# Current state of opera singing....Dame Joan Cringes!



## dantejones (Jan 14, 2015)

"I'm afraid the rot is setting in. Today the young singers do not develop a basic vocal technique. They don't know how to breathe and support and project the sound. They breathe from here" - she puts her hands on her breast - "and they don't support anything. They sing from here" - this time she indicates the throat - "but they don't project the sound into the cavities of the mouth and use the high palate. You see them holding on like this, down in their throat. It's so unrelaxed. There seems to be no repose, no feeling of ease, no feeling of continual line, of breathing and projecting the sound, and the excitement of singing and giving it to the public.

"The old manuals were right. Garcia, Lamberti, the others. People don't learn to breathe, support and project. And they don't sing vocalise. There are great volumes of vocalise, singing exercises that give you the legato line and help join the middle voice to the upper voice. But now they sing down here... and then they stab at the top. They don't know how to get there properly, and they will pay the price in the end.

"I don't know where the teachers have gone," she says. She has discussed this recently with other singers of her own era, such as Sena Jurinac and Birgit Nilsson, and with Ileana Cotrubas from a later generation. "They are all giving masterclasses because they find too many young singers just don't have the technique. Cotrubas said to me: 'I had a hard job learning my technique. They don't want to have a hard job.' They just want to read the music, learn it and go out and sing it." - _Dame Joan Sutherland, interviewed for the Guardian by Martin Kettle, 2002.

Full interview - http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/may/08/artsfeatures_

_There's no way I can dispute these claims. I do know that the top singers, currently before the public, would not be the top singers if they were placed back in time, in 1965, 1935, 1905, etc.

But is it just technique that has led to a decline that i have been hearing for a few years? Or are there other factors?_


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The quality of opera singing has always been "declining ". The comments by the late Dame Joan are nothing new . When I first became an opera fan back in the late 1960s as a kid, experts and retired opera singers were saying the same thing , and 40 or 50 years from now , people will be longing for
the "good old days " of today's top opera singers .
Heck, even Rossini was complaining about the decline of singing standards in opera in his later years !
The more things change . . . .


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

superhorn said:


> The quality of opera singing has always been "declining ". The comments by the late Dame Joan are nothing new . When I first became an opera fan back in the late 1960s as a kid, experts and retired opera singers were saying the same thing , and 40 or 50 years from now , people will be longing for
> the "good old days " of today's top opera singers .
> Heck, even Rossini was complaining about the decline of singing standards in opera in his later years !
> The more things change . . . .


So today's sopranos are as skilled in coloratura as Joan Sutherland, then? Was Sutherland herself as skilled in that respect as Adelina Patti had been? Of course singing has been in decline (though the decline may have levelled off somewhat) throughout the era in which sound recordings have been made. Changing fashions mean that certain skills become surplus to requirements, and young singers cease to acquire them at all, so another part of the tradition dies. This happened in Rossini's time too, but the era of innovation was not yet over: Duprez sang his high C from the chest, and high notes sung in voix mixte (or whatever exactly tenors did before Duprez) became rare. Rossini (who was a grumpy old git where singers were concerned) wrote out his ornamentations and the improvisatory talent singers cultivated eventually became unneeded (but we still have Patti, de Lucia, Battistini and others). So far- up to Rossini's time- I would argue there was probably no overall decline, just one set of skills replaced with another- and might not, say, Arnold's high Cs have benefited from more power than Nourrit was able to give them? I would trace overall decline from the beginning of the verismo era, from the singers born in the early 1870s onwards- but even this catastrophic shift in tastes could be characterised not as global decline but merely as a change in priority from vocal beauty and singing as singing, towards the valuing of overt emotion and powerful acting. I don't subscribe to that optimistic theory of verismo's beginnings, though: emotion can be served by beautiful 'bel canto' singing (think of Patti's 'Ah non credea mirarti' or Emma Eames' record of Tosti's 'Dopo') and one can act with the voice without unnecessary recourse to parlando, sobbing, shouting, etc.- think of the powerful yet very nineteenth century drama in any record by Tamagno or Maurel. From the start of the verismo era singing became heavier, more unrelentingly loud, less nuanced, and more tolerant of overt vulgarity and non-musical effects, and that to me is 'decline'- though fortunately for listeners it has not been exactly linear, but has happened in fits and starts.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> The quality of opera singing has always been "declining ". The comments by the late Dame Joan are nothing new . When I first became an opera fan back in the late 1960s as a kid, experts and retired opera singers were saying the same thing , and 40 or 50 years from now , people will be longing for
> the "good old days " of today's top opera singers .
> Heck, *even Rossini was complaining about the decline of singing standards in opera in his later years !*
> The more things change . . . .


Rossini didn't have recordings to back up his claim. We do, going back over a century now.

Anyone who has explored the recorded history of singing over that time knows that Sutherland was right.

Name almost any opera or role in the standard repertoire, and you will find that it's greatest interpreter is a singer now retired or deceased. Name almost any single aria or ensemble, and you will find the same. The only real exception to this is Baroque opera, which has only recently been revived in a major way and has benefitted from the study of early music performance practices.

Baroque opera does not require voices of great size. But it is very difficult now to cast satisfactorily the later operas of Verdi and the heroic roles of Wagner, as well as much of the verismo repertoire, and even bel canto repertoire is rather in a bad way (who now is comparable to Callas, Sutherland, or even Caballe?). Current standards of singing in these works as heard at the Met are low, as recent broadcasts have made obvious. There is only a handful of singers presently who can do justice to these roles. But it is not only dramatic voices that have become scarce. Even among voices of smaller size it's hard to find supremely accomplished technique and style.

For some reason it seems to me that great male singers have become rarer than female ones. Coming up with present-day tenors and baritones, especially larger voices, to equal those I remember even within my lifetime has me scratching my head. Between 1949 and 1969 (my first decade of life) there were tenors Bjorling, Bergonzi, Valletti, Tagliavini, Melchior, Peerce, Corelli, Del Monaco, Di Stefano, Wunderlich, Gedda, Tucker, Vickers, Simoneau, Dermota, Kraus, Alva, Lemeshev, Atlantov, Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti, and baritones Bechi, Valdengo, Taddei, Gobbi, Panerai, Guelfi, Bastianini, Bonelli, Warren, MacNeil, Merrill, Gramm, Evans, Van Dam, Quilico, Schoeffler, Hotter, London, Stewart, Wachter, Krause, Uhde, Neidlinger, Fischer-Dieskau, and Prey. That is not an exhaustive list of the great singers of the time, much less a list of the greatest singers of all time, but it gives a vivid idea of the pool of singers from which opera houses and recording companies could draw to cast effectively the full range of standard repertoire. I'd say we would be most fortunate to have these singers with us now, and I would challenge anyone to compile a list of male operatic artists of comparable quality from 1995 to the present.

It's possible to argue that standards of vocalism were even higher in the years before World war II. I myself believe it to be true, and there are plenty of recordings that support that view, but I'll leave that argument for another day, or for other members here who have made more of a specialty of tracking down the relevant recordings. There are in fact threads on TC featuring posts of recordings of great singers of the past. I recommend them to anyone who wants to understand the full potential of the human voice.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I respectfully disagree.
Names today like Radvanovsky and Calleja would certainly be welcome in the 50's.
And some others too like Pavarotti and certainly Callas.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

So does that mean that Netrebko will be forgotten in 10 years?  Not sure.

I know that one of the potential causes is that opera houses are overworking their singers perhaps?

I think that singing for Baroque operas has improved but for Wagner and Verdi voices are harder to find.

Jonas Kaufmann does rather well by my yardstick .


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

duplicate post...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> I respectfully disagree.
> Names today like Radvanovsky and Calleja would certainly be welcome in the 50's.
> And some others too like Pavarotti and certainly Callas.


Radvanovsky is good in Verdi, maybe our best Verdi soprano right now, but my goodness! In the 50s and 60s there were Callas, Tebaldi, Milanov, Cerquetti, Olivero, Nelli, Stella, Gulin, Gencer, Brouwenstijn, Price, Farrell, Rysanek, Arroyo - all at least as good in the spinto repertoire as Radvanovsky and several of them superior to her and to anyone around now.

Calleja is technically one of our best tenors right now. It's a light lyric voice, of course, not suitable for most Verdi or verismo. We have a number of nice light voices around - tenors of note include Florez and Polenzani - but the problem is: where are Manrico and Radames? The Met recently sent the bantam-weight and over-the-hill Marcello Giordani to Verdi's Egypt. You had to wonder why Aida and Amneris would even look at him twice, much less fight over him.

And do I hear that Netrebko is singing Lady Macbeth, and that Alagna is tackling Otello?  Signs of the times.

Pavarotti was at his best almost half a century ago now - which only reinforces my point.

Callas, of course, was not only _welcome_ in the 50s, she _was_ in the 50s - and did much to make the era what it was.

I've never thought that the 50s were the "golden age." Actually I think that was from before World War I up to around the 1930s. Obviously I can't speak for the 19th century, except to say that the greatest bass and baritone I've ever heard are Pol Plancon and Mattia Battistini, both of whom were singing in Verdi's time and left phenomenal recordings, with singing we haven't heard the like of since. But I do know we're not in a golden age now - not even a bronze age, for anyone who knows what the human voice is capable of.

Now who else can you come up with ?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

albertfallickwang said:


> So does that mean that Netrebko will be forgotten in 10 years?  Not sure.
> 
> I know that one of the potential causes is that opera houses are overworking their singers perhaps?
> 
> ...


10 years? What is 10 years? I suspect that both Kaufmann and Netrebko will still be very much around.
But if you're talking 50 years from now I suspect they will still be remembered because today they are such super stars and are the only ones who can still sell out the house. (Kaufmann for sure!)
Renee Fleming and Domingo will also join the ranks of the 50 year veterans.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

True, Rossini didn't have recordings from the past, but he lived a long life had and heard and worked with the greatest singers of his day from his youth . Apparently he did think the quality of singing had declined in his later years . 
We can only hear bits and pieces of the past on recordings now. We hear great singers from the past and tend to idealize it . We tend not to realize that there were plenty of perfectly lousy performances from the past, too . Or just so-so ones . If you read the biographies of Wagner and Verdi, you will find that they were sometimes exasperated by singers they felt were woefully inadequate to the demnds of their music .


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

superhorn said:


> True, Rossini didn't have recordings from the past, but he lived a long life had and heard and worked with the greatest singers of his day from his youth . Apparently he did think the quality of singing had declined in his later years .
> We can only hear bits and pieces of the past on recordings now. We hear great singers from the past and tend to idealize it . We tend not to realize that there were plenty of perfectly lousy performances from the past, too . Or just so-so ones . If you read the biographies of Wagner and Verdi, you will find that they were sometimes exasperated by singers they felt were woefully inadequate to the demnds of their music .


Verdi, like Rossini, was cantankerous and tended to focus on the negative. And there are plenty of so-so performances on early records, but we're talking about two things on this thread: the calibre of the acknowledged greatest singers of the age, and, by implication, the general standard of singing. Of course there were some very ordinary singers around in the early 1900s whose records are not among anyone's desert island discs, but the point is that there were also very many whose performances soared above the ordinary, and we do not have their equals today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> True, Rossini didn't have recordings from the past, but he lived a long life had and heard and worked with the greatest singers of his day from his youth . Apparently he did think the quality of singing had declined in his later years .
> We can only hear bits and pieces of the past on recordings now. We hear great singers from the past and tend to idealize it . We tend not to realize that there were plenty of perfectly lousy performances from the past, too . Or just so-so ones . If you read the biographies of Wagner and Verdi, you will find that they were sometimes exasperated by singers they felt were woefully inadequate to the demnds of their music .


The question is not "were there mediocre singers then." Of course there were. The question is "are there great singers now of a calibre, and in numbers, comparable to 1960 or 1940 or 1920 or 1900." No question of idealization need arise. We need only listen to current singers and compare. The legacy of recordings is far, far more extensive than "bits and pieces." In fact it is vast.

Among the star tenors of today we have perhaps not a single one to equal, for combined voice and technique, Affre, Escalais, Tamagno, Caruso, McCormack, Schipa, Gigli, Piccaver, Sobinov, Jossifov, Vezzani, Melchior, Thill, Bjorling, Lemeshev, Corelli, Vickers, Wunderlich, Pavarotti - I'll stop now! - in their respective repertoires. Kaufmann, Calleja, Villazon and Florez are all excellent singers and artists, but who else is even in that class? This is a worldwide crisis, and the managers of opera houses are desperate to find first-rate casts for many of the standard operas. The question is not "have standards of operatic singing declined" but rather "why have they, and what can be done about it?"

You don't have to take my word for any of this. The recordings are there.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> If you read the biographies of Wagner and Verdi, you will find that they were sometimes exasperated by singers they felt were woefully inadequate to the demnds of their music .


Verdi is said to have disliked Mattia Battistini, whom many (including me) feel is the greatest baritone on records. It's hard to imagine why, given Battistini's splendid technique and style. Something personal, perhaps, or concerning acting. Wagner, of course, was asking his singers to cope with a radical new music strange to them, and most of his complaints concerned how that music was sung and interpreted, not singers' voices as such.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Not to be kidding but I'm tempted to build a cage for a MTV Celebrity Deathmatch for opera singers from all ages.

Like do a Joan Sutherland versus Angela Gheorghiu
or Jonas Kaufmann versus Richard Tucker
or Renata Tebaldi versus Isabel Leonard

and then we can check the technique.

Undoubtably, there are a larger number of opera legends from the 1950's to 1970's but we live too closely to our time period to ascertain who are the legends for the past 10 years.

I know that Juan Diego Florez and Jonas Kaufmann are two of the great tenor giants of today's world. Their legacy will be around to come.

The only way is to do a double blind test of singers and then determine who survives the ordeal of who's the best.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

albertfallickwang said:


> Not to be kidding but I'm tempted to build a cage for a MTV Celebrity Deathmatch for opera singers from all ages.
> 
> Like do a Joan Sutherland versus Angela Gheorghiu
> or Jonas Kaufmann versus Richard Tucker
> ...


I hope you're not expecting Luisa Tetrazzini to appear on MTV. She isn't looking her best lately.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I hope you're not expecting Luisa Tetrazzini to appear on MTV. She isn't looking her best lately.


Though she never was excessively concerned with physical appearance- didn't she once say something like, 'I am old, I am fat, I am ugly- but I am still Tetrazzini!'  She could bring Eva along too- I've always wondered what the elder Tetrazzini sister sounded like.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

albertfallickwang said:


> The only way is to do a double blind test of singers and then determine who survives the ordeal of who's the best.


It's been done on this very forum. Here's a link to several unnamed but famous tenors singing a fragment of a tenor/soprano duet from Aïda, courtesy of Schigolch. He posted it on the 'favourite Verdi opera' thread in response to a question I asked, and I found it a really interesting exercise. I managed to identify a measly two out of nine, though there were others I should have been able to get!


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> It's been done on this very forum. Here's a link to several unnamed but famous tenors singing a fragment of a tenor/soprano duet from Aïda, courtesy of Schigolch. He posted it on the 'favourite Verdi opera' thread in response to a question I asked, and I found it a really interesting exercise. I managed to identify a measly two out of nine, though there were others I should have been able to get!


That was very interesting! I had no idea who anyone of them were but the only ones I liked were 1 and 2 - strong precise voices and nice phrasing. There was some quite bad pitch in the others and 5 sounded like he was having an accident of some sort at the start

For those in the know, who did I enjoy?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Interesting but I can remember reviews of Sutherland's work where critics were full of complaints. Callas too! Seems you have to die to be appreciated.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Interesting but I can remember reviews of Sutherland's work where critics were full of complaints. Callas too! Seems you have to die to be appreciated.


Nah. They're both dead and people are still full of complaints.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dgee said:


> That was very interesting! I had no idea who anyone of them were but the only ones I liked were 1 and 2 - strong precise voices and nice phrasing. There was some quite bad pitch in the others and 5 sounded like he was having an accident of some sort at the start
> 
> For those in the know, who did I enjoy?


The only ones I feel confident about are 1. Jon Vickers, 2. Franco Corelli (that animal high note and the sobs after it are giveaways!), 4. Jussi Bjorling (technical perfection), and 9. Luciano Pavarotti (toneless soft notes). I suspect Carlo Bergonzi is in there somewhere (5?), and the German guy (8.) has me really curious (gorgeous soft high note). 3. is played too fast, making it a half tone sharp and distorting his voice (78rpm problem).


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I must confess I have never been convinced of the old guard saying that singers in the past were better on the evidence of the ancient recordings. They always sound like warbling to me. I just cannot see how you can judge based on such different criteria.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Verdi is said to have disliked Mattia Battistini, whom many (including me) feel is the greatest baritone on records. It's hard to imagine why, given Battistini's splendid technique and style. Something personal, perhaps, or concerning acting. Wagner, of course, was asking his singers to cope with a radical new music strange to them, and most of his complaints concerned how that music was sung and interpreted, not singers' voices as such.


Carlo (Ernani), Carlo (La Forza del Destino), Conte di Luna (Il Trovatore), Giogio Germont (La Traviata), Iago (Otello), Macbeth, Posa (Don Carlo), Renato (Un Ballo in Maschera), Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra...

These are Verdi's baritone roles sang by Battistini. I don't think Verdi disliked Battistini as a singer, he just preferred other baritones for some of these roles, as Iago. However, Verdi himself tried to convince Battistini to premiere the role of Falstaff, something the then still young singer declined, because he didn't feel it was the right choice for him. Verdi was not pleased, as one can imagine, and I guess this was also part of the story.

In the matter of modern singing, I do think there is a dearth of voices today for Belcanto, Romantic and Verismo operas. More in some fachs than in others, but especially male voices (baritone and spinto/dramatic tenor) are really at a premium. Even singers that are very good in other repertoires, like Alagna, are singing Otello today... Listen at this at 10:00, please:






But then, what can we do?. Don't perform a lot of the traditional repertoire anymore?. Of course, this is not an option, so we just need to go ahead with what there is at hand. I won't even compare with the 1950s or the 1920s.Since I attend opera regularly, late 1970s, I have noticed in the theater, and after hundreds, rather thousands now, of performances, a pronounced decline in the quality of singing for Verdi, Wagner, Donizetti,... True, this have been more than compensated by the emergence of Baroque opera, the adventure of the countertenor fach,... But this is *my* reality, *my* world of everyday.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

schigolch said:


> Carlo (Ernani), Carlo (La Forza del Destino), Conte di Luna (Il Trovatore), Giogio Germont (La Traviata), Iago (Otello), Macbeth, Posa (Don Carlo), Renato (Un Ballo in Maschera), Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra...
> 
> These are Verdi's baritone roles sang by Battistini. I don't think Verdi disliked Battistini as a singer, he just preferred other baritones for some of these roles, as Iago. However, Verdi himself tried to convince Battistini to premiere the role of Falstaff, something the then still young singer declined, because he didn't feel it was the right choice for him. Verdi was not pleased, as one can imagine, and I guess this was also part of the story.
> 
> ...


Thanks for posting that _Otello_ performance. I'm listening to it without watching it, in order to focus entirely on the voices. What I hear from this cast strikes me as fairly typical contemporary operatic singing. The miking makes the actual power of the voices difficult to judge, but the loss of vocal ease and focus when even moderate volume is required is a giveaway: it's clear that they're working at full capacity to project. I'd like to think that being outdoors may affect their sense of what effort is necessary, but they do not sound as if they have more to give, and much of the singing sounds forced - a sound which, I fear, we've come to take rather for granted these days.

Alagna, a lyric tenor predictably out of his depth, just gets the voice out, with nothing to spare; climaxes are badly strained, and the ring and squillo of a real Otello voice is totally absent. In quieter conversational passages he sounds pleasant enough but not in the least heroic (Domingo wasn't a true dramatic tenor either, but his tone had a cleaner focus and didn't distort at higher volume). Even in the introspective monologue "Dio mi potevi" he cannot color the voice or encompass the climactic phrases, and without watching him I find him utterly unmoving for most of the opera, though he does bring some audible pathos to Otello's death. Our Iago seems to have sufficient power and a fine dark timbre, yet he bellows brutally, with a vibrato slow enough that we can count the pulsations, and he can handle neither the small notes nor the high ones with any grace. Desdemona has an attractive, smallish voice which sounds a bit taxed by the climaxes, but at least she doesn't offend.

It all sounds as if the cast of _La Boheme_ had arrived at the theater and discovered that _Otello_ had been substituted at the last minute. Though I don't believe that this is the best Otello cast that can be assembled nowadays, it is certainly representative of what too often passes for dramatic singing, even at major venues. I certainly agree that we can't just stop performing these operas because of the scarcity of voices up to their demands, but it disturbs me that a Romeo and Alfredo of proven ability should feel the need to take on roles like Radames and Otello, and that instead of putting him in his proper place managements give in because his name sells tickets. But not even morbid curiosity could have induced me to buy one. Thanks, but I have my Del Monaco and Vickers recordings; I'll stay home and save my money.

It's Saturday, and time for the Met's broadcast of _La Boheme_. Not too difficult an opera to cast. Let's see what they're offering the patrons today.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Also today's singers (most of them) are trying to take on too many roles, including ones that doesn't fit with their voices, rather than specializing and husbanding their voices.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I must confess I have never been convinced of the old guard saying that singers in the past were better on the evidence of the ancient recordings. They always sound like warbling to me. I just cannot see how you can judge based on such different criteria.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> The only ones I feel confident about are 1. Jon Vickers, 2. Franco Corelli (that animal high note and the sobs after it are giveaways!), 4. Jussi Bjorling (technical perfection), and 9. Luciano Pavarotti (toneless soft notes). I suspect Carlo Bergonzi is in there somewhere (5?), and the German guy (8.) has me really curious (gorgeous soft high note). 3. is played too fast, making it a half tone sharp and distorting his voice (78rpm problem).


1.- Vickers
2.- Corelli
3.- Lauri-Volpi
4.- Björling
5.- Bergonzi
6.- Gigli
7.- Carreras
8.- Lorenz
9.- Pavarotti

Very well done! I of course identified all of them- by the simple expedient of writing to Schigolch and asking who the heck they all were.  On my own, I got only Gigli and Lauri-Volpi- FAIL!!!

Max Lorenz is a revelation in that little clip, isn't he?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Figleaf said:


> 1.- Vickers
> 2.- Corelli
> 3.- Lauri-Volpi
> 4.- Björling
> ...


I failed to identify any of the singers but I'm terrible at listening tests. Of course, I loved the instrumental backing  which what I gravitate towards for any opera. Hum me a great melody indeed.


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