but I always preferred "pop opera" voices.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Monsalvat said:


> It's certainly not the only way to vocalize; anyone who has heard Peking opera can testify to that fact.


I had to look it up !


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't remember ever finding operatic singing odd. It seems to be vibrato that bothers people, but in popular perception that term covers a variety of vocal effects. I was born in the era of the 78rpm record, and among my first exposures to opera were some old records of Caruso, Pinza and Galli-Curci. This was one of them:






I don't think I was conscious, listening to this sound that seemed to float through the air like a feather, of anything called "vibrato." As I heard more opera, learned about singing, and did more and more singing myself, I learned what a true, natural vibrato is, and learned that what was often called "vibrato" was not always produced by the same vocal mechanism. Some of the effects of pitch fluctuation we hear are not vibrato in the strictest sense. In jazz, for example, we often hear a vocal imitation of the loose pseudo-vibrato used by jazz instrumenalists.

I suspect that many people form their idea of vibrato from singers with faulty technique, who may exhibit a heavy throbbing, a rapid, machine gun-like tremolo, or a wide, wavering wobble. Such effects are produced by muscular tensions that interfere with the natural, secondary vibrations of the vocal chords which produce the true vibrato.

The prominence of vibrato varies naturally among singers, but at its best vibrato enlivens and enhances the tone and doesn't draw much attention to itself. Singers with big vibratos that distract us and sometimes even obscure the intended pitch of the sung tone have never been looked on with favor, but are all too common on our opera stages today.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

I've been in the performing arts and arts management for a few decades now, including working for an opera company...I fully believe the sound of a soprano's voice is the number one off-putting thing to growing the audience base.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

I don’t blame anyone getting to know the genre today finding the style odd. Squeezed, pushed, swallowed, small, gargled, woofy, screechy, wobbly are descriptions you’d be able to apply in a majority of opera productions these days about various singers. I can only stomach more natural sounds myself so when people express their dislike for opera I’m not particularly alarmed, most people probably aren’t searching out great records from the first half of the 20th century when the state of singing was unequivocally better. Ponselle, Callas, Flagstad, Tebaldi, Dominguez, Thorborg, Gigli, Merli, Galeffi, Basiola, Siepi, Nissen etc. don’t sound odd at all to me.


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Yes.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Op.123 said:


> I don’t blame anyone getting to know the genre today finding the style odd. Squeezed, pushed, swallowed, small, gargled, woofy, screechy, wobbly are descriptions you’d be able to apply in a majority of opera productions these days about various singers. I can only stomach more natural sounds myself so when people express their dislike for opera I’m not particularly alarmed, most people probably aren’t searching out great records from the first half of the 20th century when the state of singing was unequivocally better. Ponselle, Callas, Flagstad, Tebaldi, Dominguez, Thorborg, Gigli, Merli, Galeffi, Basiola, Siepi, Nissen etc. don’t sound odd at all to me.


But to my partner, it is all the same thing. He dislikes Callas as well.

About males, he says they are trying to make unpleasant sounds as much as they can, but still don't reach the level of the sopranos


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

BBSVK said:


> But to my partner, it is all the same thing. He dislikes Callas as well.
> 
> About males, he says they are trying to make unpleasant sounds as much as they can, but still don't reach the level of the sopranos


It’s not the most phonogenic way to sing so maybe if he had heard the great singers of the past live he might have a different opinion. Maybe he is listening in the wrong way and needs to actively listen for the freedom and openness that makes operatic singing so exciting and beautiful, when a voice is properly opened there is no ‘trying to make’ an ugly sound, it is just the sound of the human voice, resonating freely. But maybe he just doesn’t like opera, it’s rarely the most soothing art form.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

prlj said:


> I've been in the performing arts and arts management for a few decades now, including working for an opera company...I fully believe the sound of a soprano's voice is the number one off-putting thing to growing the audience base.


I've been involved in the performing arts, first as an amateur and then as a professional, since I was five, so that's 65 years now and I've always loved the soprano voice. We always had music in our home. My father was a superb pianist, my brother played the clarinet, I played piano and viola and my mother sang (she was a contralto). Parties at our house would always end with my father at the piano and various people getting up to sing, mostly operetta arias and musical comedy, but singing in, I suppose, a recognisably operatic way. I always loved the soprano voice and loved hearing them reach the highest notes. 

However I don't get so much pleasure from a lot of sopranos today, particularly those who sing the dramatic soprano rep. Not so long ago I watched a Turandot transmitted live from somewhere. I can't remember the name of the soprano singing the leading role, but the sounds emitting from her throat were so ugly and wobbly I doubt anyone coming to opera for the first time would have found them pleasing. Dramatic sopranos in the past didn't sound like that at all, so I don't think it's the soprano voice per se.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Only when they attempt to sing pop music. They roll their "r"s and enunciate words too perfectly instead of just letting the music flow. It sounds fake.
Also, I recall trying to inculcate my grandson to opera by playing a soprano singing and asked him what he thought about it. His answer was, "she screams too much". So I guess there is_ that _too.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I always found it strange that most pop singers could only sing for about an octave.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Weird or unpleasant singing? - Never... Weird or unpleasant "emoting"? - Oh, hell yeah...

This is why you should probably wait until you're actually seated at the opera house before telling your guest that it's a Cecilia Bartoli recital...


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Depends on the opera. I cannot tolerate the coloratura style at all. Wagner, Puccini, all the verismo is ok. I also do not the flowery Mozart writing for sopranos.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

mbhaub said:


> Depends on the opera. I cannot tolerate the coloratura style at all. Wagner, Puccini, all the verismo is ok. I also do not the flowery Mozart writing for sopranos.


But bel canto is the best ! [sob]


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> Depends on the opera. I cannot tolerate the coloratura style at all. Wagner, Puccini, all the verismo is ok. *I also do not the flowery Mozart writing for sopranos.*


I've got to say I'm really baffled by this. Mozart's writing for sopranos is surely some of his best.






I also want to say that I think even with older singers there can be a transition to listening to opera. Many of the older forum members here grew up in a time when more popular singers sang with fuller voices in a style less manufactured for the microphone. Most pop singers now sing in a way that only works because of the microphone, and as a result someone accustomed to this style of singing will find operatic singing odd. Heck, such a person will even find that some old pop singers, who projected more, will sound odd. I know because I was such a person; luckily, I have cured myself!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Yes, when it's a countertenor.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Itullian said:


> Yes, when it's a countertenor.


The first countertenor I have heard live was last Friday. It sounded very similar to at least some mezzosopranos. The only weird thing was, that the voice came from the balding man


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I find it sounds kind of weird when they incorporate emotional expressions like quivering, being snarky, laughing, etc. into the singing, when I don't know what it's all about.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Phil loves classical said:


> I find it sounds kind of weird when they incorporate emotional expressions like quivering, being snarky, laughing, etc. into the singing, when I don't know what it's all about.


I must confess, when I know what are they singing about, I find side sounds excessive and adverse too.


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## FrankE (Jan 13, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> My love for operatic singing voice is an acquired taste, although acquired very early, at 7 years old. However, I still remember, that it sounded weird, maybe more funny than pretty when I first heard it. It is different from the good old kindergarten and elementary school singing voice :-D . Especially the female voices. I think it is the main reason some people avoid opera. Of course I love the operatic singing now, the "normal" way of producing voice feels diluted or like a diet meal which leaves one hungry. Still, what was your initial perception when you were small ? Some of you speak of "natural" voices, so maybe it never ever sounded weird to you.


I grew up with it. My mum was involved in opera, my dad ancestors had a couple of opera singers. However. I don't know anyone in person who likes opera and they all cite the "overly-high sopranos", "shrieky sopranos", "unnatural singing ranges" or whatever and people I speak to who like opera still say they'd prefer to hear just an orchestral piece.
I have trouble with the sopranos too, my tensor tympani muscles spasm.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I've been involved in the performing arts, first as an amateur and then as a professional, since I was five, so that's 65 years now and I've always loved the soprano voice. We always had music in our home. My father was a superb pianist, my brother played the clarinet, I played piano and viola and my mother sang (she was a contralto). Parties at our house would always end with my father at the piano and various people getting up to sing, mostly operetta arias and musical comedy, but singing in, I suppose, a recognisably operatic way. I always loved the soprano voice and loved hearing them reach the highest notes.
> 
> However I don't get so much pleasure from a lot of sopranos today, particularly those who sing the dramatic soprano rep. Not so long ago I watched a Turandot transmitted live from somewhere. I can't remember the name of the soprano singing the leading role, but the sounds emitting from her throat were so ugly and wobbly I doubt anyone coming to opera for the first time would have found them pleasing. Dramatic sopranos in the past didn't sound like that at all, so I don't think it's the soprano voice per se.


I’m telling you if you were sitting next to me last year, upstairs, listening to Lise Davidson’s Ariadne..... well I guess you Would have thought you jumped back 40 years! Yes I know she misses but you’re going to be very happy when you hear her not miss!


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Weird and unpleasant strike me as being off in different directions. For me, Weird?......no, because Dad had it playing before I knew what it was. Unpleasant?....almost all of the time! Not every singer, but someone or many someone’s in every performance of an opera. And not just NOW - for all you “the glass is just about dry“, vocal Hearers of doom - but Since soon after I started listening in ‘69. I ALWAYS Thought opera was something like a Saturday night live show.,..,you know most of the sound/comedy will not be good and you’re gambling that something will come along to justify the ticket! The odds go up with names like Sutherland or Tina Fey... Pavarotti or Eddie Murphy! But, even though we may get used to opera’s non-star voices out of necessity, I long ago realized that for me, many a bar singer has more pleasant chops than Metropolitan Opera Comprimarios.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

ScottK said:


> I ALWAYS Thought opera was something like a Saturday night live show.,..,you know most of the sound/comedy will not be good and you’re gambling that something will come along to justify the ticket! The odds go up with names like Sutherland or Tina Fey... Pavarotti or Eddie Murphy! But, even though we may get used to opera’s non-star voices out of necessity, I long ago realized that for me, many a bar singer has more pleasant chops than Metropolitan Opera Comprimarios.


This surprises me. I live in Bratislava and perceive the live performances in our theater as a lottery. Nowadays it is better, but at my teens, you could really have some bad luck. And now you are telling me, this extends all the way to the famous places like MET ?
(The opera which was on TV was almost always good or great, leading to obsessions).


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I can understand that many people from outside classical families/circles still find operatic voices "weird or unpleasant" as, let's face it, operatic voices are not 'normal' singing voices. To others they can sound exaggerated or affected. Before opera fans start throwing rocks at me let me explain. The standard 'singing' voice is articulated to sound pretty much like a more pleasant /rhythmical version of most people's talking voice whereas in opera it's the extremes of the singing voice (especially pitch) that is being explored/emphasised. Very generally speaking, I think the ear has to be 'trained' to accept operatic singing voices (unless you are from a household where it was always there in the background/foreground). 50+ years on from hearing my first operatic voices (via TV) I still often baulk at the sound of most male opera singers and can only take female opera singers in short bursts. I just don't find it appeals to me but I can totally understand its appeal to some. I know I'm not speaking for everyone but, for the casual listener, listening to opera requires accepting a style that many people find unnatural. Then it's just a matter of taste; how it resonates with you. Sometimes I'm in the mood to hear a soprano, for example, but more often that not I have to be REALLY in the mood for such vocal performances. That's not being critical of opera (or lieder to a lesser degree) in any way its just not my bag very often. As I said, I find male operatic voices even more off-putting and sometimes feel they sound 'silly' (but I find musicals ridiculous anyway too). Some things either appeal to you or they don't. It often depends on the accompanying music and how much I like that.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

This is how it worked with me. My granparents had this beautiful libretto at home:









I wanted them to read it for me repeatedly, and eventually I wanted to listen to the music...

One summer vaccations was enough to make me an opera fan.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

BBSVK said:


> This surprises me. I live in Bratislava and perceive the live performances in our theater as a lottery. Nowadays it is better, but at my teens, you could really have some bad luck. And now you are telling me, this extends all the way to the famous places like MET ?
> (The opera which was on TV was almost always good or great, leading to obsessions).


I may not have conveyed my response perfectly. (there's gotta be a first time for everything😅)
Of course the Met, like all performing arts institutions, puts up plenty of stinkers. Opera is pretty hard to do. But I wasn't trying to say that the performance level in a season was a complete lottery. Like So many on this forum, I feel that the 70's and 80's produced a lot of great singing and wonderful performances, many of which were the ones you were seeing on TV. But Since part of this thread is about whether the sound of an opera singer is ever heard as being unpleasant, the crapshoot I was talking about focused on the sound made by many of the opera singers who sing the smaller roles and some who sing the leads. On the professional stage, these people are of course talented, trained singers far beyond anything I ever could hope to achieve. But I still find that much of the vocal sound that comes from the met stage, percentage wise, is not pleasant. And of course there is the problem of the size of the house, which must affect the sound of many singers. But I am essentially with you about how good the performances were, for many reasons, but vocally because the guys singing Rodolfo were Carreras, Pavarotti and Aragall ( Great Rodolfo!!) and the Mimi's were Scotto, Freni and Caballe and THEY are the ones we went to hear....the ones who lead YOU to obsess!!! I mostly meant that aside from the genuinely attractive opera voices, which I consider to be a minority, I often find the opera vocal sound to be on the unpleasant side.


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## oldpete (9 mo ago)

When I notice the vibrato more than anything else, it is too much.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I don't remember.
Among the first music (and clearly the first classical) I remember were opera choruses where my parents had an LP of. So I became somewhat acquainted with opera without the "extremes" of solo singing. I was never really into current popular music and in the 1980s in Germany (light) classical was still comparably common on general TV and there were also a few popular singers that sang a bit closer to the classical style. Take some of the then popular Webber musicals, above all the pseudo-opera "Phantom of the..." Or (a bit later?) Caballé singing with Mercury, the "Three tenors", Peter Hofmann doing silly crossover. Sure, I got into classical eventually mostly via instrumental music but except for some extremes (like the Queen of Night aria almost everyone would probably find irritating at first) I never had a huge problem with operatic singing. I guess I was not as strongly conditioned by pop style singing as many others and was gradually introduced into the classical/operatic singing style.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> Only when they attempt to sing pop music. They roll their "r"s and enunciate words too perfectly instead of just letting the music flow. It sounds fake.
> Also, I recall trying to inculcate my grandson to opera by playing a soprano singing and asked him what he thought about it. His answer was, "she screams too much". So I guess there is_ that _too.


Opera is beautiful screaming.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

This is what happened. Wagner built Bayreuth for his _Ring_, and since then opera houses have gotten larger and larger.

And then came the 20th century, when performing 18th- and early 19th-century works like Mozart, Beethoven or Weber, singers with their massive voices mainly were concerned with generating enough volume to fill the theatres. Details, accuracy and key ingredients of sound like improvised ornamentation were lost, what remained was nothing but non-stop vibrato which is not natural or _right_ for the sound itself. The scores were no longer communicated to the audience fully and purely as they are. As a result, a "weird" or "unpleasant" operatic style emerged as a 20th-century voice tradition. 

To put it simply, you can't perform works in theatres built for later written ones. Metropolitan is fine for Wagner and Strauss, but it would be a disaster to perform _Médée_ or _Idomeneo_ (which is happening right now). @prlj mentioned that the soprano voice put off potential opera enthusiasts. I can only see that as the result of the voice tradition described earlier, and I'm sure that if they listen to Mackerras, Gardiner or Currentzis' recordings first they'll love Mozart immediately.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

feierlich said:


> This is what happened. Wagner built Bayreuth for his _Ring_, and since then opera houses have gotten larger and larger.
> 
> And then came the 20th century, when performing 18th- and early 19th-century works like Mozart, Beethoven or Weber, singers with their massive voices mainly were concerned with generating enough volume to fill the theatres. Details, accuracy and key ingredients of sound like improvised ornamentation were lost, what remained was nothing but non-stop vibrato which is not natural or _right_ for the sound itself. The scores were no longer communicated to the audience fully and purely as they are. As a result, a "weird" or "unpleasant" operatic style emerged as a 20th-century voice tradition.
> 
> To put it simply, you can't perform works in theatres built for later written ones. Metropolitan is fine for Wagner and Strauss, but it would be a disaster to perform _Médée_ or _Idomeneo_ (which is happening right now). @prlj mentioned that the soprano voice put off potential opera enthusiasts. I can only see that as the result of the voice tradition described earlier, and I'm sure that if they listen to Mackerras, Gardiner or Currentzis' recordings first they'll love Mozart immediately.


I see this has Simone Kermes as the Countess, reason enough for me to avoid it. I can't bear it, or her style of singing and nobody will convince me that this is how sopranos sounded in Mozart's time. I find it both "weird" and "unpleasant."

I can think of any amount of sopranos of the twentieth century whom I would prefer in the role: Rethberg, Schwarzkopf, Te Kanawa, Fleming, Margaret Price are some of the names that immediately spring to mind and none of them had voices overladen with vibrato.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Kreisler jr said:


> .... I guess I was not as strongly conditioned by pop style singing as many others and was gradually introduced into the classical/operatic singing style.


Thats' an important point, Kreisler (and one I forgot to mention) and like your other point about familiarity via TV both must have an impact. As I was saying, I didn't grow up hearing much opera. School was initially nursery rhymes, humorous songs then simple hymns, some more popular and complicated musical-type material and the rest was made up with pop music so the only access to opera was via the odd cartoon ( Bugs Bunny), adverts, novelty acts on talent shows, etc but opera titbits were there on TV back in the 70s and it was very visible in the late 80s in the UK (which coincided with the rise of divas like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey) . Since then there's been less and less exposure to those kind of voices as the years have passed and apart from a shocking performance of the Flower Duet last year (on 'Britain's Got Absolutely No Talent'), the Proms and the yearly showing of 'The Snowman' I can't remember hearing classically inclined voices since this time last year. Under-representation in the media is hardly helping the cause. What we could do with is Stormzy using a section of a little known opera in one of his songs or wheeling a couple of opera singers out to accompany him on stage. Visibility is very important but relevance is important too. Look at the worldwide audience the San Francisco SO reached by its work on the Metallica S&M concerts.Even musical theatre seems to have regenerated itself over the past few years a d there's a new wave of interest on musicals (much to my annoyance).


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I actually was exposed to rather little music overall as a kid in the 70s/early 80s but it was a mix that contained very little "mainstream" pop/rock. In addition to these opera chorus highlights I recall highlights of "My Fair Lady", "Fiddler on the Roof" (both in German), the West Side story movie, more operetta style anthologies (stuff like Lehar, Kalman. This was what my parents (born in the 1940s and a bit too old to have become fans of the 1960s rock music or for whatever reason) liked (but they didn't listen that much either). Most of these, even more popular "easy listening" records featured often trained voices and if the style was sometimes closer to chanson or easy listening swing or so, it was certainly as far from blues or heavy metal singing as from opera... And the first rock music I clearly remember was "Queen" (roughly the first greatest hits or whatever was their best known stuff around 1982) that is about as operatic as rock gets....
I don't really remember the first opera arias I heard. I vaguely recall finding the Queen of Night aria really bizarre but a bit later, after I had been interested in instrumental classical music I listened to an Don Giovanni highlights LP and I liked that well enough, the singing certainly did not distract from the music


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I see this has Simone Kermes as the Countess, reason enough for me to avoid it. I can't bear it, or her style of singing and nobody will convince me that this is how sopranos sounded in Mozart's time. I find it both "weird" and "unpleasant."
> 
> I can think of any amount of sopranos of the twentieth century whom I would prefer in the role: Rethberg, Schwarzkopf, Te Kanawa, Fleming, Margaret Price are some of the names that immediately spring to mind and none of them had voices overladen with vibrato.


This is also part of what I wanted to say. Most people (including me and you) first got in contact with Mozart via 20th-century performance practices (which, again, is unnatural), and they unconsciously taught themselves to get used to this type of sound. I'm not saying any Mozart sung by 20th-century sopranos is worthless, for instance I personally love Erika Köth and Júlia Várady's voices. I'm saying the tradition on the whole is bad for development of musical interpretation and in fact we have seen new methodologies which are based on a complete system of research of musical texts. (It doesn't matter if it's "how it sounded in Mozart's time", because we can never know that.) You may not like them but I believe they exist for a good reason.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Tsaraslondon said:


> *I see this has Simone Kermes* as the Countess, reason enough for me to avoid it. I can't bear it, or her style of singing and nobody will convince me that this is how sopranos sounded in Mozart's time. I find it both "weird" and "unpleasant."


I'll see your Simone Kermes and raise you a Vivica Genaux - I've posted these before but there's always someone new to horrify...

The videos are cued up...


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## Parsifal98 (Apr 29, 2020)

feierlich said:


> This is what happened. Wagner built Bayreuth for his _Ring_, and since then opera houses have gotten larger and larger.
> 
> And then came the 20th century, when performing 18th- and early 19th-century works like Mozart, Beethoven or Weber, singers with their massive voices mainly were concerned with generating enough volume to fill the theatres. Details, accuracy and key ingredients of sound like improvised ornamentation were lost, what remained was nothing but non-stop vibrato which is not natural or _right_ for the sound itself. The scores were no longer communicated to the audience fully and purely as they are. As a result, a "weird" or "unpleasant" operatic style emerged as a 20th-century voice tradition.
> 
> To put it simply, you can't perform works in theatres built for later written ones. Metropolitan is fine for Wagner and Strauss, but it would be a disaster to perform _Médée_ or _Idomeneo_ (which is happening right now). @prlj mentioned that the soprano voice put off potential opera enthusiasts. I can only see that as the result of the voice tradition described earlier, and I'm sure that if they listen to Mackerras, Gardiner or Currentzis' recordings first they'll love Mozart immediately.


I never really understood the argument about opera houses getting bigger being the main reason why current singers are pushing their voices. The main opera houses, or at least the most prestigious like La Scala, Garnier, Bayreuth, Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro San Carlo, La Fenice, Covent Garden, Bayreuth, etc, are still being used today and have not gotten bigger over the years. La Scala (1778) and Unter den Linden (1742), whilst rebuilt over the decades, were designed in the 18th century, and were already built when Mozart and later Bellini were composing their masterpieces. If we compare a modern performance held in these halls today to a performance recorded there in the 40s, 50s and even 60s, I am pretty sure we would rapidly hear the difference in vibrato (and quality of the voices in general) and then the argument of operatic houses being too big would easily be discarded.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I was indifferent to or annoyed by opera singing until about ten or twelve years ago. Especially female singers. But for some unknown reason my tastes changed and I became interested after that. Now I own several dozen opera recordings. My wife has been a fan much longer so we enjoy them together.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

Parsifal98 said:


> La Scala, Garnier, Bayreuth, Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro San Carlo, La Fenice, Covent Garden


... and which of these houses saw any premiere of operas by Mozart? None. Some of Bellini's operas did have their premiere in La Scala and La Fenice I think, but that belongs to the category of _bel canto_ which is a whole different system than what I'm talking about.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

feierlich said:


> ... and which of these houses saw any premiere of operas by Mozart? None. Some of Bellini's operas did have their premiere in La Scala and La Fenice I think, but that belongs to the category of _bel canto_ which is a whole different system than what I'm talking about.


But it still makes no sense, based on this, to argue that the decline of Mozart productions is due to the size of opera houses built in the 20th century when we've performing Mozart in the same opera houses since the 18th and 19th century. It's irrelevant whether a Mozart opera was actually premiered in La Scala.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Merl said:


> I can understand that many people from outside classical families/circles still find operatic voices "weird or unpleasant" as, let's face it, operatic voices are not 'normal' singing voices. To others they can sound exaggerated or affected. Before opera fans start throwing rocks at me let me explain. The standard 'singing' voice is articulated to sound pretty much like a more pleasant /rhythmical version of most people's talking voice whereas in opera it's the extremes of the singing voice (especially pitch) that is being explored/emphasised. Very generally speaking, I think the ear has to be 'trained' to accept operatic singing voices (unless you are from a household where it was always there in the background/foreground). 50+ years on from hearing my first operatic voices (via TV) I still often baulk at the sound of most male opera singers and can only take female opera singers in short bursts. I just don't find it appeals to me but I can totally understand its appeal to some. I know I'm not speaking for everyone but, for the casual listener, listening to opera requires accepting a style that many people find unnatural. Then it's just a matter of taste; how it resonates with you. Sometimes I'm in the mood to hear a soprano, for example, but more often that not I have to be REALLY in the mood for such vocal performances. That's not being critical of opera (or lieder to a lesser degree) in any way its just not my bag very often. As I said, I find male operatic voices even more off-putting and sometimes feel they sound 'silly' (but I find musicals ridiculous anyway too). Some things either appeal to you or they don't. It often depends on the accompanying music and how much I like that.


I think this is largely a product of the microphone. Before the microphone it was not unheard of for vaudeville singers with no formal training to get promoted to opera singing. Roughly speaking, if the singing most pop singers do is a pleasant/rhythmical version of ones 'inside voice', then opera singing is a pleasant/rhythmical version of ones 'outside voice' (I could say 'shouting', but this brings with it a rather negative connotation rather than just projecting). 

More broadly this shift has affected other things. Even radio announcers and actors back in the day had a tendency to project and you can hear this in older radio/movie/TV programs. 

I think to then characterise opera singing 'abnormal', when it is the most natural way to sing while projecting (all solo singers in the pre-amplification era, even at cheap vaudeville singers, would have had to project) seems to just be an artifact of living in a society that has rendered projecting ones voice a bit obsolete.

That being said, if a singer is singing in a manner that is not merely projecting but overly exaggerated or affected, then they are likely doing something wrong and one can find examples of such 'manufactured' voices. But don't worry, I have no rocks to throw at you .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> I think this is largely a product of the microphone. *Before the microphone it was not unheard of for vaudeville singers with no formal training to get promoted to opera singing. Roughly speaking, if the singing most pop singers do is a pleasant/rhythmical version of ones 'inside voice', then opera singing is a pleasant/rhythmical version of ones 'outside voice' *(I could say 'shouting', but this brings with it a rather negative connotation rather than just projecting).
> 
> More broadly this shift has affected other things. *Even radio announcers and actors back in the day had a tendency to project *and you can hear this in older radio/movie/TV programs.
> 
> ...


I think this is exactly right, and succinctly stated. A century ago, far fewer people would have thought operatic singing "unnatural" or "abnormal." If you have to sing or speak unamplified into a large auditorium or in the open air, you need to learn to employ the full resonance of your voice, and that is the essential thing that opera singers do. In 19th-century America, opera singers traveled from town to town performing in local opera houses, and people undoubtedly felt that their singing was not strange but simply highly skilled - a superior version of the singing they themselves would have done in church and at social functions.

Even after the development of recordings and electronic amplification, the ability to speak and sing with power and resonance continued to be admired; as you point out, the actors in old movies don't mumble, mutter and whisper portentously in the (irritating) manner we get so much of today, and musical theater and films still featured voices of operatic or near-operatic amplitude and quality. Opera singers themselves were frequent guests on TV through the '50s and '60s, and audiences clearly admired and enjoyed them.

My parents, born in the 1920s, knew nothing about opera or classical music, but they didn't think opera singing was odd. I grew up in the '50s, I sang in my school and church choirs, I heard opera singers on TV and radio, and I thought operatic singing sounded simply like the human voice utilizing is full potential for tonal resonance, beauty and expression. Opera singers were doing what I did in church, but doing it better.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Of course. Everyone does, at least at first. Even before WWII, opera was considered a bit extreme and niche, despite some recent claims that it was the music of the masses. Since WWII, of course, mainstream operatic singing has become a withered husk of its former self, poisoned by cultural irrelevancy and its relegation to out-of-touch academia. I still find most modern opera singing to be extremely off-putting and would never intentionally listen to it.

But anyway, when it comes to GOOD classical singing, the very old kind, it's an acquired taste, like any high art. Harder to immediately appreciate, but so much richer and deeper, with more come-back-later value.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

ScottK said:


> I’m telling you if you were sitting next to me last year, upstairs, listening to Lise Davidson’s Ariadne..... well I guess you Would have thought you jumped back 40 years! Yes I know she misses but you’re going to be very happy when you hear her not miss!


LOL. She's exactly the kind of problem we're talking about. That is a thoroughly modern voice. Very, very unnatural, woofy, overly heady, with that vomiting, throaty Kermit sound that's de rigueur in major houses.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

feierlich said:


> This is also part of what I wanted to say. Most people (including me and you) first got in contact with Mozart via 20th-century performance practices (which, again, is unnatural), and they unconsciously taught themselves to get used to this type of sound. I'm not saying any Mozart sung by 20th-century sopranos is worthless, for instance I personally love Erika Köth and Júlia Várady's voices. I'm saying the tradition on the whole is bad for development of musical interpretation and in fact we have seen new methodologies which are based on a complete system of research of musical texts. (It doesn't matter if it's "how it sounded in Mozart's time", because we can never know that.) You may not like them but I believe they exist for a good reason.


I am 15000000000% sure that Mozart's singers sounded more like Patti and Albani and Gustav Walter than today's trust-fund-baby Juilliard-scholarship YAP-churned overeducated singers who learned in school that your forehead and nose are your resonators and have never even heard of the singers I mentioned. All this talk about "historical practices" and they don't even listen to the historical singers. I'm serious. They don't listen to them at all. I'm in the business. The way they sing is NOTHING like the oldest singers on record, and it is certainly nothing like what Lamperti described. 

As you said, we really don't know what Mozart's singers sounded like. But we have a rough idea, and it's nothing like this white-voiced straight-toned yawn-vomit that's all the rage now among the early-music geniuses who practice ng-scales (to maximize what, nasality?), lip trills, and straw phonation, completely forgetting that microphones didn't even exist and the people probably wanted to be heard in the back rows, even outdoors.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

@BachIsBest @Woodduck and others, saying, that operatic singing is just a natural consequence of singing without the microphone, what do you think of Chinese opera singing, which somebody poited out as a different solution to the problem ?

Those, who have a problem with operatic ways ( maybe @haziz ) - is Chinese singing any better ?


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Monsalvat said:


> Yes I remember thinking vibrato sounded unnatural and weird when I was around the same age. I've never been trained as a singer and haven't sung anything aside from the odd choral work, so I have never been trained specifically in that technique and don't even sing with vibrato myself. I think young me would never have thought of producing vibrato at all. Needless to say, my views on this subject have since changed _immensely_. I can't speak to the technical benefits firsthand, but used judiciously, it is a good thing that can add expression, improve intonation, and improve projection over the orchestra. (Used too much and it's worse than useless at any of these things.) It's certainly not the only way to vocalize; anyone who has heard Peking opera can testify to that fact. But when you get used to it, it makes sense.


I don't know why you're so eager to offer your judgment on a phenomenon you don't understand and have admittedly never mastered. Vibrato is not "used." It is a natural phenomenon of relaxed high-energy phonation in the adult human voice. It does not add expression or improve projection. It cannot be used judiciously or too much. It is the result of singing technique, which can be flawed and end up producing a labored or uneven vibrato. Relaxation improves intonation, and vibrato is a product of relaxation. Vibrato does not itself improve intonation. Straight-tones are invariably the result of overly tense singing, in any genre. It's true that most modern singers today have little to no vibrato, and that is because they are god-awful at singing. Back in the day, everyone had it. Country singers like Mickey Newbury had it. Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck. Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Sam Cooke, Eddie Fisher, John Gary, Jackie Wilson, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Odetta, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Sinatra, Tino Rossi, Aurelian Andreescu, Jimmy Roselli, Robert Goulet, Gordon MacRae, you name it. Rock started doing away with it, and from then on you get voices that have to sing live in lower keys than their recordings and are extremely inconsistent and ephemeral because...(fast) vibrato is a sign of healthy technique.

And _vocalize_ tends to mean _sing with no consonants_ in a singing context.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

BBSVK said:


> @BachIsBest @Woodduck and others, saying, that operatic singing is just a natural consequence of singing without the microphone, what do you think of Chinese opera singing, which somebody poited out as a different solution to the problem ?
> 
> Those, who have a problem with operatic ways ( maybe @haziz ) - is Chinese singing any better ?


Western operatic singing is cultivated to a certain norm, as is the music it was developed to interpret. It is obviously true that the overwhelming majority of unamplified singing has never been operatic, considering our multi-millennium singing history and opera's less-than-500-year-long history. Vibrato and operatic balance are necessary to perform the rep--you could not maintain the note values in a Peking Opera singing style. Vibrato is not inevitable, but it is somewhat present in all adults, and it is more noticeable (and hopefully regular) in relaxed, high-energy singing. Peking Opera singing/Sprechgesang is cultivated to a different norm, and that norm is less technically demanding. They can get away with that whiny squeak tone, which is pretty much objectively less free and relaxed. A large orchestra and long, flowing melodies would be a big challenge for them.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

BachIsBest said:


> But it still makes no sense, based on this, to argue that the decline of Mozart productions is due to the size of opera houses built in the 20th century when we've performing Mozart in the same opera houses since the 18th and 19th century. It's irrelevant whether a Mozart opera was actually premiered in La Scala.


It's relevant because my point is these Italian theatres aren't built for Mozart but for later emerging styles called _bel canto_ which indeed requires larger theatre. Theatres don't necessarily serve for works written during the same time.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> I am 15000000000% sure that Mozart's singers sounded more like Patti and Albani and Gustav Walter than today's trust-fund-baby Juilliard-scholarship YAP-churned overeducated singers who learned in school that your forehead and nose are your resonators and have never even heard of the singers I mentioned. All this talk about "historical practices" and they don't even listen to the historical singers. I'm serious. They don't listen to them at all. I'm in the business. The way they sing is NOTHING like the oldest singers on record, and it is certainly nothing like what Lamperti described.
> 
> As you said, we really don't know what Mozart's singers sounded like. But we have a rough idea, and it's nothing like this white-voiced straight-toned yawn-vomit that's all the rage now among the early-music geniuses who practice ng-scales (to maximize what, nasality?), lip trills, and straw phonation, completely forgetting that microphones didn't even exist and the people probably wanted to be heard in the back rows, even outdoors.


You're not understanding what I'm saying, which is that no matter how early you go, you can't go beyond the point when microphone was invented, and during that point musical practices are still more based on inherited tradition than actual interpretation and research of musical texts. These "historical practices" are not about going back progressively in history and trying to get as close to what it sounded like as possible, but directly diving into the musical text, which is the one thing we have to trust since it's a testament by the composer himself.

If you are not sure what I mean by interpretation, research and "diving into", you can check out these mini-lectures by Robert Levin who recently recorded a complete set of Mozart's keyboard sonatas on ECM.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

PaulFranz said:


> LOL. She's exactly the kind of problem we're talking about. That is a thoroughly modern voice. Very, very unnatural, woofy, overly heady, with that vomiting, throaty Kermit sound that's de rigueur in major houses.


4000 rapturous patrons in the opera house would seem to have disagreed with you!!! And not one of them was laughing out loud. I’ve heard bad recordings from her, but you ain’t got the whole picture that’s VERY clear! You sound like you really relish writing something negative.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> I don't know why you're so eager to offer your judgment on a phenomenon you don't understand and have admittedly never mastered. Vibrato is not "used." It is a natural phenomenon of relaxed high-energy phonation in the adult human voice. It does not add expression or improve projection. It cannot be used judiciously or too much. It is the result of singing technique, which can be flawed and end up producing a labored or uneven vibrato. Relaxation improves intonation, and vibrato is a product of relaxation. Vibrato does not itself improve intonation. Straight-tones are invariably the result of overly tense singing, in any genre. It's true that most modern singers today have little to no vibrato, and that is because they are god-awful at singing. Back in the day, everyone had it. Country singers like Mickey Newbury had it. Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck. Roy Rogers, Rex Allen, Sam Cooke, Eddie Fisher, John Gary, Jackie Wilson, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Odetta, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Sinatra, Tino Rossi, Aurelian Andreescu, Jimmy Roselli, Robert Goulet, Gordon MacRae, you name it. Rock started doing away with it, and from then on you get voices that have to sing live in lower keys than their recordings and are extremely inconsistent and ephemeral because...(fast) vibrato is a sign of healthy technique.
> 
> And _vocalize_ tends to mean _sing with no consonants_ in a singing context.


I typed up a more full-fledged response, but I decided not to post it. Your post might be addressing _me_, now, but it isn't addressing the seven or eight year old me when I first heard a singer with vibrato and didn't understand why her voice was not steady. I hadn't heard it before, ever.



> I don't know why you're so eager to offer your judgment on a phenomenon you don't understand and have admittedly never mastered.


I'm not offering my judgement. I'm sharing what my first impressions honestly were. The thread is asking about if I _ever_ found it weird or unpleasant, and it is true that I found it weird or at least unnatural when I was first exposed to it at a young age after _only_ hearing straight tone singing up to that point. Many years have intervened since, and I have a better understanding of the human voice than I did at the age of eight or so. Although it has a fundamentally different technique, my experiences with playing a brass instrument and developing a vibrato also inform my own thoughts about the subject. But that's another topic; I was pretty good, but never at a professional level with that either.

And I think the assertion that an excessive vibrato is not possible is ridiculous, as some present-day singers might be examples of the opposite... Aside from that, I don't know what the rest of your post is referring to, because it isn't me. You listed a bunch of singers; congratulations? It's a _non sequitur_. I hadn't heard of any of those singers at the time. Reading your post again, it seems like we are not really responding to the same topic. I apologize that thoughts I had at the age of roughly eight could cause you to react so defensively.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> @BachIsBest @Woodduck and others, saying, that operatic singing is just a natural consequence of singing without the microphone, what do you think of Chinese opera singing, which somebody poited out as a different solution to the problem ?
> 
> Those, who have a problem with operatic ways ( maybe @haziz ) - is Chinese singing any better ?


It's possible to create a variety of loud vocal sounds. Chinese opera goes for a certain nasal sort of sound, suited to a certain style of music. You wouldn't be able to sing Monteverdi, Bach, Donizetti or Wagner with it. I'd say that it employs muscular tensions of a kind Western classical singing must avoid in order to achieve full resonance and flexibility. The intentional wobble it employs in place of the natural, involuntary vibrato indicates this.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Shaughnessy said:


> I'll see your Simone Kermes and raise you a Vivica Genaux - I've posted these before but there's always someone new to horrify...
> 
> The videos are cued up...


The first one was just plain weird. Btw, is the title of it ‘I’m agitated because I’ve got wind?’

The second one? Ay caramba! This would be the be-bop version I presume. Hilarious and horrific at the same time. Thank goodness I don’t listen to baroque or I’d be going mental. 😂


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Barbebleu said:


> Thank goodness I don’t listen to baroque or I’d be going mental.


To each his own


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Deleted post - Video links no longer active...


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Monsalvat said:


> And I think the assertion that an excessive vibrato is not possible is ridiculous


Still not understanding much, I see.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

feierlich said:


> You're not understanding what I'm saying, which is that no matter how early you go, you can't go beyond the point when microphone was invented


Gustav Walter was born on February 11, 1834, 90 years before microphones were used in the commercial recording industry. He was an excellent Mozart singer. He made his first recordings in 1904, 20 years before microphones were used in the commercial recording industry or modern speakers were used for amplification purposes. He was born 43 years after Mozart's death, and 90 years from usable microphones.

Here's what you said: "Most people (including me and you) first got in contact with Mozart via 20th-century performance practices (which, again, is unnatural), and they unconsciously taught themselves to get used to this type of sound. I'm not saying any Mozart sung by 20th-century sopranos is worthless, for instance I personally love Erika Köth and Júlia Várady's voices. I'm saying the tradition on the whole is bad for development of musical interpretation"

You'll forgive a reader for thinking that, in a thread about vocal production, you are talking about vocal production when you mention "type of sound" and "sopranos."

So now you're abandoning "sound" altogether? Do you think singers learn to sing from reading? Heck even if you did, I've already mentioned Lamperti, which you ignored. You think recordings of singers born within 50 years of Mozart's death are worth less than WRITTEN WORDS when it comes to learning how to SING?

"These "historical practices" are not about going back progressively in history and trying to get as close to what it sounded like as possible, but directly diving into the musical text, which is the one thing we have to trust since it's a testament by the composer himself."

Honestly, this is just bad-faith nonsense. You're discussing style and technique at the same time so you can shift focus from one to the other whenever challenged. Do you think that singers in Mozart's time were "researching" and "diving into" his texts? Or did they just sing they way they were taught and like what they heard around them? In other words, from tradition? When exactly does all of that tradition irrecoverably perish? Clearly by the time Walter started learning to sing, right? Everything he learned as a lad was utterly different from what Mozart wanted, I guess, even though he sang in Vienna and was a native of the Austrian Empire. So within 50 years, every trace of Mozartian practices was wiped off the face of the Earth, and now we have to learn about register blending, covering, vowel modification, and fioritura from...uhh, the score of Don Giovanni. If you're trying to tell us that learning how to sing is best accomplished by reading scores and journal scribbles, then I really don't know what to tell you. That's not a serious position at all.

EDIT: also, ironically, you are revealing your own lack of diligent scholarship when you make posts saying that constant vibrato is unnatural and anachronistic ("not natural or _right_ for the sound itself"). There is no historical evidence to support this. Some writers praised singers for having NO vibrato, but because of recordings (which are totally useless; trust me, bro), we can hear that they have constant vibrato throughout every sustained note. Words do not communicate sounds. Also, the idea that constant vibrato in a singing voice is not natural is...well I don't even have the energy to go after that one at this point.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> Still not understanding much, I see.


I believe all of us here "understand" that every sound has a vibrato which is natural for itself: it's physically impossible for singers having no vibrato; and what you don't "understand" is that this is _exactly_ why a constant excessive vibrato is in every way possible. Vibrato is not just a physical property of sound, it's also a musical technique which composers may or may not instruct players to do. From what you said I assume that as a guy who favours so-called audio evidence over core musical texts you've hardly read any scores? This explains why you lack a basic understanding of vibrato while accusing others of the same, and why you replace "musical texts" with "written words", an example of what's called the straw man fallacy. Following your logic should we find the earliest recordings of piano, violin and all other instruments possible to guide us on how to play them today? To push this further, do you think conductors learn works by listening to prior recordings instead of actually looking at the score? This is musical interpretation we are talking about, not archaeology, and in this sense there's no difference between singing and playing and conducting: they are all sound-producing, music-making activities. And I cannot say this enough: musical texts are far more important than composers themselves once they are gone. When they are alive everything's good, they can listen to performances and exchange ideas with interpreters, helping them with understanding and/or revising their works. But when they are dead, there's no one to trust but the score, so for the last time: this whole argument of mine is not primarily about growing theatres, invention and use of microphones or vibratos, it's about interpretations based on solid, logical and consistent research produce simply _better_ results musically than those based on inherited tradition or, in your words, "recordings of singers born within 50 years of Mozart's death". And if you just can't see this fundamental point I'm making, well then I really don't know what to tell you either.








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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

I don't think you can blame many of us for thinking your argument was about growing theaters when you started off with:


feierlich said:


> This is what happened. Wagner built Bayreuth for his _Ring_, and since then opera houses have gotten larger and larger.


I listened to the Currentzis. I liked the improvisation and the freedom that that seemed to bring to their sense of phrasing. Fine musicians. As for the voices, the entire dynamic range is between mumbling into your coffee and politely asking the waitress for a demitasse spoon. Granted that this is not Tosca leaping from the ramparts, but it isn't the retirement home cafeteria either. The voices are pretty, but thin and brittle.
If we look for a very early record of the same piece, we find:
Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492: Sull' aria... Che soave zeffiretto (Recorded 1908) - YouTube
I find these voices extremely pure and beautiful even on this old recording as we have it -- no imagining a voice I think might have been there. I have no idea whether most people would agree with me, but I find them very natural, beautiful, and clear. There is no hint of "excessive vibrato" here, unless your idea of "excessive" is anything in excess of zero. I find these singers just as free and spontaneous, and with more robust voices that possess much greater depth of tone. I am intrigued at the thought of them improvising like the singers in the modern recording, but in a way they do; they use portamento and rubato, and, imo, except for an unfortunate lapse in intonation at the climax, produce an excellent musical result.

Now, I'm actually more in sympathy with the idea that a performance should be judged on its musical value in the here and now than with the idea that it should be judged against an imagined recreation of what the composer might have actually heard. But, I would argue very strongly that the technique of singers like Eames and Sembrich a) is far more flexible, and can therefore produce a much wider range of interpretations performed with much greater freedom; b) is more suited to opera as drama -- it's not just musical texts, it's musical texts that interpret, inform, and enact words, and to make an interesting dramatic presentation, imo, you need two full registers working in tandem; and c) is part of the tradition that the music itself came from, and therefore can help us to understand the music better. We know for a fact, from singing manuals and from descriptions of singers, that since the Baroque period sopranos have developed their chest voices specifically to give the low notes and the whole voice strength and character. Knowing how the registers work helps us to interpret the score: should low notes in certain passages be sung in a barely audible head voice at the bottom of its range where it can only be weak, or should the singer do what is natural to the voice and in line with the technique of the time and switch to at least a coordinated chest voice? Well, to me, the singing tradition embodied in singers like Patti, Sembrich, and Melba helps us to demonstrate very clearly that the latter is not only natural but dramatically and musically desirable.



> Following your logic should we find the earliest recordings of piano, violin and all other instruments possible to guide us on how to play them today?


Why do we still listen to Mozart at all? Because it's music worth listening to even after a few hundred years. He wrote classic operas, and a classic is (in my definition) a work of art that is relevant in all times in places. To my mind, many of the instrumentalists and vocalists of the early 20th century that were recorded were important artists, and their recordings are classics in the same sense as Mozart's operas. This recording is a treasure for all time:
Tristan und Isolde Melchior Flagstad Reiner 1936 LIVE - YouTube

Singers today should study it, not only to be connected with the tradition of the past but also because, like Wagner's opera itself, it repays effort and repeated engagement. Now, today's composers shouldn't be rewriting Mozart's operas as knockoffs, and I'm not telling singers now they have to start a Tetrazzini cover band (though that actually does sound pretty cool). What I'm saying is that just as today's composers could learn a heck of a lot from Mozart about how to write for voice, how to integrate dramatic structure with musical structure, and how generally not to be a great big bore, today's singers and instrumentalists can learn a lot from their predecessors about how to sing a legato line, how to use registers to express drama, and how to sing with sprezzatura and chiaroscuro.

Now, if it's true that modern singers are singing pieces in ways that show better insight into the musical scores, I would like you to give what you think is a good example of this famous Mozart aria and explain why it is better than this classic recording from an old-school soprano with exceptional technique. I've done this many times to demonstrate why I think old singers are better, and to me it's the only way to rigorously make a point about a recording or a singer.

How does Melba's heavy vibrato here lead her into a musically dubious performance?
Nellie Melba 1904 Mozart The Marriage of Figaro "Porgi, amor" - YouTube

When I compare it to Simone Kermes, I think especially of the ending:
Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492: Atto Secondo: Porgi amor qualche ristoro (No. 11, Cavatina: La... - YouTube

The aria ends on the word "morir". The sense of the line is, "bring me back my beloved (lit. treasure), or at least let me die." This text is sung twice in short succession at the end of the aria. Both Melba and Kermes use exclusively head voice the first occurrence, but Kermes sings the final "morir" in a weak head voice while Melba sings it strongly and clearly in chest voice. Which is better? I say Melba, because the stronger, darker, slightly (and in in the case of Melba's uber-refined voice it is only slightly) grittier tone quality of chest voice better expresses the anguish of the Countess's state of mind. To me, this is a perfect example of how a vocal tradition (at least having the option of chest voice in and below the passaggio) gleaned from recordings can actually help us interpret a score as a piece of dramatic music.

In general, I find Melba's style natural, direct, and poised, which is exactly right for an aristocratic character of substance. I find Kermes rather weak and affected, and frankly the voice sounds much more unnatural than Melba's, even though Melba is singing into a glorified tin can.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Now, if it's true that modern singers are singing pieces in ways that show better insight into the musical scores, I would like you to give what you think is a good example of this famous Mozart aria and explain why it is better than this classic recording from an old-school soprano with exceptional technique. I've done this many times to demonstrate why I think old singers are better, and to me it's the only way to rigorously make a point about a recording or a singer.
> 
> How does Melba's heavy vibrato here lead her into a musically dubious performance?
> Nellie Melba 1904 Mozart The Marriage of Figaro "Porgi, amor" - YouTube
> ...


Kermes seems hardly to be singing at all. Is the idea that the countess is merely thinking aloud, sort of muttering to herself? I'm sure of one thing: this is not the sort of precious, contrived vocalism that Mozart had in mind, and had he heard a soprano producing such wan, emaciated crooning he would have suggested that she go home and rest until she felt well enough to sing.

I haven't heard Currentzis's much-touted (by whom?) Mozart recordings, but if this is the sort of artifice he thinks will save Mozart and the world, I don't want either of them saved.


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## feierlich (3 mo ago)

vivalagentenuova said:


> What I'm saying is that just as today's composers could learn a heck of a lot from Mozart about how to write for voice, how to integrate dramatic structure with musical structure, and how generally not to be a great big bore, today's singers and instrumentalists can learn a lot from their predecessors about how to sing a legato line, how to use registers to express drama, and how to sing with sprezzatura and chiaroscuro.


This I totally agree to. As I said the term "20th century" I used doesn't refer to all things that happened in those 100 years, but a general discourse that happened to be dominant in the last century. Of course musicians today have a lot to learn from the past. That does not mean 2 things: A, old singers are better and modern singers are just messing around; B, modern singers should base their practice on imitation.



vivalagentenuova said:


> Now, if it's true that modern singers are singing pieces in ways that show better insight into the musical scores, I would like you to give what you think is a good example of this famous Mozart aria and explain why it is better than this classic recording from an old-school soprano with exceptional technique.


One aspect I would like to mention is ornamentation. No matter how to praise the "exceptional technique" of old singers, 95% of them ignore ornamentation, an essential element in 18th-century music, not only to make sense of the sound itself but also of the tonal accents of the Italian language. We know this from reliable people like C. P. E. Bach and Domenico Corri, and no other but Mozart himself: the slow part of Countess' aria "Dove sono..." is identical to "Agnus Dei" in the _Krönungsmesse_, where the composer wrote ornamentation in the score for the second verse and even more for the third. At least from this aspect you can't say modern singers didn't produce better results than old-school ones, simply because it made more sense musically.

"Dove sono" sung by Schwarzkopf
"Dove sono" sung by Carol Vaness and conducted by Charles Mackerras
"Agnus Dei" from _Krönungsmesse_

And I think this is the end of this discussion about historical vocal practices, at least on my end. I don't have more to say and any more would be just the stuff I said all over again. We all have our prejudices: I had unpleasant experiences when I first got into contact with Mozart, and performances by Mackerras, Gardiner and Currentzis (who as you can see is not alone! He is no one but a successor and enhancer of the previous two's methodologies) overwhelmed me with immense musical power (or catharsis, in Currentzis' terms). Other people like @Woodduck criticize Currentzis' methods even though he never even actually listened to his recordings. So thank you all for taking your time for this discussion and inspiring me to write stuff I usually wouldn't.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

feierlich said:


> Why do we still listen to Mozart at all? Because* it's music worth listening to even after a few hundred years. *He wrote classic operas, and a classic is (in my definition) a work of art that is relevant in all times in places.


We just want/like to believe that way (and the media tends to make us to). But the idea that [by some kind of ever-unchanging "Universal Laws of Physics" Mozart fundamentally has higher artistic value than Paisiello] doesn't make sense to me. We just like to delude ourselves that [people of the late 18th century were "musically dumb", so they appreciated Paisiello more]. We shouldn't forget that Mozart always thought of himself as an "entertainer", wanted to achieve the fame of Paisiello (the most popular opera composer of the 18th century), but didn't have what it takes to. It could be thought that Mozart simply had "Mozartian" elements and strong characteristic Germanic-style harmonic, orchestral texture (in addition to his _sentimentally tragic_ life story) that could be mistaken for proto-Romanticism, which some Romantics were later attracted to.

*Il barbiere di Siviglia*
Ma dov'eri tu, stordito... www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HT28Sd3ts8&t=1m46s
Scorsi gia molti paesi www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-AK05vxFug&t=3m2s
La calunnia, mio signore... www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UMOUDKLRVg&t=1m54s


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

feierlich said:


> Other people like @Woodduck criticize Currentzis' methods even though he never even actually listened to his recordings.


What? 

I listened to what Currentzis had Simone Kermes do to "Porgi amor," and I stated my opinion of it (see post #62 above). I have no idea what those "other people like Woodduck" are up to.

Currentzis - like so many musicians today, especially of the HIP sort - seems a very idea-driven person. I'm sure there's an idea behind that particular performance. It seems to me a bad idea.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I have this too.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

feierlich said:


> It's relevant because my point is these Italian theatres aren't built for Mozart but for later emerging styles called _bel canto_ which indeed requires larger theatre. Theatres don't necessarily serve for works written during the same time.


If you wish to argue that the decline of Mozart singing is due to the increase in theater size, it certainly does seem relevant as to when theater sizes increase.

By the same token, I could say the fact that Bayreuth and other Wagnerian theaters were built was irrelevant because these theaters were built for an emerging style of Wagnerian dramas and not for Mozart. Yet you posted



feierlich said:


> *This is what happened. Wagner built Bayreuth for his Ring, and since then opera houses have gotten larger and larger.*
> 
> And then came the 20th century, when performing 18th- and early 19th-century works like Mozart, Beethoven or Weber, singers with their massive voices mainly were concerned with generating enough volume to fill the theatres. Details, accuracy and key ingredients of sound like improvised ornamentation were lost, what remained was nothing but non-stop vibrato which is not natural or _right_ for the sound itself. The scores were no longer communicated to the audience fully and purely as they are. As a result, a "weird" or "unpleasant" operatic style emerged as a 20th-century voice tradition.
> 
> To put it simply, you can't perform works in theatres built for later written ones. Metropolitan is fine for Wagner and Strauss, but it would be a disaster to perform _Médée_ or _Idomeneo_ (which is happening right now). @prlj mentioned that the soprano voice put off potential opera enthusiasts. I can only see that as the result of the voice tradition described earlier, and I'm sure that if they listen to Mackerras, Gardiner or Currentzis' recordings first they'll love Mozart immediately.


Mozart was sung in large theaters like La Scala long before the 20th century. Theater sizes were increasing long before Wagner.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

feierlich said:


> One aspect I would like to mention is ornamentation. No matter how to praise the "exceptional technique" of old singers, 95% of them ignore ornamentation, an essential element in 18th-century music, not only to make sense of the sound itself but also of the tonal accents of the Italian language. We know this from reliable people like C. P. E. Bach and Domenico Corri, and no other but Mozart himself: the slow part of Countess' aria "Dove sono..." is identical to "Agnus Dei" in the _Krönungsmesse_, where the composer wrote ornamentation in the score for the second verse and even more for the third. At least from this aspect you can't say modern singers didn't produce better results than old-school ones, simply because it made more sense musically.
> 
> "Dove sono" sung by Schwarzkopf
> "Dove sono" sung by Carol Vaness and conducted by Charles Mackerras
> ...


It's almost like you are pointing out that you have to study the inherited musical tradition these works were written in the context of and not just the score to produce the best performance. What a concept!


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