Dear Christine and Vocalisters;
You wrote:
>I remember when I was in college and I had a big voice for my age (without
>much of a top) - I was singing Dalila and Carmen arias. A few years later, a
>teacher assigned me "O don fatale". This same teacher had given me "O mio
>Fernando" to prepare for an audition and two separate adjudicators asked me,
>"Ms. Thomas, why are you singing this aria? You are a lyric mezzo and this
>is far too heavy for you." It was not till then that I even knew the
>difference between fachs, I'm embarrassed to say. I just knew the choral
>designations and figured that if it was in the gray Schirmer mezzo anthology
>and I had the notes, I could sing it. (Except the Wagner ... I knew that
>much!)
COMMENT: Your experience singing "O don falale" is, surprisingly,
not an uncommon one. This piece is often given to mezzos because it
has a rich melody that tends to draw out the best in the mezzo voice
and it lies within an easy range for the young mezzo, albeit it a bit
low. In this sense there is nothing wrong in assigning it if it is
made clear that it may not be a role to which the singer will ever
aspire. It can have a very defined benefit for the singer because it
requires the best in tonal production in the middle voice.
However, because this aria did not sound as a good fit for your voice
in the NATS competition you mentioned, you received the comment that
you were a lyric mezzo. This is a judgement based more on the
process of elimination than on a real knowledge of your voice
because, obviously, the teachers judging you had little more than an
inkling of the potential of your voice after hearing only a few songs
and arias from you. I personally think such comments are always out
of place and of no value. Such comments are more a criticism of the
one giving the comment than the one receiving it because it displays
a judgement that is not based on necessary information.
The whole concept of Fachs, and the term, is German in origin. The
singers in the state opera houses in Germany were able to negotiate
contracts with their management such that they would not be required
to sing roles outside their best vocal efforts. This made it
necessary to develop a criteria which defined the many operatic roles
and placed them into categories of voice types. Date was collected
based on the experience of conductors, managers and singers. Well
established singers of the day were asked which roles they felt best
fit their voices. Many of these singers sang favorite roles that
were, technically speaking, outside their voice types and these were
included in the list.
If you examine the early Fach lists you will be amazed at some of the
roles that are put together under one voice type. Many of the roles
are clearly not within the voice type in consideration. In many
cases these atypical roles are a reflection of the
outside-the-voice-type roles that were included by the famous singers
of the day. The more recently updated Fach list still contain many
such strange inclusions but the lists are an interesting way of
gaining an education about how the German houses consider voice types.
It would be an mistake, in my opinion, if US or Canadian houses were
too tied to the Fach system or anything that even resembles this
system. And I think it is a major error for voice teachers to even
consider the Fach system as they work with young singers. It has
been my experience that in auditions the singer has the
responsibility to determine what music will show them to best
advantage. Opera managers and conductors expect that from those
auditioning and they give little thought into which Fach a person
should belong because they are primarily concerned with casting their
productions and that requires a comparison of singer to singer and
role to role, and very little the Fach of the singer.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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