I love this!! Young, young, young. Keep a young sound in your singing and you will have not only vocally longevity (thinks here of Melba & Sutherland, Kraus and de Luca) but beauty and artistry, and all the gifts a singer needs!!
Try and make a tone that is not yours and you're lost. That's the problem with singing now more than ever. Everyone tries for hooooooooge tone!! Look at the lovely Jane Eaglen. When I first heard her in London, when she was a young girl at the English National Opera, when she was just 'singing' then the next time I heard her, someone had gotten hold of her, told her her voice was large, and somehow (of course) it had gotten smaller. Making a 'large' sound that wasn't hers!! Now, she's very hit and miss and making some terrible noises, but apparently, it's exciting!!! Hmm, no comment!
I will say, that, not only do I not consider it wise to do anything to a voice apart from keep it in check, I find it positively dangerous!! If, as you get older you try and darken it rather than what it wants to do (remember, there's no reason for the voice to darken as you get older: poppycock in fact. The laryngeal mechanism is the last to age so no excuse there!!)
As it happens, it was the fact that my voice being overweighted when young caused it to collapse big time!! People now remark when they hear me at 39 years old how youthful I sound. I always, of course, tell 'em that 39 IS young!!
Remember as Isabelle so rightly said. Youthful, unforced singing gives years and years of service. I only have to make reference to poor old Callas on that one! Lots of bottled up tone with lots of interpretation. Guaranteed to kill you!!
What I really want to say I guess is, that if the shrill voices you hear are on the gramophone and not live, you will have absolutely no idea a)what you're talking about, and b) what they really sound like!!
As Henderson once said about Melba doing Brunnhilde. "It was lovely, but please don't smash a piece of Dresden china", and, having said that also said that no one equalled her for the vocal liberation until Flagstad!! However, that's it entirely!! Melba could sling a lively, lovely healthy tone into the auditorium which was youthful and vibrant: that's how Brunnhilde probably should sound, unlike the clapped out old bags who do it now, but she was able to do it because there was no vocal pretension!!
That, by the way, is what this post is about. Sing with what you have: do not 'try' for any other sound than you have naturally. Voices do not darken with age. It is a fabrication and a terribleexcuse!! Anyone who suggests otherwise is either a charlatan or idiot! (I include singing teachers in that bracket, big time!) People suppose that the voice has darkened and become wobbly as they age! Poppycock galore!!
Anyway, rambling on here, so that's it for this time!!
A very happy New Year to all of the wonderful people on this list.
Ian Voice wrecker to the stars!
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