| From: Isabelle Bracamonte Subject: re: Renee Fleming and her bright/darkness To: vocalist Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>
I think Fleming's quote reflects the fact that she was trained (as my friend Mary's research has taught me, Fleming's teacher being one of the ones she is considering studying with) in a tradition founded upon the relaxed, bright, forward [i] ("eeee" for the IPA-wary) position. You often hear this ring ("ping," she calls it) live in the theater when she performs. In her recordings, however, she darkens and covers her sound, for a more round, plummy (opulant?) tone. Her comment seemed to indicate that audiences prefer this rounded tone (very much like Hong, Swenson, Jo, and other coloraturas of the moment) to the one with more bite/point/edge/ping in it. Old recordings rarely display the plumminess and breathiness of our warm, rounded singers today, even taking into account the acoustical differences in the recording technology. Coloraturas of the past -- Erna Berger, Roberta Peters, etc. -- sound overly-bright and childlike when our ears are used to Swenson and Hong. Just a change in tastes.
If you saw her segment on 60 Minutes, the scales she sang demonstrating "ping" sounded much different than her "whooshy," plummy recorded tone.
My experience from hearing her live, which I've only done three times, is that she creates the covered warmth when she can afford to in the middle voice, but for extreme top and bottom notes, she puts more of that bite into the tone. This is in accord with her comment in Opera News that the forward ping is truly the health of the instrument, and (therefore I imply) the artificial darkness is a trick that can be used effectively from time to time.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte-at-yahoo.com
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