I am a bit wary of a teacher who doesn't produce "any" sound (i.e., Mr. X gives his students a healthy technique which allows their own voices to shine through, thus there is no common thread among his students) -- it is related to my wariness of SLS teaching, which seems (in my opinion, as stated before in the messages debating this point) to produce a well-trained but bland sound (operatically speaking), reproachlessly correct but also unremarkable.
Ivogun was known for bright, agile voices (Schwarzkopf, Berger, Streich). Marchesi produced voices known for an even scale and the ability to color the voice in lots of different ways (Melba, Eames, Calvé). Lilli Lehman taught her students (Farrar, Fremstad) to lean on the forward vowels [i], [e] (and hated the ah vowel). Garcia... I don't know. Was there a common sound to his student's voice, from the written sources left behind? He's tough because there aren't any recordings left. Most of the other, though, are recognized as great teachers because they produced mor than one illustrious singer -- and I hear commonalities in the groups of students. Of course, they are all long since dead.
But these days, you have Johnson, known for "brightening" voices up and giving them pierce, Hoffmann for warmth and "float," Falcon for a powerful, body-driven sound, Puffer for an open-throated large-fat-notes sound, Boyajian for resonance in the low notes, Martin for young-sounding "simple" voices, etc.
Of course, I don't mean that these teachers will force an unhealthy technique onto a singer, or that each teacher has only one technique that applies to each student without modification or adjustment -- but, just as a teacher of musical theater legit will produce a different sound than will a teacher of opera (or they should -- and it's not just a matter of style), I think the subdivisions are carried further. Because there is no One True Way of teaching operatic singing, each teacher's approach to correct technique will produce a slightly different type of sound.
I do believe this. If you took a young singer and sent him to study for 6 years with Garcia, I think he would sound different than if you had sent him to study 6 years with Marchesi, or 6 years with Miller -- even though all of these "parallel universe" singers might end up singing with equally correct, healthy techniques. He might have different faults -- one teacher might give him an exciting sword-like thrust to the top at the expense of some warmth in the middle voice; another might give him heart-meltingly warm, lovely vowels at the expense of some squillo. Yes, there is such a thing as the individual sound (no one's making sweeping generalizations about De Hildago's technique, for instance), but there's no "perfect" technique -- all technical approaches will give a student X at the expense of Y, or B at the expense of C, or will take the bland approach -- giving a student neither X nor B, but only his own healthy instrument. [Side note: This student wouldn't be lacking totally in X and B, but would have it in the normal, unremarkable amounts.]
Why do I think that his own healthy instrument, with neither a fantastic X nor an extraordinary B, would be bland? Things like squillo and formant and thrust or warmth or cut or float can be *taught*, and there's no way to get everything. You can't have a soprano with a warm, full middle, a clear and sparkling top, a dark, powerful low head voice, breakneck agility, spinto heft, a pianissimo to drop a pin into, unrivaled diction, and a zillion vocal colors. You just can't. Some of it has to do with what the student's voice is naturally capable of, but some of it has to do with how you're taught -- whether your training focuses on cut and cleft, or grace and diction, or warmth and loveliness, for example. There are lots of slightly different vocal approaches, and many of them work and are healthy, but they work differently, emphasizing one direction or the other. If there's a student who is given no direction, but merely steered into the correctness of the middle of all of these techniques and skills, I think it will be bland.
I think, of course. Take all this with a hefty dose of my own observing opinion.
I'm not saying Miller is bland -- that's why I asked. Does he have a direction, an area of technique he excells in? It makes me wary that he has been teaching for so long and hasn't produced any fabulously great singers -- I'm not saying that you need a superstar to be a good teacher, but I'm wary of SLS for the same reason (not having produced any notable operatic voices, although its credits in other genres are most impressive). I don't doubt that both of these approaches produce good, serviceable, reliable, fine-sounding voices who are out there and working in the B-level houses; but at some point, there has to be some technical direction to be chosen for the voice to be remarkable. I think.
That was certainly more than I intended to write.
Whew.
I look forward to other's opinions. For the record, I greatly enjoyed Miller's book "On the Art of Singing," but disagreed with some of his technical concepts in "Structure of Singing." His ideas about the opera business, interpretive approaches, student attitudes, musicality, etc., I find to be fabulous.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
__________________________________________________
|