# Old Books Written By Opera Singers About Singing



## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

Hey!
I had an idea- to create a list of as many old books written by great singers about the art of singing. I thought that with the help of everyone here, we could come out with some great materials that should be out there studied and celebrated by singers and audience of our time, it could be a great resource.

So here is my first contribution to the list - Luisa Tetrazzini's How to Sing -
https://books.googleusercontent.com...7aeYqHOb2NBDNXUqzHzJ7eepNAloAjgpqPud4tr3q8-dJ

It's truly fascinating to read, so much you can learn about how the industry used to work back then, makes you think about how what she writes relate for today. She also gives some tips about singing and references some of her friends and mentors who were the great artists of her time.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Jerome Hines "Great Singers on Great Singing"


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

"The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer" Renee Fleming


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## Operasinger (May 28, 2021)

nina foresti said:


> Jerome Hines "Great Singers on Great Singing"


Thanks Nina! Just found some excerpts from this one online and it's fascinating. Specifically there was a quote of Martina Arroyo saying she do not have a chest voice at all. It is very strange that she says that!

There's another book of the famous Lilli Lehmann also named How To Sing.
What's most fascinating is that when you listen to those old old recordings, you never ever hear nasality, right?
but Lilli Lehmann has an entire chapter about "nasal singing" "singing in the mask" and all this kind of wordings that she wrote in 1904.
And I'm thinking that back then she was surrounded with singers who used primarily their chest voice, even women, even in the high notes, it's really prominent in all those recordings, making all the high notes extremely bright. Maybe she was advocating for a change from the other direction that we're thinking, maybe all the descriptive words she uses morphed their meaning through all those years. Maybe each time she talks about nasality it equals to mix in nowadays meanings, and each time she talks about the ah vowel and it's powers and how it should be mixed with all other vowels- she actually means chest voice (not chest resonant which she also mentions).

Maybe this was one of the contribution for all the misunderstanding around the chest voice. It's like operatic singing moved from one extreme point to the other, both of which are the duality of the human voice. At her time it was probably at the extreme point of primarily using the chest making the high notes very bright because of it. Over the years singers started darkening their high notes (with more head), following the direction Lehmann was advocating for, like Tetrazzini did, one generation after Lehmann. It's clear in Tetrazzini's recordings whenever she jumps to the high notes she gets so dark. Then later you have Ponselle and so on, singers who used tons of head and chest all the way through their voice, but then the "pure" chest voice sound wasn't apparent anymore as much as it used to and so it wasn't as clear for teachers and singers that singers should use it, and with 
trying-to-avoid-the-break method just completely disregarding it's existence. Then people went to look for answers about how to make singers loud again (cause just head voice singing is very quiet), and they read Lehmann's writing about how "nasality" singing (really mix) makes singer's voices to be so loud. And everything else she writes about aiming the air to the resonances... they miss understood her, and now we have the most successful singers using and teaching actual nasality singing.

Anyway this totally came off topic and I have no idea if any of this is interesting to anyone here. All this technique details. I was just blubbing out my thoughts as I figured them out after reading Lehmann's book, trying to follow all her directions and so on.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

A Prima Donna progress , the autobiography of Dame Joan Sutherland .


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

For anyone studying French song _The Interpretation of French Song_ by Pierre Bernac is absolutely essential reading.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

A book I have found absolutely fasinating is this one in which John Steane listens with Schwarzkopf to some of her own records.










She talks about the techniques a singer of her type, with a relatively small voice, needs to use to penetrate heavier orchestrations. She's also quite objectively self-critical. If she thinks something is good, she will say so, but is equally critical if she thinks it isn't. Indeed sometimes she will take Steane by surprise by coming down hard on a performance he rather enjoys.

Interestingly, she thinks she went on singing too long, mostly because Walter Legge wanted her to (she cancelled all engagements after he died) and talks about the ways she tried to manage her waning resources.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

A must have .


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