A few days ago I caught a bit of a PBS show featuring
Michael Junior, a 13 year old boy from somewhere in
Europe. I enjoyed his singing, I thought he had a nice
sound, good stage presence and wonderful diction (and
that's a high compliment coming from a nit-picker like
me!). However, I was quite surprised and disappointed
by PBS emphasizing (both in the TV write up and in
their pledge drive) that he is an opera singer. There
is absolutely no way he could be heard over an
orchestra without a mike, his singing featured many
pop elements (delayed vibrato, scooping), and his
repertoire was not operatic (at least not in the part
of the show I heard).
It got me to thinking about how the popular view of
singing is changing... Is this just a new marketing
tool that will fade out over time? Are the boundaries
between different types of singing becoming blurred
(although pop singers crossing over into opera seems
to be more acceptable to the general public than the
other way around)? Will the amount of training and
preparation currently required of "opera" singers be
reduced as more and more untrained (or marginally
trained) but saleable singers using mikes take over?
Or is this just a PBS anomaly? (I'm thinking that PBS
was the first and main source I heard about Charlotte
Church and Andrea Bocelli as well - two other singers
with a questionable operatic sound). Hey, maybe PBS is
becoming the marketing tool of choice for certain
singers - oops, conspiracy theories is another mailing
list ;o).
Just a few musings...
Jennifer, who's still ticked that egroup's new policy
forced her to change e-mail addresses - Marko, where
are you??? I wanna go home.... :o(
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