# Soft singing



## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

Mezza voce singing really moves me. Many singers do it, but some are special. Franco Corelli for being able to do it and of course being fantastic. Beniamino Gigli who does it so beautifully and when he later over used it you couldn't care less. He does it so splendidly. And of course Renata Tebaldi whose beautiful voice is like made for soft singing. Of course Callas has to be mentioned too, since she used it too so well for dramatic effect. My personal favorite is Giuseppe Di Stefano. Like everything else he does, he does this like no one else.






And what I've read at his prime it had so good projection, that it could be heard all the way to the back of the theater.

And here is the master Gigli. Sick and old after a long career and he is just fabulous. I'm sure he would have sounded great in his death bed. Gigli really was something else. Whatever you think of him as a singer, but he sure had the technical part right.


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## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

And in that concert Gigli sang 21 pieces. He really ruined his health on that tour. One of the most natural singers.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Let us not forget to include Milanov, Caballe, Ponselle, Radvanovsky, Kaufmann.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tito Schipa






Enrico Caruso


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Some singers can make the quietest pianissimi float to the furthest reaches of a large concert hall. I remember many years ago hearing Dame Janet Baker sing the _Ruckert Lieder_ at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. She dared the tiniest thread of sound in _Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen_, and yet I had no difficulty hearing her, though I was sitting a long way back. Hers was not a big voice, but I don't remember ever having difficulty hearing her.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

As ne who is in possession of a voice line a foghorn in full cry, I am full of admiration for singers who are able to reign their voices back to produce a ravishing pianissimo. Bergonzi was able to do this and Kaufmann produces sme lovely soft singing in his DVD Carmen and Tosca. 
Interestingly del Monaco had a technique that made him unable to sing softly. His ringing voice and virile appearance earned him the nickname of the "Brass Bull of Milan".Despite his idiomatic phrasing, he was still widely criticized for being unsubtle and unyielding in his vocal interpretations. In this regard, the soprano Magda Olivero noted that:

"When Del Monaco and I sang Francesca da Rimini together at La Scala [in 1959] he explained his whole vocal technique to me. When he finished I said, "My dear Del Monaco, if I had to put into practice all the things you've told me, I'd stop singing right away and just disappear." The technique was so complicated: you push the larynx down, then you push this up, then you do that-in short, it made my head spin just to hear everything he did.
"We recorded Francesca excerpts together [in 1969]. Francesca has a beautiful phrase, "Paolo, datemi pace," marked "piano," and then Paolo enters with "Inghirlandata di violette," which also should be sung softly, delicately. Instead, Del Monaco was terrible-he bellowed the phrase! When he listened to the playback he exclaimed, "I can't believe it! After that soft poetic phrase I come in and what do I sound like-a boxer punching with his fists!" He recorded the phrase again, but the second attempt was more or less the same because he was incapable of singing piano. He was furious with himself because he wanted to. He tried everything, but his technique would not permit him to sing softly since it totally was based on the muscles." 
Be interested to hear what some of you guys who know about vocal technique think of this.


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## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

DavidA said:


> As ne who is in possession of a voice line a foghorn in full cry, I am full of admiration for singers who are able to reign their voices back to produce a ravishing pianissimo. Bergonzi was able to do this and Kaufmann produces sme lovely soft singing in his DVD Carmen and Tosca.
> Interestingly del Monaco had a technique that made him unable to sing softly. His ringing voice and virile appearance earned him the nickname of the "Brass Bull of Milan".Despite his idiomatic phrasing, he was still widely criticized for being unsubtle and unyielding in his vocal interpretations. In this regard, the soprano Magda Olivero noted that:
> 
> "When Del Monaco and I sang Francesca da Rimini together at La Scala [in 1959] he explained his whole vocal technique to me. When he finished I said, "My dear Del Monaco, if I had to put into practice all the things you've told me, I'd stop singing right away and just disappear." The technique was so complicated: you push the larynx down, then you push this up, then you do that-in short, it made my head spin just to hear everything he did.
> ...


If you listen this live love duet from Otello in 1959 there are moments he singed softly. He was in a bad car accident in 1963, which altered his voice. It lost half its volume and breathing and support became more difficult. Mario could sing softly after the car accident too, but only when he was at his best.






Mario being unsubtle is just idiotic. Listen him singing E la solita storia. I'm not certain about the date he recorded it, but if it's 1964. Then it would be just when he returned to singing after the accident.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Tito Schipa
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Wonderful, thank you. The cut-aways in the Schipa video are quite funny. The singing, however, is amazing; such control, such elegance, such finesse.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Nicolai Gedda


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Sergei Lemeshev, an imposed poor health condition made him sing in a soft and charm style as his artistic signature, an ideal model for Russian tenors for many years!


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## Green pasture (Aug 11, 2015)

The French-Canadian tenor *Léopold Simoneau *delivered an absolutely wonderful "Dalla sua pace" (Don Ottavio's Act 2 aria) at the *1956 Salzburg Festival performance of Don Giovanni *conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. The reprise of the main theme is simply heavenly. It deservedly won the lengthiest applause of the evening.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

DavidA said:


> As ne who is in possession of a voice line a foghorn in full cry, I am full of admiration for singers who are able to reign their voices back to produce a ravishing pianissimo. Bergonzi was able to do this and Kaufmann produces sme lovely soft singing in his DVD Carmen and Tosca.
> Interestingly del Monaco had a technique that made him unable to sing softly. His ringing voice and virile appearance earned him the nickname of the "Brass Bull of Milan".Despite his idiomatic phrasing, he was still widely criticized for being unsubtle and unyielding in his vocal interpretations. In this regard, the soprano Magda Olivero noted that:
> 
> "When Del Monaco and I sang Francesca da Rimini together at La Scala [in 1959] he explained his whole vocal technique to me. When he finished I said, "My dear Del Monaco, if I had to put into practice all the things you've told me, I'd stop singing right away and just disappear." The technique was so complicated: you push the larynx down, then you push this up, then you do that-in short, it made my head spin just to hear everything he did.
> ...


This was a very interesting anecdote as I consider Magda Olivero to be the queen of diminuendos. The strength of her muscles served her well into her late '80's.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

DavidA said:


> As ne who is in possession of a voice line a foghorn in full cry, I am full of admiration for singers who are able to reign their voices back to produce a ravishing pianissimo. Bergonzi was able to do this and Kaufmann produces sme lovely soft singing in his DVD Carmen and Tosca.
> Interestingly del Monaco had a technique that made him unable to sing softly. His ringing voice and virile appearance earned him the nickname of the "Brass Bull of Milan".Despite his idiomatic phrasing, he was still widely criticized for being unsubtle and unyielding in his vocal interpretations. In this regard, the soprano Magda Olivero noted that:
> 
> "When Del Monaco and I sang Francesca da Rimini together at La Scala [in 1959] he explained his whole vocal technique to me. When he finished I said, "My dear Del Monaco, if I had to put into practice all the things you've told me, I'd stop singing right away and just disappear." The technique was so complicated: you push the larynx down, then you push this up, then you do that-in short, it made my head spin just to hear everything he did.
> ...


Well all singing is based on muscles! What could Olivero have meant here? Essentially which muscles is she talking about. I can only speculate, could she perhaps have meant that singing softly depends on the breath. However breathing is regulated by muscular movements too!

There is a popular misconception that to sing softly one just reduces the breath pressure, but that isn't so (I guess this comes about because some singers have a sensation that the breath is reducing in the same measure as the volume of sound). For true piano singing a different balance between the muscles connected to the vocal chords is needed. The arytinoids (or chest voice) should be used less and the crico-thyroids more (or rather head voice). The support needs to increase as the tone becomes smaller. So it's all muscular, I would suggest that del Monaco found it difficult to reduce his chest voice and so always had a big tone no matter what he tried. In this case Olivero is saying that his technique was based on using the arytinoid muscles and he wasn't able to reduce their activity and produce tones dominated by crico-thyroid muscle action.

I hope somebody can make sense of that!

N.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> Let us not forget to include Milanov, Caballe, Ponselle, Radvanovsky, Kaufmann.


In his book from 1970, THE GRAND TRADITION, J.B. Steane singles out Caballe's soft singing as being remarkable. I agree with your other choices, though the singer whose quieter singing affects me the most is probably Sherrill Milnes. I can think of many examples from his recordings, but one in particular stands out: the phrase "Io son beato" in the last moments of the aria "In braccio alle dovizie" from Verdi's I VESPRI SICILIANI (the RCA recording conducted by James Levine). With Milnes it's one of the most beautiful, haunting sounds I've ever heard a singer produce. The first time I ever heard it, years ago, I was in awe, as I continue to be whenever I hear it today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

plumblossom said:


> The French-Canadian tenor *Léopold Simoneau *delivered an absolutely wonderful "Dalla sua pace" (Don Ottavio's Act 2 aria) at the *1956 Salzburg Festival performance of Don Giovanni *conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. The reprise of the main theme is simply heavenly. It deservedly won the lengthiest applause of the evening.


Utterly beautiful. When will we hear such singing again?


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## Green pasture (Aug 11, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Utterly beautiful. When will we hear such singing again?


Don Ottavio is not a particularly flattering character in Don Giovanni, but through his utterly beautiful and sublime singing, Simoneau rightly stole the entire show. A correction to my earlier post, btw: ""Dalla sua pace" is in Act 1, not Act 2.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

plumblossom said:


> Don Ottavio is not a particularly flattering character in Don Giovanni, but through his utterly beautiful and sublime singing, Simoneau rightly stole the entire show. A correction to my earlier post, btw: ""Dalla sua pace" is in Act 1, not Act 2.


Love that live 56 Mitropoulos Don G, Simoneau has tough job to steal the show when his Donna Anna is Grummer at the top of her game.......

A truely classic Don G for sure


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Of particular merit is Nilsson. She had a breathtaking piannisimi, even on C#. Her Nile Scene in Aida was astonishing for all the ravishing soft high notes. It was all the more astounding because she had one of the largest voices of all time. She could sing a high note at half volume over an orchestra and still be heard clearly. She was so much more than huge High C's.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Jane Eaglen did not have a full piannisimo like Caballe or Milanov, but she could do some really ravishing soft singing back in the day before her early retirement. The last note of the Libestod was glorious. Jessye Norman in her prime had breathtaking soft high notes. In Euranthe she sings repeated soft high C's in a coloratura piece that I could listen to over and over.


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