Conversation

I recently went with an old friend to see the rerun of the Met HD of Der Rosenkavalier. Friend had memorized the role of Sophie in her youth but had never seen the opera performed before. I knew that when I was studying I had little interest in the performance of anyone except myself.

This made me wonder how many other voice teachers are teaching opera singing without having experienced much in the way of opera? I also wondered how many voice teachers are aware of how many perfectly plausible and successful techniques there are besides their own? How many teach everyone a verismo technique because that's what they were taught? Or a leggiero technique because their teacher taught that? Just wondering.

Or have you ever heard of a voice teacher recommending that a student switch teachers to someone other than themselves because the student's voice would be more suited to the other teacher's technique? You need a verismo voice before you need a verismo technique.

Or how many of them would have any idea what I was talking about?