# Opera singers with immense middle voices



## Francasacchi (7 mo ago)

Anny Konetzni's middle voice sounds oceanic even in the live recordings. I would add Traubel, Farrell, and Crespin to this list as well.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Jessye Norman!!!


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Sondra Radvanovsky


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## Dogville (Dec 28, 2021)

Is this only sopranos? 

Obviously Flagstad, Callas in her prime, Varnay


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

Italian bass Andrea Silvestrelli. Biggest voice I've heard live. An avid opera lover told me that Burchuladze has an even more voluminous voice.


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## kappablanca (9 mo ago)

Robert Merrill’s voice was gigantic. Listen to him almost dwarf Corelli in live Forza performances. And I’m pretty sure Corelli said that Guelfi was the largest voice he ever sang with, who he also was overpowered by — and Corelli sang on par with Nilsson.


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## Francasacchi (7 mo ago)

I had heard from other sources that Guelfi's voice was colossal. Adding Elena Nicolai among mezzos. The two sang in Lohengrin as Ortrud and Telramund. Nicolai's voice was big all over, not only in the middle.


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## OffPitchNeb (Jun 6, 2016)

Traubel, Tebaldi, Cerquetti, Farrell.


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

kappablanca said:


> Robert Merrill’s voice was gigantic. Listen to him almost dwarf Corelli in live Forza performances. And I’m pretty sure Corelli said that Guelfi was the largest voice he ever sang with, who he also was overpowered by — and Corelli sang on par with Nilsson.


Yes, Guelfi of course! I once read that Cornell MacNeil had an even bigger voice than Guelfi. The writer had heard them both live.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Flagstad, Ponselle, Traubel, Tebaldi, Anny Konetzni, Milanov, Caniglia, Varnay, Stignani, Nicolai, Del Monaco, Melchior, Merrill, Cornell, Guelfi, Ruffo, Viglione Borghese.


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## kappablanca (9 mo ago)

Op.123 said:


> Flagstad, Ponselle, Traubel, Tebaldi, Anny Konetzni, Milanov, Caniglia, Varnay, Stignani, Nicolai, Del Monaco, Melchior, Merrill, Cornell, Guelfi, Ruffo, Viglione Borghese.


About Del Monaco's vocal size: was it really as large as many say? There are not many recordings that reinforce his voice as utterly stentorian, as often stated. Listen to any of his live recordings: Pagliacci with Gabriella Tucci and Gobbi, Otello 1959 with Gobbi again as direct comparison in Otello/Iago duets, Andrea Chenier...and in all of these performances, he doesn't seem to demolish his colleagues. Maybe once case I can recall that he did absolutely overpower a soprano was a live 1948 or 1949 Turandot, where he dwarfed the soprano in Gli enegmi sono tre.

Del Monaco was absolutely not small, but maybe he was not as loud as some claim.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

kappablanca said:


> About Del Monaco's vocal size: was it really as large as many say? There are not many recordings that reinforce his voice as utterly stentorian, as often stated. Listen to any of his live recordings: Pagliacci with Gabriella Tucci and Gobbi, Otello 1959 with Gobbi again as direct comparison in Otello/Iago duets, Andrea Chenier...and in all of these performances, he doesn't seem to demolish his colleagues. Maybe once case I can recall that he did absolutely overpower a soprano was a live 1948 or 1949 Turandot, where he dwarfed the soprano in Gli enegmi sono tre.
> 
> Del Monaco was absolutely not small, but maybe he was not as loud as some claim.


The size of Del Monaco’s instrument is often hard to gauge from recordings as a great deal of the power came from his squillo. It is also heavily dependent on how your listening equipment is EQ’d, I bought a pair of headphones recently that had a large spike at around 3khz before equalising and while some recordings, Gheorghi’s ‘Si mi chiamano Mimi’ for instance, were fairly listenable, listening to Del Monaco was absolutely ear-splitting. 

Regardless, contemporary accounts seem to suggest his voice was pretty huge, especially in his prime. The recordings you mention, I assume, are the Japanese performances made at the end of his prime when he had began to place the voice a little higher. It was undoubtedly still a very large, powerful instrument, but the best recordings to really show him at his peak were probably from around 1951-1957. I remember an account of his voice describing it as being like a giant silver gong, the size of a house. This seems a good analogy as, like Del Monaco’s voice, the power of a gong is determined more by the overtones it produces than the fundamental. Plenty of others have remarked on his exceptional power and so I don’t think there‘s much dispute about it being a voice of unusually large proportions. He certainly sounds more powerful than Corelli, especially in the lower and middle registers, and Corelli‘s was far from a small instrument. I also find him able to produce a more consistently brilliant sound across the vowel spectrum as opposed to, say, Melchior, who could be uneven in that respect. The one voice of the time that was described as having comparable size, some say bigger, others say smaller, was that of Gino Penno, but yet again Del Monaco was certainly the more consistent.

A lot of people might assume that Del Monaco’s voice couldn’t possibly have been as large as it was reported to have been given his relatively small stature, but from what I can see there are few tenors in recorded history who could compete with him on the grounds of volume and resonance.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

kappablanca said:


> About Del Monaco's vocal size: was it really as large as many say? There are not many recordings that reinforce his voice as utterly stentorian, as often stated. Listen to any of his live recordings: Pagliacci with Gabriella Tucci and Gobbi, Otello 1959 with Gobbi again as direct comparison in Otello/Iago duets, Andrea Chenier...and in all of these performances, he doesn't seem to demolish his colleagues. Maybe once case I can recall that he did absolutely overpower a soprano was a live 1948 or 1949 Turandot, where he dwarfed the soprano in Gli enegmi sono tre.
> 
> Del Monaco was absolutely not small, but maybe he was not as loud as some claim.


It’s possible that he simply sang loudly all the time, or most of the time. As one critic put it: “…on side six, Del Monaco loudly sings Verdi arias.” (It may not have been Verdi arias, but some other composer(s)’s arias).


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Francasacchi said:


> Anny Konetzni's middle voice sounds oceanic even in the live recordings. I would add Traubel, Farrell, and Crespin to this list as well.


These were all the first examples I thought of as well. True Wagnerian soprani tend to have middle voices which evoke the sounds of mighty ocean waves crashing against the shore on a stormy night. Traubel probably comes to mind as _the_ biggest middle voice of any recorded singer. 

other examples



Joan Sutherland





Oralia Dominguez





Jerome Hines





Claramae Turner





Mykola Kondratyuk


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> These were all the first examples I thought of as well. True Wagnerian soprani tend to have middle voices which evoke the sounds of mighty ocean waves crashing against the shore on a stormy night. Traubel probably comes to mind as _the_ biggest middle voice of any recorded singer.
> 
> other examples
> 
> ...


Thanks for the Claramae Turner. Didn't know her. Sutherland's middle voice became bigger and rounder after her mid 40's.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I dare to offer Tatiana Serjan.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Ekaterina Semenchuk


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## sworley (6 mo ago)

To judge from the old Cetra Aida I was just listening to, I would add Caterina Mancini--a bit squally on high, but with a strong and ample mid-register one rarely encounters anymore.


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## Francasacchi (7 mo ago)

sworley said:


> To judge from the old Cetra Aida I was just listening to, I would add Caterina Mancini--a bit squally on high, but with a strong and ample mid-register one rarely encounters anymore.


Mancini's voice was sizeable all over, but the middle could be immense. By the late 50s she started having serious issues with high notes and at one point in 1962 in Dallas sang the contralto arias in Handel's Messiah.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> These were all the first examples I thought of as well. True Wagnerian soprani tend to have middle voices which evoke the sounds of mighty ocean waves crashing against the shore on a stormy night. Traubel probably comes to mind as _the_ biggest middle voice of any recorded singer.
> 
> other examples
> 
> ...


My music listening buddy and I listened to Claramae Turner in the car today and were blown away. She reminds me a lot of Helen Traubel in her sound. Her Deep River is maybe even better than Traubel and that is saying a LOT.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Elena Pankratova


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

And Tatiana Serjan once more.


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

ColdGenius said:


> And Tatiana Serjan once more.


her middle doesn’t strike me as immense at all, dark, yes, but artificially so, there aren’t the overtones for the voice to sound as big as most of the others mentioned here. Pankratova seems to be a similar case.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

They are much better in the theater. In recording the voices are recognizable but they lose something. I heard Pankratova at least three times and go to listen to Serjan regularly. Immense is one of the words coming to mind when I try to describe their voices, if I use it in correct meaning of course.


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