# SOPRANO TOURNAMENT: (By Request): Melba vs Alda



## Bonetan (Dec 22, 2016)

Nellie Melba, Australia, 1861-1931






Frances Alda, NZ/AU, 1879-1952






Who's singing did you prefer and why?


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I was somewhat familiar with Melba and had never heard of Alba. Melba has a great reputation but she bored me. I remember her being more exciting in coloratura singing. Alba had a really beautiful, distinctive voice and kept the performance interesting throughout. She gets my vote.


----------



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Wow, the soprano tournament is getting more and more exciting for me!

I have been a huge fan of Alda since first I heard her _Amor, celeste ebbrezza_ from Loreley. It took me some time to warm up to Melba. She first strikes as cold and boring, but a friend of mine played to me Melba's recording of Bemberg's _Chant hindou_-- and it totally changed my mind. I think that her true strength lies in songs rather than in opera, although some of her Mozart arias are very lovely.

In the Willow Song part, Alda is clearly the more expressive singer. Melba may sound too stodgy for the modern taste, but some parts of it are sweet, like how she recites _"salce... salce... salce..."_ as if Desdemona is lost in her memory daydreams. I enjoy the Ave Maria part equally, though again, Melba's interpretation is more song-like.

I will vote for Alda.

P/S: Listening to Melba again, I am quite amazed by how "cleanly" and effortlessly she attacks the notes (0:44, 1:55, 2:43, 6:36, 8:23); really, no fussing around. Compare this to Renee Fleming, and you will get what I meant


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've often felt that Melba was something of a singing machine, and much of this performance reinforces that impression. It's Alda who really gets inside Desdemona's mind and draws me into the drama. A beautiful singer and fine artist. No competition.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I've never warmed to Melba and this is no exception. As Woodduck says, she sounds like a machine.

Alda is quite different - a lovely voice put at the service of the music. I love the little changes of colour on the repeated _Salce_. She easily gets my vote.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

This one is a toughie for me.
Actually I have heard it done by so many who just touched my heart that I am left choosing 2 who I MUST vote between and one whose voice type is not normally a favorite of mine -- "the Pons type". Yet after hearing Alda's fuller tone I found myself going back to Melba's which had a dreamier quality to it. Actually neither did anything for me and it has nothing to do with the background acoustics. I am able to drown them out and just concentrate on the voices. 
I do not happen to like Alda's voice very much but then again I also am not crazy about Melba's Pons-like sound either. I keep hearing Te Kanawa in the back of my head (or ____________(fill in the blank).
By process of elimination I chose Melba.


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> No competition.


I agree with you that there's no competition, but not with the rest! I think Melba is the easy winner. I'm surprised that others find Melba robotic here. I find her extremely expressive, and more sensitive to the text than Alda. For example, on the line "prega sempre e per l'ora della morte nostra" Melba uses her impressive chest voice to color the words surrounding the idea of death darkly, whereas Alda sings that whole phrase in a lovely but more monochromatic head voice. Then in the following phrase, "Prega per noi, prega per noi, prega" Melba again provides a greater range of colors, offering a distinct timbre for each repetition of the word "prega", as well as unique phrasing. She provides a continuous sweep of color from dark and strong to light and ethereal, which I think is exactly the right gesture for that moment.

Another example would be "E gli era nato per la sua gloria, Io per amarlo e per morire". Alda is really good there, but again, her phrases are less balanced and well shaped than Melba's. Furthermore, on "amar" Melba does a slight diminuendo (on an utterly ethereal tone) and then lands on "lo" in her middle voice, and pulls slightly towards chest on "e per mor", even though she basically stays in head voice. That slight touch of dark coloring is perfectly expressive of this moment of coming down from the high of her love to death and the realization that she was ultimately alone in her love.

Melba's rendition is filled with moments such as these. This is one of my favorite vocal recordings.


----------



## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Alda is the clear winner here with a delicate and nuanced performance.


----------



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I agree with you here, but not with the rest! I'm surprised that others find Melba robotic here. I find her extremely expressive, and more sensitive to the text than Alda. For example, on the line "prega sempre e per l'ora della morte nostra" Melba uses her impressive chest voice to color the words surrounding the idea of death darkly, whereas Alda sings that whole phrase in a lovely but more monochromatic head voice. Then in the following phrase, "Prega per noi, prega per noi, prega" Melba again provides a greater range of colors, offering a distinct timbre for each repetition of the word "prega", as well as unique phrasing. She provides a continuous sweep of color from dark and strong to light and ethereal, which I think is exactly the right gesture for that moment.
> 
> Another example would be "E gli era nato per la sua gloria, Io per amarlo e per morire". Alda is really good there, but again, her phrases are less balanced and well shaped than Melba's. Furthermore, on "amar" Melba does a slight diminuendo (on an utterly ethereal tone) and then lands on "lo" in her middle voice, and pulls slightly towards chest on "e per mor", even though she basically stays in head voice. That slight touch of dark coloring is perfectly expressive of this moment of coming down from the high of her love to death and the realization that she was ultimately alone in her love.
> 
> Melba's rendition is filled with moments such as these. This is one of my favorite vocal recordings.


Very interesting analysis! This is why I am equivocal about Melba. Some of her recordings, especially the Italian opera arias, do sound mechanic on the first listen, but zooming into them phrase by phrase often reveals niceties and nuances as you point out.

Here is the Bemberg's song I mentioned in the previous post. This is my most favorite of her recordings. She is clearly very expressive here. I would love to know what you all think about it, and if it would change your opinions about Melba:


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Melba sounds like she's suppressing her vibrato in most of the upper range, a sound i do not like. Plus there seems to be little propulsion behind the _acuti_ that make them sound flattish.

Alda lets her natural vibrato "out" and thus sounds better to my ears. I also liked her warmer vocal production vs. Melba's cooler one. I vote for Alda.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I agree with you that there's no competition, but not with the rest! I think Melba is the easy winner. I'm surprised that others find Melba robotic here. I find her extremely expressive, and more sensitive to the text than Alda. For example, on the line "prega sempre e per l'ora della morte nostra" Melba uses her impressive chest voice to color the words surrounding the idea of death darkly, whereas Alda sings that whole phrase in a lovely but more monochromatic head voice. Then in the following phrase, "Prega per noi, prega per noi, prega" Melba again provides a greater range of colors, offering a distinct timbre for each repetition of the word "prega", as well as unique phrasing. She provides a continuous sweep of color from dark and strong to light and ethereal, which I think is exactly the right gesture for that moment.
> 
> Another example would be "E gli era nato per la sua gloria, Io per amarlo e per morire". Alda is really good there, but again, her phrases are less balanced and well shaped than Melba's. Furthermore, on "amar" Melba does a slight diminuendo (on an utterly ethereal tone) and then lands on "lo" in her middle voice, and pulls slightly towards chest on "e per mor", even though she basically stays in head voice. That slight touch of dark coloring is perfectly expressive of this moment of coming down from the high of her love to death and the realization that she was ultimately alone in her love.
> 
> Melba's rendition is filled with moments such as these. This is one of my favorite vocal recordings.


Listening to Melba again, I hear more nuance, but still not much of the warmth and vulnerability I want from Desdemona. I do think that part of my problem with her is the way her voice recorded; more even than some other soprano voices of the time, hers, with its very narrow vibrato, comes out sounding like something mechanically or electronically generated. I need to have some positive response to the sound of a voice, and I don't to hers. G. B. Shaw described it as possessing "splendor," but all I can think is "you had to be there." By contrast, the warm, feminine quality of Alda's timbre and manner comes through to me even on the old recording. I don't think she's a better singer, but I find her much more endearing.


----------



## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

There is a really cool experiment on this site to break down the vibrato of Melba compared to more modern singers (Callas, Price, and Fleming). All credits go to Ian Howell at http://vocped.ianhowell.net/melba/.

I will try to summarize: the author picks a very brief excerpt (technically, it's just a one-second D5 from _"Porgi amor"_) from a recording of each of these four sopranos. He then visualized the notes via spectrogram. Some of us may have known: the spectrogram is a type of visualization for the Fourier transform of acoustic signals.

Before we dive into the details, let's have an overall look at the spectrogram (1st is Melba, 2nd is Price, 3rd is Fleming, and 4th is Callas). For such an old recording like Melba's, virtually all harmonics beyond 3,700 Hz are lost. That is why we never know how she truly sounds likes.






​
To make it easier to look at and compare, we will focus on the fundamental up to the sixth harmonic and ignore other noises. The high-frequency noises and between-harmonics noises have been "blackout" by the author.






​
*A few observations:*

0) The note is a D5. Thus the fundamental is centered at 587.33 Hz; the second harmonic is at 587.33*2=1174.66 Hz; the third harmonic is at around 587*3= 1762 Hz, and so on. These are plotted in log-scale.

1) All four sopranos have a vibrato frequency of around 6Hz, which means that Melba's vibrato is about as fast as of Callas and the others.

2) Regarding pitch fluctuation, Callas has the widest vibrato (her "sine wave" has the largest amplitude among the three). Melba's vibrato is about as wide as Price's and Fleming's.

3) When the same source of noises that plagued Melba's recording was digitally added into the other three recordings, it drastically dimed our perception of vibrato for Price and Fleming (audios are available on the website). Callas' vibrato is still distinct, probably thanks to her wider pitch fluctuation. Therefore, Melba's true vibrato was obscured by the limitations of recording techniques; she does sound white-tone, vibrato-less in some recordings indeed.

4) One thing the author didn't mention but can be clearly observed from the spectrogram is how "consistent" Melba's vibrato manifests across the fundamental and the other harmonics. Her 5 red sine waves appear extremely clean and regular in shape. In sharp contrast, Price's and Fleming's second sine waves are kind of fussy. Their vibrations on the third and fourth harmonics are almost non-observable. When it comes to vibration on the fifth harmonic, Melba is again the best. _Isn't Melba just amazing?_ If I have to rate the "healthiness" of vibrato _in this very specific one-second note_, it would be: Melba > Callas >>> Price=Fleming.

I am sounding too much like a Melba fanboy  Although she is not my favorite soprano, I am intrigued. While some of her recordings are downright ridiculous in terms of style (I laugh at them as much as at Florence Foster Jenkins's hits), her better recordings demonstrate many virtues of good singing: strong chest voice, healthy vibrato, and smooth register transitions.

P/S: It seems like "This is opera" is a fan of her. They have a nice compilation here.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I listened to Melba's performance again after reading Vivalagentenuova's post and I did hear a little more nuance, but again, like Woodduck, I can't really warm to the performance or the manner. It just seems cold and rather detached to me, as if she is just singing it, where Alda _experiences_ it. I'm not sure if that's very clear.

I then listened to the Bemberg song silentio detailed and found a much greater level of involvement. She almost sounds like a different singer.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I've never warmed to Melba and understand what those who have said she sounds like a singing machine mean. Alda was just a name to me before now and I didn't find her voice more appealing than Melba, but her interpretation is more varied and interesting than Melba's. I don't know whether Melba is just one of the few singers where the recording technique was so primitive at that time, I can't hear her greatness through the sonic 'grime', or whether she was more about vocal beauty and less about drama, so she isn't quite what I listen for in an artist.

Alda wins, but I spent most of the listen wanting to put on Ponselle's version...

N.


----------

