Things to learn to train for opera

1 How to support the tone. This is taught a lot of different ways but basically consists of controlling the breath as it goes out and keeping the pressure down off of your vocal chords. You're going for a low even pressure that gets stronger as you go up the scale.

2 How to enunciate clearly. Remember there is no amplification at the opera.

3 How to pronounce foreign languages. Unless you are Cecilia Bartoli or work exclusively at the ENO, you will be expected to know how to pronounce Italian, German, French and maybe English. Your teacher will tell you how to pronounce the neutral vowel in French and then someone else will tell you it's not like that at all. You can also learn to speak these languages if you like, but that is easier if you have someone to talk to.  [See Diction Police.  See things voice teachers worry about.]

4 How to integrate your registers. You will need to be able to convince the audience that you have only one voice and not two or three as you go up and down the scale.  [See Chest Voice ]

5 How to sing legato.  How to sing legato while enunciating clearly. This is actually possible.  [See Legato]

6 How to place your vowels. That means your pharynx is open AND your upper formant is focused all at the same time. This is a big part of the process of getting all of your voice to sound more or less the same.  [See Yawn]

7 How to sing loud. They will choose the loud one. Practice the messa di voce. Then you will be able to sing both loud and soft. And in between.  [See Messa di Voce.  See where Christa Ludwig recommends it.  See where Vesselina Kasarova recommends it.]

8 How to sing high. No high notes, no opera. Even Placido Domingo had high notes when he started out.

9 If you are a tenor, you will need to learn how to sound like one. Being a tenor is harder. This is a specialized trick that will require you to find a teacher that knows how to do it.  [See Tenor Blog.  See Leggiero Tenor]

10 How to sing in tune. You are allowed to sing out of tune sometimes but only on purpose. Some teachers will put this at the top of the list, but this is a mistake. If this is really hard for you, maybe you shouldn't be a classical musician. The better your breath support the easier it is to sing in tune.

11 If you want to be a coloratura, you will need to know how to sing fast and with less legato.  You will need to learn how to trill.  [See Vibrato/Trill and Trill]

12 How to do all of these things at the same time.

Put off classification as long as possible.  And practice.  It's no use knowing how to do things if you don't practice.  This list is the result of listening to a lot of students. They're not really learning anything.

Diction Police

Did you know there's a blog called dictioncorner?  Neither did I.  The subtitle is "The musings of a French vocal coach in America".  There's even this lovely logo.

Singing is really hard.  You have to do all the things an instrumental player does and this diction thing, too.  Not only that but diction functions in various ways.

1.  Correctness.  Each singer must pronounce the language as a native speaker would.  Some languages are a lot fussier than others.  The French are very fussy.  In German there is a whole language to represent correctness:  Hoch Deutsch.  When I lived in Germany, all stage actors and television personalities spoke hoch Deutsch.  Except in Switzerland.  Living in Ulm allowed me to view TV from Austria, Germany and Switzerland from the comfort of my living room.    This all leads to the idea of diction police who only worry about this part.

2.  Understandability.  One should never allow oneself to mistake these two things.  Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was always a target of the diction police, but when I hear her singing, for me every word is easily understandable.  For me this is far more important than item 1.  One of the reasons I love Jonas Kaufmann's Winterreise so much is because it is so easy to understand.

3.  Vocal technique.  The sound and placement of the vowels and ones ability to move smoothly and easily through the consonants is a powerful force in developing proper technique.  This is too hard to explain in a blog post.

4.  Phrasing.  Diction is also a tool in the phrasing tool box.

The objective is to achieve all four at the same time, not an easy task.

When you make vowels in any language, your tongue mounds up to separate the lips from the pharynx and separate your throat into two chambers front and back.  Where the tongue makes its mound determines which vowel it is.  Other things happen.  You might open the throat into the nasal cavity in back to make a French nasal vowel.  You might do different things with the tip of your tongue and your lips.  All these things can change the vowel.

As a gross generalization I would say that the back chamber controls the color of the voice and the front chamber controls the clarity of the language you are singing.  You can do both at the same time, but it isn't easy to learn.

In 2005 I wrote:

"Sometimes when you see photographs of recording sessions, there is a language coach sitting there with the singers. In the conflict between tone and correct pronunciation, tone should win. There is a school of vocal technique that bases its methods on vowel modification. So having someone there correcting your vowels could actually throw the whole thing off. So where is the vocal coach who is correcting the correcting of the language coach?"

Opera companies can have language coaches.  I think this is possibly the explanation for why the singers at the Bayerische Staatsoper are the easiest to understand in German.

The article about Jonas Kaufmann on the diction police blog is fun to read.  He actually seems to conclude that music perhaps on occasion tops diction. Here is my explanation of the article:

[ɛ]/[e] EH/AY without the diphthong; [œ]/[ø] UH slightly rounded lips/UH much more rounded French sound; [ɔ]/[o] AW/OH. Closed means narrower lips. He discusses only the first pair of sounds in the word “réveiller” [re vɛ je] RAY VEH YAY again all without diphthongs. A diphthong in IPA would include an additional symbol.  In the second performance he sings RAY VAY YAY. The guy likes the second version, thus screwing up all his previous opinions. I always remember my conversation with the French people on Twitter and how in French they like Jonas Kaufmann better than anyone. Better than Sophie Koch who actually is French. This problem is created because it's Jonas. Which makes it funny.

I notice listening to the second version [this refers to films embedded in the article] that the aria has “réveiller” two times in succession. He sings the first one as described and the second one is like the other film. Curious. He gets to the end of his argument and concludes that music wins. Music does win.

Blogging

Forgive me.  It's been quite a while since I wrote anything insanely technical.  When I found out people actually read this, I became intensely self-conscious.  It is more fun to just write whatever I want.

I used the term "falsettist" instead of "countertenor" on several occasions and thought perhaps I should try to see if anyone fully explains falsetto.  Ugh.  Unfortunately everything I find is nonsense, including Wikipedia.

Falsetto is not breathiness.  It's not a register.  It's a technique.  It means that only the edges of the folds are vibrating and not the whole thing, specifically not the cartilages.  It is generally accompanied by a relatively high larynx since the force of pulling the larynx down might pull you out of falsetto.  Anyone can do it, I suppose on any note, but it is more easily identifiable when a man does it on relatively high notes.

David Daniels is doing it in this film.



But so is this guy. Skip ahead to 1:50.  Warning.  Not for the faint of heart.



I'd have to have a guinea pig to try this on, but can a man messa di voce from a falsetto into a normal tone?  You'd have to pick the right note, I suppose.

Maybe there are other books.  I haven't spent huge amounts of time looking for them.  But for me the only real book on vocal technique is William Vennard Singing the Mechanism and the Technic.  I have the 1967 version.  If you want a complete explanation, see Vennard, but don't expect it to be easy to understand.

A countertenor is singing falsetto, and it is certainly not breathy.  It has been a feature of certain pop singers.  I'll try to find a good example.  There's a song on YouTube called "Falsetto," which I will not post, where the guy sings most of the time in his normal voice and slips into falsetto to imitate a woman.  The normal singing is breathier than the falsetto, resulting in an excellent comparison between the two methods.

Here we go.  I buy this as falsetto.


I am baffled by the videos on YouTube purporting to explain this and not succeeding.  

Legato

Renée Fleming talks about the legato.



I'm not making this stuff up.  It's all there--connecting it to the breath, extending it across the consonants.  What have I been saying?

The ABCs of the Wagnerian singer

Die Zeit, 01/03/2013
MORITZ VON USLAR

The ABCs of the Wagnerian singer

The tenor JONAS KAUFMANN in conversation with our reporter MORITZ VON USLAR compiled what is important for Wagner today. Strict alphabetical order, from top A to Z for cigarette


A-,the high
For tenors usually the high C is the summit, with Wagner it is the A. The Heldentenor who has a wide and strong voice, is not necessarily a knight of the high C. To reach a note in your room does not mean that you can also sing it on stage. A high A is applied immediately to Lohengrin, from the Gralserzählung to the magical "Elsa, I love you."

B-elcanto
One thinks immediately of Bellini, the pioneer of bel canto, and not of Wagner: Should you, however, Wagner was a great admirer of Bellini! And he preached the bel canto - Bel canto literally: beautiful singing. There should be a softness, warmth, beauty of sound. Where Wagner writes for singer and orchestra piano or pianissimo, you have to try that. I understand myself, especially in the Wagner Fach, also as a bel canto singer.

C-Ds
The big studio recordings are from the fifties and sixties. Today, for cost reasons these are no longer produced. A drama? No. Is it a shame? Of course. Today's generation of singers doesn't have the same opportunities as those days.

D- eutsche, das
First of all: I am a German. It makes a difference if you already as a three year old at home have heard Wagner or not. On the other hand, the German has in Wagner always a bitter aftertaste: the abuses of the "Third Reich" simply cannot be forgotten.

E-ule
The wonderful traditional inn on the market place in Bayreuth! Since 1876, the founding year of the festival, the hard core of Wagnerians meet there after the performance. If you want, the signed artist portraits that adorn the walls, read something like a crisis of Wagner singing: Since 1960 is hardly a new singer picture added. Do I hang in the Eule? I do not know.

F-orte
The audience in Lohengrin always notices only the loud parts - the old Wagner song. He writes as often piano and pianissimo! Wagner is famous for his fortes and underestimated for his piani. For this reason I address directly the quiet parts in Lohengrin: the "dove" in the Gralserzählung and in " Mein lieber Schwan."

G-ralserzählung
A mysterious text! In my interpretation, there is here a shift: from anger and accusation to shame, depression and despair. Lohengrin knows he is himself to blame. In the love duet he has brought his feelings into it, has pushed and bragged that he wanted to take this woman necessarily for himself. Now he regrets that he cannot lead the people to war, but he especially regrets that he must leave Elsa. It is not a heroic piece. The sadness makes the Grail narration so fragile.

H-eldentenor [heroic tenor]
Wagner's operas are populated by heroes: Siegfried, Tristan, Lohengrin. Today the immaculate image of the hero doesn't interests us, but the broken do. Siegmund, the epitome of the warrior and fighter, when he appears in the Walküre before Hunding's hut, is utterly at the end. When he is suddenly so weak and languishing, it says to the women: wonderful. Wagner has always been interested in the people in his heroes.

I-talianità
Since we have to speak of Lohengrin once more: this is Wagner's most Italian opera. Here all the melodies are sweeter, softer, mistier, until the choruses enter. Even Verdi said: His Wagner is Lohengrin. I've been listening to a lot of Wagner recordings in Italian and French. How much these Italianatà changed the piece! A Lohengrin, sung in Italian, sounds like an Italian opera.

J-oseph Alois Tichatscheck
The tenor who sang in Wagner's lifetime: He reportedly had unearthly vocal force. To the master himself will Tichatschek have said. "Dear Richard, the Tannhauser I sing to you, two times a day." Tichatschek, so goes a thesis, led Wagner to overestimate the performance capabilities of his singers, and after Rienzi and Tannhäuser he wrote a few parts that are considered unsingable.

K-onsonanten
A difficult chapter. Commonly it is said: The clearer, harder, more spit out the consonants, the better you understand the text. Foreigners are drilled to spit the consonants, for that is typically German. By no means! A consonant may of course not be swallowed. But: The more real the vowel, the more easily the ear expands the consonants. If I have only the consonants, then this is just a "Wrzlpfrmpf": spit and pigeon noises [Gespucke and Gegurre]. But Wagner wished that his text bubbled on his harmonies. So beware of the consonants!

L-auritz Melchior
The tenor legend of the last century, his " Wälse "-calls in the Walküre (live for 15 seconds!) are unmatched. Is he good as a model? The Dane is said to have carried the nickname "The Singing sofa." Sure, the acting requirements for a singer in his time were not as high as today. Then people would tolerate just fine him standing motionless on the stage when he sang. Today it would no longer be accepted.

M-essa di voce
This refers to the healthy mix of vocal color, therefore, the voice that alternates between chest voice and head voice, the correct placement in order to let the sound rise and fall. In Wagner singing it is of great importance, especially in the recitative passages.

N-ever should you ask me
The famous question ban in Lohengrin. I want to put it simply: Everything that is forbidden, is particularly irritating. For Elsa it must be quite a shock: She has this man, who enters for her innocence, desires and fantasizes, she was sure that he would save her. And now the Swan Knight stands in front of her and says, "That you do not ask me where I come from!"

O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe
The love duet in the second act of Tristan. In the third act comes the actual vocal overstrain: incredibly deep, psychologically phenomenally interesting but hardly endurable. The tenor has to sing 50 minutes at a stretch. There is no break. The crux: The Tristan must have both, the steely, resilient voice for the third act - and the softness of the love duet.

P-iano
The contrast with the forte. And only a real piano lets a forte really shine. Wagner is, against all rumors, a composer of quiet passages.

Q-ual, süße [sweet agony]
A typical text-paradox. In Wagner, the brilliant word creator, it means: the anticipation of the highest happiness between the state "no longer" and "not yet". The search for redemption. The music is often associated with neither major nor minor.

R-efflux
A typical singer disease. Cause is stress and wrong eating habits, especially the so-called hernia. In singing the diaphragm is used heavily. It pushes itself down, squeezes the stomach and intestines: The lungs should be given as much space as possible to the column of air that forms between the larynx and diaphragm, to hold as long as possible and to produce the greatest possible sound. This constant down-pressing causes the gastric outlet located between the diaphragm to push up. This in turn hinders the circular muscle that closes down the esophagus to the stomach. Heartburn arises. It can be operated on, but in the long term does nothing. I have an osteopath, who pushes my stomach back into place. This is painful, but it helps.

S-ängerdämmerung
The old complaint is that no useful Wagnerian tenors any longer exist. So, I do not know. If you read reviews of the supposed glory days, it says there already: We have no more great voices. The period in which the opera was a street sweeper has passed. [?] Before the advent of cinema and television opera singers were treated like Hollywood stars. What I find much more important: through the strengthening of the orchestral sound we are experiencing a shift in occupations. The former Mozart singer is the Rossini singer of today, the former Verdi singer is the Mozart singer of today, the earlier Wagner singer is the Verdi singer of today. What, then, for heaven's sake, the Wagner singer of today? Not the vocal capacity constraints fail - the demands have grown enormously.

T-extverständlichkeit
The secret is not only that you can sing and speak clearly, but more importantly is that you really know what you sing, and feel. My experience is: The moment in which I create the text and really feel, so fill out with emotions, one also understands me. An excuse for the lack of care of the comprehensibility of the text are certainly the supertitles, which run along today in every major opera house.

U-nterleib
You breathe more in this direction. "Sing to the abdomen" or "singing with body connection," another one of the old German expression that I find great - that means that the whole body contributes to amplify the sound that is produced in the diaphragm. Singing with the abdomen is also an interpretive concept: The sound is fuller, manlier.

V- erschleiß
Wear: A law of nature. No singer can completely protect himself from it. There is evidence of exhaustion which suddenly makes itself felt: one has to persuade his voice, needs longer in the morning, in order to warm up. My concept is, however, that after Wagner, as a way to relax, I sing always Mozart, Verdi and the classical Lied. The worst symptom of fatigue would be that in the evening one has no desire to go on stage.

W-olfgang Windgassen
The epitome of Wieland Wagner's heroic tenor: an icon of modern Wagnerian singing. Pity that there are so few film documents with him, to evaluate his effect on the audience we do not have enough recordings and studio recordings. People who have seen Windgassen on stage rave today, still with glowing cheeks and ears.

X, das große
Underlying this is the future of Wagner singing. One would now see the complete work of art, not just beautiful singing, but the interpretive singer. Regie has become more important. Singers deal with each line of text, trying to discover new nuances. This also is a new musical sophistication. It has more than ever killed interpreting, killed the celebration of Wagner's music.

Y-oga
Every morning, but certainly before I touch my voice, I do the Five Tibetans. A splendid revival of breath, body and mind.

Z- igarette
My last cigarette was long ago: end of school, the beginning of study. Baritones and basses put away the smoke obviously better than we tenors. The recently deceased Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau smoked before every performance: one last time inhale and out on stage. For me, that doesn't go [haut das nicht hin]. My lungs don't forgive any cigarette.

[Dr. B.  This is my translation from Die Ziet.  He and I are in complete agreement, especially with regard to X.

I realize that you can put these through the Google translator, but I try to make all the sentences understandable, as well technical music talk.]

Essay

I was relatively young when I noticed that what I was being taught -- how to pronounce languages, how to articulate notes, always to sing in tune and rhythm, etc. -- wasn't the same as what the most famous singers were doing. I concluded that this meant that they knew something I didn't.

Now in the days of YouTube no one seems able to make this logical leap. The constant carping that is seen in the comments for famous singers seems to come from individuals who studied singing and believed completely in what their teachers were telling them. What follows is my conclusions, not your teacher's.

 Maria Callas was a mezzo and was pushing her voice up into a tessitura it wasn't precisely suited for. This and not her weight loss is the cause of her loss of quality in the upper register. If you can't stand to listen to it, find someone you do like. All this carping isn't going to change anything.

Jonas Kaufmann became wildly famous because he found a teacher who could get him to open his throat and produce a heavier, darker sound than the wimpy lyric tenor he was doing before this. He still lapses into a lighter tone on occasion and cannot seem to commit to this dark sound. Sounding like a baritone doesn't mean he is a baritone. Tessitura and not color is the basis for classification. Lesson--please pay attention--which notes you can produce comes from the vocal cords, and what color your voice creates comes from the resonators. Classification comes from the vocal cords, not the resonators. Please don't make me say this again. Sometimes there is a mismatch. Vocal cords always win.

Anna Netrebko sings a lot of coloratura repertoire, but doesn't seem to articulate the notes the way you were taught in school. Lots of singers slur the coloratura: Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Edita Gruberova to name a few. I covered this in my I Puritani contest post. It's fine for a student to always articulate cleanly, but no awards are given out for achieving this. When push comes to shove, you had better have more to offer.

Renée Fleming sings virtually everything in a very slurred, Romantic style with very little hard articulation of consonants. Please note that she is very very famous, far more famous than the people who are spitting away on their consonants. She has found her gimmick and does not need your carping.

I allowed myself to get swept up into a YouTube argument by someone who wants to trash Jonas because he used a glottal attack on something in Italian. This subject always reminds me of an occasion when I was studying a piece by Henry Purcell with the words "all, all, all, all, all is love to me." My teacher wanted, insisted on a glottal attack on every "all." I thought this sounded ridiculous and dropped the piece from my repertoire.

Cecilia Bartoli does a lot of glottal attacks. I remember being shocked by this, but there is no evidence that she has suffered any ill effects from doing it, the only thing about it that concerned me. I think the amount of force involved is crucial.

In the German language the word "Einsam" which begins Elsa's Dream would start with a glottal stroke. Because this is normal speech. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Just be sure you actually are German first. Some singers do this, some don't. Does it form a basis for hysteria either way? I think not.

When I am judging the quality of a singer's performance, I do not consult the encyclopedia of principles I learned in school. I consult my heart. If I feel the familiar twinge, I know I have found gold.

I feel much better now.

Review the Reviewer

In the September issue of Opera News Stephen J. Mudge reviewed Renée Fleming singing Arabella in Paris.  He likes Renée's "creamy" sound, meaning her legato I suppose, but hates her German diction.  He notes that the other singers have better diction and thinks they should be teaching their diction to her.  These other singers, he notes, are lacking in creaminess.  He points out that the audience went mad for Fleming, but he appears to have no idea why.

Ok.  You have to pick one.  You get to have a "creamy" sound OR you get to have really good German diction.  Renée has made her choice, and no amount of complaining is going to make her change her mind.  People in Paris don't speak German so they won't care.  You want Renée Fleming or you don't. 

If you know of someone who has both creaminess and diction, please tell me who.  My recollection is that people also complained bitterly about Schwarzkopf's diction, though I don't recall having any trouble understanding her.  There is a tendency today for German operas to be sung in a very talky way, as though all operas, including Strauss and Wagner, were buffa.  I don't care for this all.

Modified to reflect journalism.

Vibrato / Trill

What is the matter with people? I am reading on YouTube--probably a mistake--a nonsensical discussion that has to do with two kinds of trills. Jeeze. Then, of course, they rant and rave against whoever is performing incorrectly this thing they have invented.

The voice of any opera singer--maybe not Emma Kirby, but everybody else--fluctuates in pitch. It does this ALL THE TIME on every note. The brain consolidates this into a single pitch somewhere near the center of the fluctuation. Your brain may put these higher or lower than someone else's brain, giving you the idea that they are flat or sharp when they are in fact both flat and sharp at the same time. And they are both flat and sharp at the same time on every note they sing.  This is called a vibrato, and it is the primary feature of opera singing.

The brain does this consolidating until the fluctuation exceeds about a half step in extent, at which time the listener hears a trill. Your brain consolidates the fluctuation into a single pitch or it doesn't. There is no third possibility.  To be most effective as a trill the fluctuation needs to be clearly wider than the normal vibrato.

There seems to be something about the internet that encourages the arrogant ignorant.

If the singer gets old, their vibrato may slow down.  At this time it becomes a wobble.  The trill effect is also distorted if the fluctuation is too slow.

The rich and famous are chosen in part because their vibratos are pretty.  A vibrato can just as easily be ugly.  It is also possible that the precise same vibrato will seem pretty to some and ugly to others.  Your opinion of any given singer's vibrato (and by extension trill) did not drop from heaven.  It's just your opinion.

Time for a Tirade

On Sunday I went to an audition of students from local colleges.  The first 5 were undergraduate singers.  It was enough to cause one to despair for the state of voice teaching.

I agree with Stuart Skelton (see comment here) that undergraduates don't want to get involved in the really heavy repertoire.  (That's not exactly what he said.  I'm interpreting.)  I have praised the Merola program here for emphasizing the lighter lyric operas in their training.

However, there are a couple of things that students can learn at any age and any voice classification.

Anyone can learn breath support.  Undergraduates can learn to carry the breath across the phrase and keep the pressure low in the body.  These lessons will be valuable no matter what happens to the voice later in life.  Good breath support lets the natural sound of the voice come out.

Anyone can learn to produce a proper legato.  Let me repeat that.  EVERYONE can learn to produce a proper legato.  Jeeze, you guys.  What do you do in your lessons--and by you I mean all of you--no one gets off here--if the subject of how to produce a proper legato never comes up?

The elements of a good legato are...

• The vowels all resonate in a similar space.  This involves keeping the teeth a similar distance apart, emphasizing the forward formant, thinking about how the vowels are produced at all....  I said this was going to be a tirade.  I'm just trying to put out ideas.  Don't do what I say.  Make up your own method.  Believe it or not, this all enhances diction rather than interfering with it.
• The singer learns to keep the energy of the phrase going across the change from one note to another and during the consonants.  Think of singing as being like a musical saw.  The notes and the words change but the tone keeps going.  This will eventually eliminate leaking air.

These are the building blocks of everything else.  Until you have a proper legato, there is no point in trying to develop the elements of phrasing discussed elsewhere.  Each--breath support and legato--emphasizes and enhances the other.

Quit trying to make your students into something.  Teach them breath support and legato and wait to hear what comes out.  Teachers often screw up students' entire lives by thinking they should begin with classification.  I recommend the Cecilia Bartoli method--put off classification until the student is over 40.  (Now that she's in her 40's she finally admits that she's probably a high lyric mezzo.)  The very young should sing as much variety as possible.  For the young classification is just choosing what they sound best singing.

I am speaking as a person whose classification was screwed up.  I was actually told never to sing Mozart.  How insane is that?

Tirade over.

Stating the Obvious

First of all I want to say that nothing exists about singing that is separate from the people who are out there doing it.

This leads to the logical conclusion that most books about singing technique are irrelevant because nothing in their contents leads back to specific examples of specific singers.  If there is no illustration, especially now in the modern world where illustrations are everywhere, there is no content.

I know how to pronounce French because that is how actual French singers pronounce it.  This is only one of hundreds of possible examples.

If I can't see it and hear it, it doesn't exist.  I don't want to read about how some example in the laboratory or in your studio does something unless you let me hear it, too.

Pronouncing R

Norman Lebrecht has gotten himself involved in a discussion of how to pronounce "R."  (Here for French, here for German.)  This sounds like the sort of silly stuff I write about.  My fanaticism is the pronunciation of the unpronounced neutral vowel in French.  If it isn't pronounced, how are you supposed to tell how to pronounce it?

When native speakers speak both French and German, they often use a uvular or gutturalized R (back of the throat) instead of a rolled or flipped R (tip of the tongue).  When I lived in Germany, my Spanish friend  would laugh that she could do a guttural R only on the word "Brod."  Then she would demonstrate.  I couldn't do it on any word at all, so I was very impressed with this.  My uvula refuses to do anything but just hang there.  The fanatical German speech coaches fussed with a lot of things about my German but never once brought up how I pronounced R.  Perhaps they simply assume that foreigners have no hope of achieving this.  Or perhaps the uvular R isn't considered correct in opera singing.



I like to use certain models for these things. In French I think of Edith Piaf as the supreme model.  Watching this again I can see her tongue rolling those R's.  I am surprised by this.
 

For my money Régine Crespin and Edith Piaf are rolling with the tip of the tongue.  This is what singers are taught.  And you will please notice that neither one of these women use the silly super-rounded neutral vowel you are constantly hearing from coached non-French singers.



And Fritz Wunderlich is definitely using his tongue.



Christa Ludwig rolls with her tongue.  The idea here is that you do nothing with your pronunciation that interferes with your tone because tone is king.

When the man in Brussels asks for a uvular R, he is trying for a theatrical effect.  He wants Carmen to sound common.  Here is a link to comments from the singer on this situation.

Curiously, if you go back a few posts to the film of Victoria de los Angeles, the word "chagrin" sounds the most likely to be guttural of anything I've found.

The only singer I am absolutely certain consistently uses a uvular R when singing is Gisela May.



At one point in the song she even sings it with her mouth wide open.  No tongue.  She was one of Brecht's favorites.  We prefer to approach these subjects using the empirical method.

Tenor Blog

Apparently there is an entire blog that obsesses over the vocal technique of tenors here.  I'm not prepared to get this carried away with it.  The operatic tenor sound is not exactly natural, so they have to get very heavily into technique.  There is stuff about squillo, e.g.

"For my Mother"

I'm reading Christa Ludwig's autobiography In My Own Voice, and she makes the most amazing statement. She writes about makeup artists, especially admiring the ones at the Met, and then says that in modern German productions no one wears any makeup. The singers apply their makeup when they prepare to go home. Oy.

She writes about the things I would want to read about.

Christa Ludwig's book is dedicated to her mother, and the dedication is a list of wise sayings from her mother.

I, of course, am most attracted to the wise sayings about vocal technique.

"Breath, vocalization, and overtones are the pillars of good singing technique. Everything else comes from differences in body structure. Different cavities resonate differently from person to person." This is really all there is to singing technique. Controlling the breath controls the vocalization, which is really the smallest part. It controls the tessitura and registers. You only need to have heard the unresonated voice once to recognize this. Everything else is resonance.

"Never strive to sing loudly. Only aspire to make a beautiful sound. Practice singing every note smoothly from pianissimo to forte, and back, at least forty times every day." Does this remind you of something? It should. It's the short version of my chapter on the messa di voce. I am amazed.

It is so cool to read this. If you were attempting to boil it all down, you could hardly beat this.

"Singing is spiritual. Physical technique is the base, but you must also be in spiritual harmony with yourself and with your surroundings." And, "Love must flow from you when you sing."

She writes what I would want to read--the parts that give her joy, the parts she loves.

She calls herself "we Austrians," though she is certainly German. "In Vienna, all that's wanted is bread and circuses--or rather pastry and opera." I've read singer autobiographies before, but never one written by someone who was so passionate about opera.

Charlie Chaplin, and a lot more celebrity types, wrote an endless "and then I met" name dropping list.  Christa writes about the business.

She writes about her take on each of her major roles, of her own particular style in creating characters. She tells us that somewhere there exists a score where she and Gottfried von Einem rewrote the opera Der Besuch der alten Dame to suit her voice. She thinks it is unfortunate that this opera is no longer performed.

We learn in a footnote that there is a privately printed newspaper by and for the standees of the Vienna State Opera. This is now called Der neue Merker and, of course, is available on line here. Who knew?

She writes the most amazing things about Lady Macbeth from Verdi's opera Macbeth. It wouldn't have occurred to me that a mezzo would sing this. She tells a wonderful story about studying this with Zinka Milanov. They agreed on a bel canto approach to the role. Perhaps this is the problem. This is SOOO interesting.

I've started to think I'm channeling Christa Ludwig, we think so much alike.  If you read nothing else, read "The Greatest Artists are always Searching."

She likes any staging as long as it "doesn't distract from the music."  What have I been saying? She then goes on to complain about various stagings, but I think this is a German perspective where everywhere they have regie theater. I would enjoy seeing a Despina that tends bar. I think.

She says, "I believe that a talented interpreter not only has the right, but the duty to always examine and create a piece of theater anew." And then she goes on to quote Goethe: "...individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art." I have always loved Goethe.

Singing is above all else an act of creation.  She calls the score the "golden bonds" from which and through which art is created. She urges singers not to imitate but to create their own art. She tells us that Herbert von Karajan thought there was no absolutely right tempo. The pulse and the tempo are related. It is part of the individual interpretation--whatever flows for you is right for you.

Oh! "A professor teaches and an artist searches." What could be cooler than that?

We part company only in her criticism of original instrument orchestras, a phenomenon I have been slow to understand. I think the same movement that wanted original instruments also has resulted in far more ornamentation in Baroque styles these days than was the case in my youth. Unless you're talking about Marc Minkowski who only wants the da capo sections to be sung sotto voce. Bah! The idea of individualized ornamentation is one of the most powerful trends in modern opera performance.

She writes what I would want to read--the parts that give her joy, the parts she loves.

She calls herself "we Austrians," though she is certainly German. "In Vienna, all that's wanted is bread and circuses--or rather pastry and opera." I've read singer autobiographies before, but never one written by someone who was so passionate about opera.

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Messa di Voce

[This is an edited chapter from my mysterious never to be seen again book, the one that explains the purposes and methods for practicing the messa di voce. The person to whom it refers shall remain mysterious. It could be anyone.]

We still haven't sung any repertoire and will not again today. My biggest concern about you is for the general care and maintenance of your voice. My goal is not to give you a standard technique, but to find ways to keep your voice balanced and healthy, the diverse parts connected, and to find unity in the variety of your work.

Today I will teach you the messa di voce, the most classical of all vocal exercises. In its almost absurd simplicity is an enormous variety of benefits, and I wish to give them to you. I'm a big believer in the messa di voce (placing of the voice). Garcia and a lot of other famous teachers recommended it, and I recommend it to you. I used to practice it when all was going to hell in the middle, and sometimes when it wasn't.

Garcia is Manuel Garcia the younger, the brother of the famous mezzo-sopranos.... "Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot," you interrupt. Yes. And the most famous voice teacher of the nineteenth century. His father, also Manuel Garcia, was the tenor for whom Rossini wrote the role of Otello, which means he must have been a pretty damned amazing tenor.

Singing is an athletic activity performed by a tiny muscle in the throat. All of the respiratory mechanism is used to control and shape the sound, but this tiny muscle is crucial. I am reminded of stories about decathletes--the people who compete in the decathlon. They always explain that in order to be good in a big variety of events, their performance in individual events usually suffers. Bulking up for the shot put interferes with developing the right fitness for sprints. Sprinting develops the legs in a slightly different way than long distance running, which in turn is different from the broad jump.

Some uses of the voice interfere with others. Too much emphasis in one area can prevent others from developing. For example, too much emphasis on chest tones can make high notes more difficult. The messa di voce tries to even out the extremes of use, to balance and unify the parts. It is useful to counteract your tendency to prefer certain "hot" zones in your voice, pitches or colors which sound particularly nice and you would like to sell to the listener. In performance you may sell your voice to your heart's content, but not in the messa di voce. Here we place the same value on every pitch and every degree of loudness. It can also tell you what is working well and what is not.

The messa di voce consists of a long crescendo (pp to ff) followed by a long diminuendo (ff to pp) on a single note. It's pretty boring, but worth it. An experienced singer like you should be able to crescendo for a moderate 8 count and diminuendo for another 8. You can do it faster if that seems too slow. If you have a very high tolerance for boredom, you can do this for a few minutes (4 or 5) at a time, covering your whole voice. Don't overdo it.

My suggested tempo is very slow. Many writers on singing recommend it, but I don't remember anyone suggesting such a slow tempo for the messa di voce. I think doing it slowly helps focus awareness on the transitions and off of the extremes.

I want to make sure you learn the messa di voce properly, and remind you that throughout the exercise, you must keep your head still. A little tilting may be allowed, but no backward or forward movement. This is very important. It would counteract the benefit of the exercise to perform it improperly. I would watch carefully to see that you did it right. I would ask you to observe yourself in the mirror, both now and when you are practicing it later.

We will begin in the middle of the voice on a G or A. Extend the pitch gradually down and up, though it is less important to practice the messa di voce at the extremes of range. On high notes you would be doing it to practice controlling the diminuendo and to bring more weight into your high notes. Any vowel is OK. It is more important where you position the vowel than which vowel you pick. Place it forward but not too far forward so you can expand and open it as you crescendo. Begin the vowel in a closed position and move to an open position on the ff, going back to closed position.

"What does it mean, 'open position' and 'closed position?'" you ask. "I don't understand this."

Closed position in a vowel means a narrow, highly focused sound, while open position is wider and less focused. Notice I do not say unfocused. Unfocused is not good. When I am talking about different sounds, I will talk about them in relationship to vowels. A very tight "ee" is closed and a looser "ih" is very open. These are two extremes of the same basic sound. If I am going through the material too quickly, please stop me.

On pitches near the break, you begin in head and crescendo smoothly into chest and back into head. Between the two is mixed registration. Some people mix naturally, but the rest of us have to practice it.

After listening to you and listening to myself when I was about your age, I notice that our two very different voices share certain qualities. We both use a lot of mixing in the middle, and our most beautiful sounds come from this mixed tone. This beautiful mixed sound is delicate and fragile and hard to make loud. When you're doing it right, you show a lot of skill in controlling the mixing. Other times you don't even try to mix and just skip directly from head to chest and back again, usually to achieve a technical effect. At your best, you are more successful at blending your registers than I was.

You must take care to keep your head and neck still during this exercise. The jaw can move. To get the desired benefit, the main activity must be in the larynx and pharynx. Your head must not go forward when you shift into chest or back when you go into head.

The diminuendo must be executed without allowing the tone to become breathy. Intensify the vowel and concentrate on moving it to the closed position. This is especially important on the "ah" vowel which you must be sure to practice. You may limit the crescendo to forte if you want, especially at first. In any event never crescendo louder than feels comfortable or can be fully supported. If you keep doing it, you should be able to extend the dynamic range gradually.

The messa di voce has a number of uses. In addition to helping to smooth the transition from chest to head, it is also an exercise to control the transition from light to heavy singing. Both transitions must be executed smoothly, with no apparent shift. Some pitches will be much more difficult than others, but those are the ones we will emphasize. We will tune the vowels to make it easier, allowing them to move slightly with the crescendo. If you become tense while practicing this, stop and try again tomorrow.

The messa di voce is very boring and requires concentration on technique alone to be effective. It has no musical content and must be practiced this way. Its purpose is to develop coordination of the vocal cords themselves, to develop and facilitate exactly those things, which are hardest for a heavy voice. The instructions should be followed exactly.

The messa di voce connects the extremes together and trains the voice to be familiar not merely with the extremes of loud and soft, chest and head, light and heavy, but with all the levels in between. You use crescendo and diminuendo in performance to bring variety and contrast, but in the messa di voce the objective is sameness and evenness, which means that it must be performed methodically in as boring a manner as possible. Think of it as a meditation, the messa di voce meditation.

The messa di voce is intended only for experienced singers, and beginners should stay away from it. It's not a drill. Repetitions aren't the point. The benefit lies in discovering how to do it correctly, and once mastery is achieved, it can be done less often for review. Practice it occasionally during your warm-up to make sure it's still working properly. If there are problems, return to systematic study.

[This has to be the longest and most boring explanation of how to do a vocal exercise ever written, the obvious result of extreme fanaticism.

For a short demonstration of how to perform the messa di voce chick here. You are not required to repeat it three times or add the huge flourish of fast notes at the end. Fiendish grin is also not necessary, but if it works for you, why not?]

Here is something in an interview with Vesselina Kasarova where she discusses the messa di voce, though she doesn't call it that.  Her description is similar to this.  I also advise her to sing Octavian as though it were Mozart.

Yawn

I am still enjoying browsing through English, French, German and Italian Techniques of Singing by Richard Miller. He doesn't talk about the Russian school because that isn't part of his experience, a perfectly valid reason.

I was preparing to argue about constantly citing Manuel Garcia II about the lowered larynx--he was against--because, well, wasn't he a bit early for that? Isn't lowered larynx more a feature of late Verdi, verismo and Wagner? How could he...? Then it turns out he lived for 101 years, until 1906. On my side of the argument is that his treatises date from the 1840s, before singing with a lowered larynx became so popular. When I even think about singing, my throat opens and my larynx goes DOWN. Because that's how I was taught. I was probably taught in the Italian technique. When I go to Italy, I hear lowered larynx all over the place. No one says that's what they're doing, but nevertheless it is.

Here in Sacramento we have two prominent voice teachers. One teaches all her students to sing with a lowered larynx, and the other likes the larynx raised. No one just lets it float around in the throat. Sigh. Mr. Miller pretends that that's what everyone does. Mind you, absolutely no one overtly discusses larynx position. It's always inferred by other instructions. In my training it was called a "low yawn." Yawning makes the larynx go down.

Yawn. I meant that talking about technique is boring and sleep inducing. Actually it's rather fascinating, and what makes it fascinating is that there is no apparent correlation between what voice teachers say and what they want you to do.  They just suddenly say, "That's it!"

I like the book. Who would have guessed that the English were trying to eliminate upper partials? Or that Placido Domingo would probably have remained a baritone if he had studied in France? I guess you have to have been through the wringer of being forced to read technique books to even know what he's talking about.

English, French, etc.

I have been leafing through English, French, German and Italian Techniques of Singing by Richard Miller and am reminded of the days when I poured over anatomical drawings and sonograms in the name of learning how to teach singing.  I have long thought that this was all bogus, and now it occurs to me why this might be.  No one bothers to connect it back to anything observable.  OK, this is what all these machines are telling me.  Now what out in reality does it relate to?

If I am discussing styles of singing in different voice schools, the bare minimum is to cite actual singers, singers available on commercial recordings, who sing that way. No one wants to name names.

A voice teacher's life consists of sitting at the piano with the student standing where the teacher can see them, listening to the sounds the student makes, watching what their body is doing, and instructing them how to change this to achieve a better result. What can I observe from my chair that is going to help me in this task? I'm not going to crunch them through machines to see how fast their vibrato is. I have to figure out all on my own what their problems are and how to fix them. No. These kinds of books serve to allow one academic to impress another academic and have little if anything to do with actual singing. I teach through my eyes and ears and ability to explain what I want. I need it to connect back to that before I will think it's useful.

Of course, when I was actually teaching, my students were usually totally off, and it was not at all difficult to think of things to change without getting too deep into the minutia of vocal technique. One sang into his nose. He was a professional singer, so how he got that far is anyone's guess. I tried to explain that the objective was to resonate in the mouth. This was amazingly hard to communicate, but eventually he got it.

Others simply knew nothing at all and needed to know about breathing and vowels and simple stuff like that. None were in advanced stages of preparing for a classical vocal career. That's the spot where the comments need to get extremely specific. "See. There at 1:22 John Doe is raising his larynx as he was taught in the French school." Without this the information is virtually useless.
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Anna talks technique

In the November issue of Opera News Oussama Zahr interviews Anna Netrebko and mentions hearing Mirella Freni in her voice:

Netrebko's eyes light up. "Mirella. Thank you. I always heard this, since I started studying. And you know what, listening to her helps me a lot, because I think her technique is amazing for what she's doing.

"She always sang," says Netrebko of the Italian soprano. And, here, Netrebko reveals her partiality for singers with flowing, generous voices, unlike a different breed of singer she sees today, marked by lots of covered tone without forward placement in order to manipulate dynamics easily. "This dynamic control, usually, it's not going from the breath. Beautiful for the audience, dangerous for the singer," she explains. "I will not tell you the name of the singer," she explains. "I will not tell you the name of the singer--very good soprano, beautiful voice, one of the most beautiful--and I attend a couple of her performances in different roles. And I was like, why the fuck are you singing half mezza voce? Who needs that? Open your mouth, give me your voice--on the breath, supported, pointed, and that's it. But lots of people think this is the musicality. I think it's bullshit. You can show a couple of the notes, okay, you have piano, thank you. After that, give me singing, give me the voice."

Part of the blame for this kind of singing, Netrebko thinks, belongs to coaches and conductors. "Lots of coaches, and God forgive me, conductors, they are the worst. The worst. And actually one of the best conductors are working very bad to the singer. 'Cause they're sitting at the piano and saying, 'Do this phrase, shhh, shhh, no, no, no! Even softer, even softer!' And after that he is going to the orchestra like bwaah,"--and she makes the sound of a deafening brass section--they show you how it has to be soft."

Singing in the Twentieth Century

Styles of singing split into two branches in the twentieth century.

The heavy style of Wagner and Puccini continued throughout the century, tapering off only toward the end. Evidence of this can be found in the concerts hosted by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation which always feature heavy singers. (Curiously, this is this evening and features James Valenti as the 2010 Richard Tucker Award Winner. From San Francisco Leah Crocetto is a grant recipient. She is by far the heaviest woman’s voice among the Adler Fellows.)

Then came Expressionism and Arnold Schoenberg. Here is a bit from Erwartung (1909).



There is a lot of shouting in this short example. Schoenberg is sort of the anti-Wagner. Where Wagner is a sea of tonality with almost constant modulating, Schoenberg carefully avoids establishing a key, and therefore cannot modulate away from it. Wagner is still about singing. His roots are firmly in the operatic world. In Schoenberg we have returned to the world of the monodists. The singing is there solely to support the drama. This is the attitude of all the modernists.

This is a nice bit from Lulu (1979 version) "O Freiheit."


The goal for the singer is to get out of it alive. It may be important to know that Anna Netrebko's manager won't let her sing Lulu, though she would like to.

Modernism requires a narrow piercing sound rather than a large round one. Because established singers are reluctant to perform this repertoire, it can provide an opportunity for young singers. Marilyn Horne made her San Francisco Opera debut as Marie in Wozzeck.

With heavy Wagner/verismo singing the danger lies in over-singing, in pushing the voice to produce beyond its natural capacity. The danger in modern singing lies in never really establishing a proper legato. I must say Marilyn produced the most legato Marie I've ever heard. It is possible to sing Berg and not destroy yourself.

Here is a personal favorite from Nixon in China (1987) "I am the wife of Mao Zedong."



How can you not love this?  Kathleen Kim who sang in Tales of Hoffmann is doing it on this season's simulcast.

It is important to know that there is no particular style associated with modern music.  Stravinsky for one deeply resented even the suggestion that there was more in the music than was written on the page.  Any singer will tell you there is always much much more.

Mail Bag

Q. …a technical question…found myself wondering the other night at SF Opera, and who better to advise me, than yourself…
…it's about vibrato in classical music--classical vocal music--more particularly, in grand opera.
Are singers, especially sopranos, taught to use vibrato on every note (well, every note that's long enough)?  Does vibrato use vary with the era, or year, or style of the music?
…thanks for any insight,

A.  I just posted a blog entry about this recently.  I think most people have a vibrato and I have absolutely no recollection of anyone teaching it.  It's a natural part of the voice. 

In the old days there were turntables that did both 45 and 33 rpm, so if you had a 45 you could slow it down and actually hear the vibrato or lack thereof.  Patty Page was the only one with no vibrato.

In general you are stuck with the vibrato you have.  If it's too fast or too slow or perish the thought too wide, you might be sunk.

There are choir schools that train singers not to have vibrato.  I am aware of training it away but not of training to have it.  Heavy singing affects the vibrato, generally in a negative way.  But this effect is not voluntary. 

In general, you have the vibrato you have, but taste in vibrato might change from one era to another.  I would guess it was lightening right now.

This is strictly an educated guess, but I think it's the muscles that hold the larynx in place that oscillate and create the vibrato.  I'd have to look it up and my books are in boxes.  For once Wikipedia is no help.  They are talking about instrumental vibrato which is entirely voluntary.

 Q Follow up.  Once again, my question was based in trying to understand performance differences between jazz (and pop) music and opera. It has seemed to me lately that opera singers--particularly sopranos--have been laying in vibrato on every single note, and it often sounds mechanical. in jazz--both for singers and for horn players, guitarists & bass players--especially on ballads, the musician will start a note steady, then add vibrato, and take it off again, to warm it up or shape the line. Kim Nalley is a master of this; you hear it a lot in Jane Monheit's singing, and Diane Reeves's, etc., etc. so if jazzers use this as a tool, for emotional impact, why wouldn't opera-ers? a mystery for our time.

A.  Historically instrumentalists didn't use vibrato.  A Vivaldi singer would have had a natural vibrato.   A Vivaldi violinist would not.

Maybe some famous violinist like Paganini started using it.  I'd have to research that, and as you know, I just wing this stuff.

The second reason a Vivaldi violinist would not have used vibrato is because his musicians, and perhaps also his singers, were children.  I think one of the reasons children singing sound so different from adults is because children have no vibrato.  You need adults for that.

Instrumentalists are imitating singers.  Singers are imitating God.

So by the time of jazz in the early 20th century I think it developed with the style for the instrumentalists and subsequently the singers to be aware of and manipulate their vibrato.  In jazz musicians and singers hang out together in a way that they just don't do in classical.

I should add this to my "Things you can do" list:  you can manipulate your vibrato, take it out, put it back, make it bigger, make it smaller, etc.

But see, then you are getting into stylistic issues.  Manipulating the vibrato, except for the trill thing, is not part of the style of classical singing.

Singing Verdi, Part II

I have decided to rewrite my earlier entry on singing Verdi.  Enough time has passed that I can no longer remember what I wrote before, but do remember that I have reconsidered.

For purposes of this article Nabucco 1842, Ernani 1844, Attila 1846, Macbeth 1847, Louisa Miller 1849, Rigoletto 1851, La Traviata 1853 and Il Trovatore also 1853 will be considered together as a group, and the remaining later operas as another group.  Nabucco was his first big success.  

Verdi shows an enormous amount of continuity with Donizetti who died in 1848.  There is the bass drum, for instance.  I like this paragraph from Wikipedia:  “Verdi's predecessors who influenced his music were Rossini, Bellini, Giacomo_Meyerbeer and, most notably, Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. With the exception of Otello and Aida, he was free of Wagner's influence. Although respectful of Gounod, Verdi was careful not to learn anything from the Frenchman whom many of Verdi's contemporaries regarded as the greatest living composer.”  The lack of Wagnerian influence is the reason we are discussing Verdi’s early operas.  And certainly one hears nothing of Gounod.  If one did, Verdi would surely have dropped out of our awareness, too.  With the exception of Meyerbeer, the principle proponent of Grand Opera, all of these influences are Italian.

Until he was quite old and composed Falstaff Verdi wrote no comedies.  The closest to Donizetti, I suppose, are Rigoletto and La Traviata where the seriousness of the stories still leave a degree of lightness in the coloratura.  One still hears bel canto, or at least the awareness of bel canto.  In Verdi there is a need for rhythmic drive in the still often very flowery coloratura.

But Verdi intended a more intense drama than anything attempted by Donizetti.  Certainly Verdi’s tenors are noticeably heavier than anything in Donizetti.  [Sentence written with no actual knowledge of "anything in Donizetti"]  Sometimes he overshot.  Manrico in Il Trovatore borders on the impossible.  

I decided to rewrite this because of the fact that the two Verdi screamer roles, Abigaille in Nabucco and Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, are both from this early period.  I call them screamer roles because that is what one generally hears.  Sopranos who make their fame on Lady Macbeth generally rapidly develop a wobble.  Callas did it a few times and gave it up.  Leontyne Price, probably the greatest Verdi soprano, refused to sing it at all.  And most established sopranos avoid Abigaille like the plague.

Maria Guleghina sings both roles very well.  She seems to have specialized of late in screamer roles and is the exception that proves the rule.  She waited until maturity to try this.

The undesirability of this seems to have occurred to Verdi, since operas of his later period never cross into the realm of complete impossibility.  He settles into the spinto heaviness across the board.  The heavy Verdi mezzo begins with Il Trovatore, the transition to mature Verdi, and reappears in Aida, Don Carlo and the Requiem.  He begins to feel secure in his handling of voices and settled in his style.  I suppose you could still destroy your voice in these roles, but I think it would be your own fault.

Weight in the voice for Italian repertoire in all voice categories reaches its peak in Verdi.  The verismo composers wrote in a different style, but the vocal requirements are not heavier.

For sopranos the model for Donizetti opera seria is Caballe.  For Verdi it’s Price.

I have decided to change the example to Maria Guleghina singing something from Macbeth. The part is simply insane. A decade later she still does not have a wobble and still sings this role. That alone is amazing.