# Irene Minghini Cattaneo: Dramatic Mezzo Soprano



## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

So I just discovered this magnificent and under-appreciated mezzo soprano Irene Minghini Cattaneo. She comes from the old Italian school of singing, with full, unrestrained use of chest voice. Not middle voice brought down into the lower range. Not damp, swallowed singing which disappears into the throat. Real CHEST voice. Contrary to modern schools of thought that "over singing" the chest voice causes damage and imbalance, the voice here is even from top to bottom. Not a scratch or kink throughout the entire range.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

The use of chest voice is superb here and the voice is an even, complete whole. However I find her a bit too demonstrative in style and I would term her a dramatic contralto, the colour of the voice is darker than a dramatic mezzo like Christa Ludwig, Huguette Tourangeau or Sarah Connolly.

N.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

Thanks for sharing - I like the recording of Aida with her Amneris and Pertile as Radames


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

The Conte said:


> The use of chest voice is superb here and the voice is an even, complete whole. However I find her a bit too demonstrative in style and I would term her a dramatic contralto, the colour of the voice is darker than a dramatic mezzo like Christa Ludwig, Huguette Tourangeau or Sarah Connolly.
> 
> N.


To my ears, those are lyric mezzos (though mezzos and baritones really need a "spinto" category like the tenors and soprani have). Dramatic mezzo is more Elena Obraztsova, Dolora Zajick or Viorica Cortez.

I admit though that the differences can be subtle. Some dramatic mezzos can be hard to tell apart from soprani (ex: Callas, Varnay and Verrett all share characteristics of both) and others are hard to tell apart from contralto (ex: Oralia Dominguez, Olga Borodina, Milla Edelman and a few others could really be typed as either).


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> To my ears, those are lyric mezzos (though mezzos and baritones really need a "spinto" category like the tenors and soprani have). Dramatic mezzo is more Elena Obraztsova, Dolora Zajick or Viorica Cortez.
> 
> I admit though that the differences can be subtle. Some dramatic mezzos can be hard to tell apart from soprani (ex: Callas, Varnay and Verrett all share characteristics of both) and others are hard to tell apart from contralto (ex: Oralia Dominguez, Olga Borodina, Milla Edelman and a few others could really be typed as either).


Yes, I agree that it can be hard to hear where the lines are. I would consider Obratsova a contralto and Callas and Varnay dramatic mezzos. I see no reason for a 'spinto' category for mezzos and baritones as you already have enough categories to describe voice (as opposed to roles).

If Ludwig, Meier, Tourangeau and Connolly are lyric mezzos what are DiDonato, Bartoli and Berganza?

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Oh God. Fachs again. Don't people have anything more...um...REAL to talk about? 

Singers should be categorized by the kinds of roles they sing well. Christa Ludwig sang virtually everything well, from Schubert songs on up to Ortrud, Kundry and Leonore, and it's absurd to debate what kind of mezzo she was. And if I hear one more time that Callas was a mezzo...


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Oh God. Fachs again. Don't people have anything more...um...REAL to talk about?
> 
> Singers should be categorized by the kinds of roles they sing well. *Christa Ludwig sang virtually everything well*, from Schubert songs on up to Ortrud, Kundry and Leonore, and it's absurd to debate what kind of mezzo she was. And if I hear one more time that Callas was a mezzo...


Voice type has nothing to do with how well someone sings, a person on their first day of singing lessons has a voice type. It may take some time for a teacher to determine what it is, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. The equivalent in straight theatre is gender/age. Acting types are young female, older female, young male, older male (without getting into a discussion about binary gender vs. a gender spectrum and ageism or sexism in the theatre) we wouldn't bat our eyelids at suggesting someone is too young/old for a role in spoken theatre or that someone should be playing the grandfather instead of the young lover or vice versa. Why not point out that a singer's voice is too light/heavy or bright/dark for a role?

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Voice type has nothing to do with how well someone sings, a person on their first day of singing lessons has a voice type. It may take some time for a teacher to determine what it is, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. The equivalent in straight theatre is gender/age. Acting types are young female, older female, young male, older male (without getting into a discussion about binary gender vs. a gender spectrum and ageism or sexism in the theatre) we wouldn't bat our eyelids at suggesting someone is too young/old for a role in spoken theatre or that someone should be playing the grandfather instead of the young lover or vice versa. Why not point out that a singer's voice is too light/heavy or bright/dark for a role?
> 
> N.


You misinterpret me. I didn't comment on how well Christa Ludwig sang. I said that she sang certain things well. That covers a great many points, including technique, vocal quality, timbre, temperament, etc., etc. If a singer fulfills the requirements of the repertoire she sings - in fact makes a superb effect in it - bickering about her "fach," which for some reason certain operaphiles like to spend their time doing, is silly. Ludwig was as much a "dramatic mezzo" as a "lyric mezzo." How do I know that? Because she was a superb exponent of Wagner's leading mezzo parts, probably the best of her generation. That she was equally fine, and as "lyric" as you could wish, in song and oratorio, shows the pointlessness of so much of this talk.

Christa Ludwig's "voice type" was just that: Christa Ludwig's voice type. It was a type of voice that sings Schubert, Bach, Wagner, Strauss and everything in between. What you want to call it doesn't matter, but trying to squeeze it into some unnecessarily limiting "fach" does matter, exactly as reifying any artificial entity matters. I've been through all this before, but I'll say it again: the concept of "fach" has its (limited) practical uses, but trying to impose one's category preferences on singers whose careers triumphantly defy such categories isn't one of them.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You misinterpret me. I didn't comment on how well Christa Ludwig sang. I said that she sang certain things well. That covers a great many points, including technique, vocal quality, timbre, temperament, etc., etc. If a singer fulfills the requirements of the repertoire she sings - in fact makes a superb effect in it - bickering about her "fach," which for some reason certain operaphiles like to spend their time doing, is silly. Ludwig was as much a "dramatic mezzo" as a "lyric mezzo." How do I know that? Because she was a superb exponent of Wagner's leading mezzo parts, probably the best of her generation. That she was equally fine, and as "lyric" as you could wish, in song and oratorio, shows the pointlessness of so much of this talk.
> 
> Christa Ludwig's "voice type" was just that: Christa Ludwig's voice type. It was a type of voice that sings Schubert, Bach, Wagner, Strauss and everything in between. What you want to call it doesn't matter, but trying to squeeze it into some unnecessarily limiting "fach" does matter, exactly as reifying any artificial entity matters. I've been through all this before, but I'll say it again: the concept of "fach" has its (limited) practical uses, but trying to impose one's category preferences on singers whose careers triumphantly defy such categories isn't one of them.


I feel that most of this is irrelevant to my point. Note I used voice type rather than fach. As I have said before, the words used to describe voice types may not be the best that could be used. The voice type 'lyric mezzo' does not mean that the singer is only capable of singing lyrically and not dramatically. It means a voice that, when used naturally, is light in terms of its weight and has a mix of darkness and light as far as colour is concerned. We are born with the voices we have and whilst voices are built via study and exercise (although there are cases of people who have had a natural ability with the voice already built to a degree), there are innate qualities that limit the repertoire that a singer can sing. A violinist may play Schubert, Bach, Wagner, Strauss and everything in between, but that doesn't make him a percussionist. Voices are instruments.

There isn't anything that Christa Ludwig sang that I wouldn't expect a dramatic mezzo to sing other than the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier and whilst she sang it well, she didn't quite sound as right for the role as she did as Octavian. Does that mean she shouldn't have sung it? No. However had she based her career on the Marschallin, Elsa, Sieglinde, Mimi, Queen of the Night and Ariel in The Tempest, I don't think it would have lasted as long as it did.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> I feel that most of this is irrelevant to my point. Note I used voice type rather than fach. As I have said before, the words used to describe voice types may not be the best that could be used. The voice type 'lyric mezzo' does not mean that the singer is only capable of singing lyrically and not dramatically. It means a voice that, when used naturally, is light in terms of its weight and has a mix of darkness and light as far as colour is concerned. We are born with the voices we have and whilst voices are built via study and exercise (although there are cases of people who have had a natural ability with the voice already built to a degree), there are innate qualities that limit the repertoire that a singer can sing. A violinist may play Schubert, Bach, Wagner, Strauss and everything in between, but that doesn't make him a percussionist. Voices are instruments.
> 
> There isn't anything that Christa Ludwig sang that I wouldn't expect a dramatic mezzo to sing other than the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier and whilst she sang it well, she didn't quite sound as right for the role as she did as Octavian. Does that mean she shouldn't have sung it? No. However had she based her career on the Marschallin, Elsa, Sieglinde, Mimi, Queen of the Night and Ariel in The Tempest, I don't think it would have lasted as long as it did.
> 
> N.


I guess I don't know what your point IS, or rather WHY you're making it. When I see people arguing about whether so-and-so is "really" more of a "lyric" or "dramatic" or "spinto" or whatever without reference to what so-and-so actually sang and how well she sang it, my eyes roll. Typing voices has its (limited) practical uses, but what do those uses have to do with this discussion, which hasn't been about guiding vocal students toward appropriate repertoire or finding a singer in a directory to fill in when the star is indisposed? What I see here is attempts to assign established artists to vocal categories based largely on personal ideas about vocal color. Maybe y'all think that's fun, but such statements as I read in posts #4 and #5 are really pretty pointless.

Balalaikaboy writes: _"I admit though that the differences can be subtle. Some dramatic mezzos can be hard to tell apart from soprani (ex: Callas, Varnay and Verrett all share characteristics of both) and others are hard to tell apart from contralto (ex: Oralia Dominguez, Olga Borodina, Milla Edelman and a few others could really be typed as either)."_ It makes no sense to "admit" that there are "subtle differences" between voice types when voice types are artificial categories without clear boundaries, and when actual voices don't conform to such categories. Who CARES whether Olga Borodina is called a mezzo or a contralto? If she can sing a wide variety of music beautifully, then she "is" a mezzo when the music lies higher and she "is" a contralto when it lies lower, and it's perfectly reasonable to refer to her either way. Tying one's brain in knots over what she "really" is is a waste of time. There IS no "really"; there is only Olga Borodina.

The world has always been full of singers whose abilities transcend conventional categories. That's what these categories are: conventions. They're a kind of mental signage that can steer our thinking in certain directions, but they should never confine us to the extent that we try to stuff unwieldy realities into them. Over on this thread Netrebko to do Salome? there's a brief discussion of dramatic baritones (started by you) in which I opine that Peter Mattei is a lyric, not a dramatic, baritone. How do I justify assigning that typology to him? By citing the actual music he sings well. I offer a YouTube clip of him singing a Verdi aria, followed by two other baritones singing the same music. The difference between Mattei and Bruson or Stracciari _in this music_ tells us what we need to know. This - a singer's demonstrated ability to do justice to music of a particular nature - is the necessary context for talking meaningfully about a singer's vocal "type."

Finally, I just have to say that it should be obvious from listening to the recordings of Maria Callas made during her best years - let's say from the late 1940s to about 1955 - that she was not a mezzo of any sort but a soprano. A strong chest voice, a darkish timbre and a deteriorating top do not a mezzo make, and neither does the ability to negotiate a limited quantity of mezzo-soprano music on recordings.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Oh God. Fachs again. Don't people have anything more...um...REAL to talk about?
> 
> Singers should be categorized by the kinds of roles they sing well. Christa Ludwig sang virtually everything well, from Schubert songs on up to Ortrud, Kundry and Leonore, and it's absurd to debate what kind of mezzo she was. And if I hear one more time that Callas was a mezzo...


The Conte and I are categorization geeks. You're not any obligation to play around, but nothing wrong with geeking out a bit.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> The Conte and I are categorization geeks. You're not any obligation to play around, but nothing wrong with geeking out a bit.


I don't want to play, but when I see that two of my favorite singers in all the world are being carried off in faching straightjackets...!


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I don't want to play, but when I see that two of my favorite singers in all the world are being carried off in faching straightjackets...!


You are seeing what you want to see (or rather what you don't want to see!) I'm not straightjacketing anybody.

To answer your post above, which is an example of your usual thoughtful and thought provoking views, I should explain again where I am coming from. Like you I see little benefit from the fach system when used to describe singers. It works as a short hand to describe particular roles (e.g. it's easier to say Norma is an Italian dramatic coloratura soprano role, than to say it's a soprano role for a singer with quite a bit of weight in the voice, huge stamina, strength and incredibly flexibility). However, and my understanding is that you agree with me here, it's absurd to say that a singer is an Italian dramatic coloratura soprano and limit them to a few roles only stepping outside the fach occasionally.

I think it useful for singers and those who care about singing to distinguish between characteristics that are innate and cannot be changed or learned and those which can. There are still people who have an idea that someone who is naturally a bass can somehow learn to become a tenor. It was once said to me that if only I were to study as a tenor I would have a brighter colour to my voice! The innate qualities are natural colour of the voice (related to, but not the same as range) and weight of the voice. Other characteristics (such as intonation, breath support, technical mastery, flexibility, linguistic ability and to a certain extent interpretation) can be learned.

When I say Christa Ludwig is a dramatic mezzo I don't mean Christa Ludwig should have only sung Ortrud, Dido, The Composer in Ariadne, Dalila, Eboli, Fricka, Gertrud, Klytaemnestra and Octavian. (I've taken this list from the Wikipedia article on fachs - and they seem somewhat spotty to me!) What I mean is that Ludwig had a voice with a somewhat bright, somewhat dark timbre with quite a bit of weight in it. Whether she sang well or not is a whole different ball game (and I agree with you that she sang a range of music well).

The reason why this is important is because ONE reason why a singer's performance is not up to scratch is because they are singing a role that isn't suitable for them. That could be because it is in a language that they don't know very well. If so they can study and if they work hard may improve and give a better performance. However, when it is a role that doesn't work due to voice type, no amount of study will make it right for them. This is obviously of tremendous importance for singers and teachers, but also for those of us buying tickets. In the context of this thread the opening post makes a comment about chest voice. Since the amount of a singer's range that lies in the chest voice region depends on the colour of the voice and the amount of chest voice mechanism used to weight (to a certain degree), it is useful to ascertain at the outset the voice type of the singer.

I have to admit that I don't understand your point about your Peter Mattei example, but it's late here and I will revisit tomorrow.

N.

P.S. I fail to see the logic in Olga Borodina being in the privileged position that she can be both a mezzo and a contralto, but Callas is straightjacketed in being most definitely a soprano.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

You are seeing what you want to see (or rather what you don't want to see!) I'm not straightjacketing anybody.

What I'm seeing is the attempt to make an ill-defined vocal category into such a distinct thing with such specific characteristics that an argument as to whether Christa Ludwig "is" a dramatic or a lyric mezzo is assumed to be meaningful regardless of the actual accomplishments of Christa Ludwig. Balalaikaboy calls her "lyric." You call her "dramatic." I call her Christa Ludwig, and decline to dance on the head of a pin.

Like you I see little benefit from the fach system when used to describe singers. It works as a short hand to describe particular roles (e.g. it's easier to say Norma is an Italian dramatic coloratura soprano role, than to say it's a soprano role for a singer with quite a bit of weight in the voice, huge stamina, strength and incredibly flexibility). However, and my understanding is that you agree with me here, it's absurd to say that a singer is an Italian dramatic coloratura soprano and limit them to a few roles only stepping outside the fach occasionally.

We agree.

I think it useful for singers and those who care about singing to distinguish between characteristics that are innate and cannot be changed or learned and those which can. 

We agree.

When I say Christa Ludwig is a dramatic mezzo I don't mean Christa Ludwig should have only sung Ortrud, Dido, The Composer in Ariadne, Dalila, Eboli, Fricka, Gertrud, Klytaemnestra and Octavian. (I've taken this list from the Wikipedia article on fachs - and they seem somewhat spotty to me!) What I mean is that Ludwig had a voice with a somewhat bright, somewhat dark timbre with quite a bit of weight in it. Whether she sang well or not is a whole different ball game (and I agree with you that she sang a range of music well).

I too might call Ludwig a dramatic mezzo in the context of a specific discussion - say, if someone were to call Anne Sophie von Otter a natural for Wagner and I were to say, "no, she hasn't the amplitude and bite of a real dramatic mezzo like Christa Ludwig." Outside such a context - say, in a discussion of _Lieder_ singers, or simply in a discussion of voices as such - I would hesitate to call her that, or anything in particular other than a mezzo-soprano. Debating this with someone who calls Ludwig "lyric" - as if she could not be both (which I think she is) - seems to me pointless and potentially misleading. It seeks to put her in a _terminological_ straightjacket.

The reason why this is important is because ONE reason why a singer's performance is not up to scratch is because they are singing a role that isn't suitable for them. ...when it is a role that doesn't work due to voice type, no amount of study will make it right for them. This is obviously of tremendous importance for singers and teachers, but also for those of us buying tickets. In the context of this thread the opening post makes a comment about chest voice. Since the amount of a singer's range that lies in the chest voice region depends on the colour of the voice and the amount of chest voice mechanism used to weight (to a certain degree), it is useful to ascertain at the outset the voice type of the singer.

It's useful to a degree, so long as "ascertaining at the outset" doesn't mean limiting a singer prematurely or trying to cram them into the wrong category. This has happened to noted singers who have unusual voices or who have matured late. Lauritz Melchior comes to mind; it was a colleague, rather than his teacher, who suggested the possibility that he wasn't destined to be a baritone, which by timbre and weight of voice he had been considered till then.

I have to admit that I don't understand your point about your Peter Mattei example, but it's late here and I will revisit tomorrow.

I was merely acknowledging that terms like "lyric" and "dramatic" have legitimate uses when we can refer to a specific repertoire and not merely to our personal perceptions of a voice's weight or color. Some cases become very clear-cut when we do that; here, Mattei can sing Verdi's passionate music acceptably but is pushed to his limit, whereas Bruson and Stracciari can take its dramatic accents in their vocal stride and suggest reserves of power and tonal depth. It's at least partly the limits of Mattei's effective repertoire that make him a "lyric" baritone, which here may mean nothing more than "a baritone with a modest-sized instrument."

I fail to see the logic in Olga Borodina being in the privileged position that she can be both a mezzo and a contralto, but Callas is straightjacketed in being most definitely a soprano.

The two cases are not parallel. Callas was never a mezzo, regardless of her effectiveness in some mezzo arias late in her career. It isn't a question of timbre; many sopranos' voices darken in their later years, and some can transition to mezzo repertoire but others can't. We don't know how well Callas would have sustained mezzo roles, in which her low and lower middle voice would have been worked harder than she ever had to work them. But if you listen to her "comeback" recitals of the 1970s, you'll hear a "hole" in her voice in the lower midrange, just above the register break, precisely where a mezzo must be solid and resonant. Borodina, on the other hand, had an even scale from deep "contralto" low notes to a brilliant "mezzo" top (both on display in "O don fatale"), and seems to have handled easily music in the alto range, whether it was associated with so-called contraltos or mezzos. That's why I say it doesn't matter what you call her. By contrast, calling Callas a soprano is simply descriptively correct, while calling her a mezzo suggests that she sang the wrong repertoire for two decades. It would be pretty hard to defend that notion!


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I don't want to play, but when I see that two of my favorite singers in all the world are being carried off in faching straightjackets...!


I literally started a thread about examples of singers doing well outside of their fach and had like 10 examples. I don't believe in "straightjacket-ing" singers. Fach is the core of the voice, not necessarily the limits of its potential. Like, the core of my voice is bass-baritone, but I can toe into lower baritone rep and do quite well in various Rossini and Verdi bass pieces (but probably not the whole opera at this point in time).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I literally started a thread about examples of singers doing well outside of their fach and had like 10 examples. I don't believe in "straightjacket-ing" singers. Fach is the core of the voice, not necessarily the limits of its potential. Like, the core of my voice is bass-baritone, but I can toe into lower baritone rep and do quite well in various Rossini and Verdi bass pieces (but probably not the whole opera at this point in time).


I must explain what I mean by "straightjacketing." No one has questioned that singers can do things outside of their "fachs." The question is whether assigning a particular fach necessarily makes sense to begin with. Knowing that a singer like Christa Ludwig can sing music of lower and higher tessitura and requiring greater or lesser power with equal effectiveness, while arguing about what "fach" she should be put into, is _terminological straightjacketing._ I'm not saying that you don't think your "lyric mezzo" can sing Ortrud. I'm saying that if roles like Ortrud are a substantial part of what she's superb at and known for, it just might be an inappropriate limitation on how she's identified to call her a lyric mezzo.

It appears to me that the criteria people use for assigning "fachs" is rather confused. Some may argue that the criterion isn't what music people sing most effectively, but how their voices "sound" purely as voices. But that's really rather subjective - how "dark" does a dark voice have to be to be? etc. - and debates can be fun but incapable of resolution. Sometimes a singer fits pretty neatly into one of the broad, generally accepted categories: for example, it makes sense to call Bjorling a "lyric tenor," because his voice was not of sufficient size for Otello, Calaf (though he recorded it effectively), Tannhauser, the Emperor, et al., and made its best effect in music requiring sustained lyricism (Italian and French romantic heroes and a broad song repertoire). Jon Vickers was just as clearly a dramatic tenor; he could sing lyrically, but his power, intensity, and roughness (in a good sense) of tone were best suited to parts requiring great declamatory force and strong vocal acting. But what do we do with Caruso, who sang, or could have sung, nearly everything brilliantly: Nemorino, the Duke, Manrico, Canio, Dick Johnson, Eleazar, Otello (he was preparing to do it when he died), and maybe a move into Wagner (he knew some of the music of Tristan)? His voice was both dark and brilliant, he had great power but also a command of mezza voce, his legato was superb, his coloratura was impeccable (judging from what little we have of it), he could trill... He may be an extreme case, but like Ludwig and Callas he illustrates the _Futility of Facile Faching._ Callas's dark timbre and strong chest voice have even induced some here to call her a mezzo! Well, Caruso's tone was remarkably baritonal, but he was not a baritone, and Melchior could have gone on singing baritone for the rest of his life (which Ramon Vinay actually did after a period of heldentenoring). What could be less profitable than trying to assign specific fachs to these people?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> What I'm seeing is the attempt to make an ill-defined vocal category into such a distinct thing with such specific characteristics that an argument as to whether Christa Ludwig "is" a dramatic or a lyric mezzo is assumed to be meaningful regardless of the actual accomplishments of Christa Ludwig. Balalaikaboy calls her "lyric." You call her "dramatic." *I call her Christa Ludwig, and decline to dance on the head of a pin.*
> 
> ...
> 
> I too might call Ludwig a dramatic mezzo in the context of a specific discussion - say, if someone were to call Anne Sophie von Otter a natural for Wagner and I were to say, "no, she hasn't the amplitude and bite of a real dramatic mezzo like Christa Ludwig." Outside such a context - say, in a discussion of _Lieder_ singers, or simply in a discussion of voices as such - I would hesitate to call her that, *or anything in particular other than a mezzo-soprano*. Debating this with someone who calls Ludwig "lyric" - as if she could not be both (which I think she is) - seems to me pointless and potentially misleading. It seeks to put her in a _terminological_ straightjacket.


Thanks for your response. I see now where we don't agree. Where I find your position confusing is that one moment you say that Christa Ludwig is just Christa Ludwig, but then that you would term her a mezzo-soprano. This prompts the question what do you think makes someone a soprano as opposed to a mezzo soprano? Is it range or colour of the voice when singing vowels that are natural for that singer, or something else?

I agree that an ability to sing lyrically or dramatically isn't an innate quality of a voice type and when I term someone a lyric mezzo I don't mean a mezzo who can only sing lyrically. In this context lyric and dramatic refer to the natural weight of the voice. As I have said before, maybe the terminology isn't helpful, but that doesn't mean the concept isn't correct.

I'm tempted to use the term a _medium weight soprano_ instead of spinto, but I'm sure someone will take offence that I'm referring to the poor woman's dress size!

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Where I find your position confusing is that one moment you say that Christa Ludwig is just Christa Ludwig, but then that you would term her a mezzo-soprano. This prompts the question what do you think makes someone a soprano as opposed to a mezzo soprano? Is it range or colour of the voice when singing vowels that are natural for that singer, or something else?


I think it's mainly a question of range and comfort. Mezzo-soprano is just one of the six basic range categories (bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, mezzo, soprano). I call Ludwig a mezzo-soprano because that's the vocal range in which she was most comfortable and the repertoire she sang most often. She sang a few soprano roles but her voice's center of gravity was lower. She could possibly have managed Isolde, but declined to do it, sticking with Brangaene. Brangaene, Ortrud and Kundry were ideal for her; they're all called soprano roles and have some challenging high passages, but need a full-bodied lower voice and don't go to the top often (neither asks for a high C). Isolde and Brunnhilde require more sustained high singing than Ludwig felt comfortable with, but had she been able to take them on comfortably we might justifiably have called her a dramatic soprano, or simply recognized her as one of those singers who defy categorization.

I have no quarrel with most of the categories for voices. I just find hair-splitting attempts to shoehorn singers into them based on niggling differences absurd and potentially misleading. We actually see certain singers categorized inconsistently on concert programs and record jackets (or CD inserts, for those too young to remember record jackets). Was Hilde Rossl-Majdan a soprano or a mezzo? I remember her in both incarnations, and frankly I have no objection to that, as she sang music designated for both. In _Euryanthe_ she's a soprano (and a damn good one too); in Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony she's a fine mezzo alongside Schwarzkopf's soprano. I don't know how she thought of herself, or if that changed over time (as it did with Regina Resnik). It really doesn't matter.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

To see how my considerations of voice type and acquired skills work I would look at my post in the Netrabko as Salome thread. There's a host of roles someone with Netrebko's voice could have sung, however her limitations as a singer (which she could overcome if she worked at it) mean that the roles she would suit best are much fewer in number.

My opinion on Netrebko and the roles suited to her voice type when she first came onto the scene are the same now as they were in 1994 (that is I thought she would make an awesome Tatiana before she sang the role). I didn't need to wait for her to sing a range of roles and then pass judgement on her voice type based on what she sang well. However, I couldn't know what her limitations were in terms of singer and artist (as opposed to a voice) until she had sung a few roles.

Like all voices Netrebko's has developed and that has opened up possibilities in terms of the roles she suits. Her voice has enough weight to make a good stab at Salome, but will she undertake the work needed to master the German language?

N.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Getting back to this singer, I love the dark color and fast vibrato of her voice. I would love to hear the top of her range better, but what I heard is marvelous. I love fast vibratos and her low voice is thrilling. She is perfect for this music.


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## mrrkdino (Dec 23, 2018)

*Wonderful Amneris*



BalalaikaBoy said:


> So I just discovered this magnificent and under-appreciated mezzo soprano Irene Minghini Cattaneo. She comes from the old Italian school of singing, with full, unrestrained use of chest voice. Not middle voice brought down into the lower range. Not damp, swallowed singing which disappears into the throat. Real CHEST voice. Contrary to modern schools of thought that "over singing" the chest voice causes damage and imbalance, the voice here is even from top to bottom. Not a scratch or kink throughout the entire range.


Here she is a a magnificent Amneris. If only we had her type today.


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