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From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Tue Apr 3, 2001  8:23 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] re: opera vs. lieder



> Mosquito voiced? What does THAT mean?! Small
> voices are small voices; what's the big deal?

No size bias meant! I dislike Upshaw's and Ameling's
voices particularly, because I find their tones to be
thin, overly bright, and slightly nasal. Compare
Ameling to a French soprano of similar volume and
lightness, Natalie Dessay, who I think is fabulous
(even the La Scala audiences conceded, "not thin," in
the recent Opera News article about her); the
comparison between Amerling and Tebaldi was one of
tone quality and richness, not of weight necessarily
(although I suppose those two might be related --
bigger voices are generally darker -- but one needn't
be thin).


> But Isabelle, McNair, Upshaw and Bonney ALL have
> thriving careers in many genres

I'm not saying there's no crossover -- Karen put out a
list of singers who sang each -- but these singers are
primarily "art song" rather than "opera" singers,
albeit they all made their start in opera and still
occasionally return to the stage. Sure, de los
Angeles sang a good bit of lieder, but she's primarily
known as an opera singer. The ratio of opera to
lieder is rarely 50-50, and I was wondering why.

I think Naomi makes a good point about the bigger
voices gravitating to opera and the smaller ones to
art song because there are more opportunities for each
there.

Also, a good point about the way lieder exposes the
voice technically (much like the Mozart discussions we
were having). It always disturbs me to hear
conservatory undergraduates deriding lieder as baby
stuff because that's what they were first given in
lessons, while they can't wait to "move on" into opera
arias and be real singers. How many of us know young
singers who think that the 24 Italian Songs are
beneath them now? I think there *is* that stereotype
out there, although we all know it's not true, and it
has to be contended with.

To all you who say there is no difference in vocal
technique between the two: You will agree that there
are different techniques in choral singing and opera
singing? Muscle memory is a big part of vocal
training, and a choral singer trains the voice to be
able to sustain a fairly high tessitura with a fairly
open vocal sound -- training in this type of placement
(where your voice ends up naturally "set up" to sing
choral works without strain) is technique, I think,
rather than style.

And does not art song have a different set of skill
goals than opera? Squillo and thrust are not trained
into the muscles as much as a variety of vowel sounds
and intimate shadings of color. Yes, you can
occasionally adopt qualities of one or the other as a
matter of style, but in terms of how your voice is
trained and placed and where your "home base" muscle
memory lies, they are slightly different. Fabulous
exponants of delicate shading and color in the art
song (Fischer-Dieskau is the most obvious example)
just don't have that squillo thrust that makes
operatic vocalism so satisfying. And it's not a
matter of weight; think of Dessay.

More thoughts on the matter from yours truly.

Isabelle B.

=====
Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
ibracamonte@y...




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