> 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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