michael,
i was making a distinction between the 'can be operatic' and the
'hopelessly operatic'. julia migenes' disc 'smile' is an example of singing
that 'can be operatic'. she produces a wide variety (very wide) of sounds,
often in the same song. a nightmare-like memory of marilyn horne and joan
sutherland singing beatles' songs on the johnny carson show would illustrate
'hopelessly operatic' (samuel ramey's broadway disc would be an example of
'repulsively operatic'). in this light, i hope my previous post is made
clearer.
singing as an extension of speech is another issue. the sustaining of
pitches in singing means that, a great deal of the time, it takes us longer
to say a word singing it than it does speaking it. how we handle the
distortion of word length affects the cohesion of those words as well as the
challenge presented by the composer in keeping them words. some writing is
going destroy the integrity of speech in the text no matter what the singer
does to salvage the text (i don't intend this as a value judgment) and, of
course, some music sets the text very closely to the pitch pattern and timing
of speech (compare the operatic writing of handel, illustrating the former,
to the operatic writing of benjamin britten, or the spechstimme passages of
'wozzeck', illustrating the latter).
mike
|
|  |
