{"id":890,"date":"2015-08-24T16:58:06","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T23:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/?p=890"},"modified":"2015-08-24T16:58:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T23:58:06","slug":"what-makes-a-great-opera-singer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/2015\/08\/what-makes-a-great-opera-singer.html","title":{"rendered":"WHAT MAKES A GREAT OPERA SINGER?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Callas\"<\/a>In America today there is a strange anomaly: more and more young men and women studying to become opera singers and a decline in subscribers to opera companies. I specify subscribers even though single-ticket buyers are down, too, because opera companies live off of the committed subscriber. Though the recession is over, most company’s bottom lines do not look healthy, yet the flood of singers graduating from universities and conservatories continues unabated.\u00a0 I think there are more Americans seeking opera careers per capita than in any other country except Germany.<\/p>\n

If so many of our young people are seeking to give us opera, what is wrong? And what can be done to help? I do not agree with those who say that the opera repertory is too stagnant, that the majority of people are not interested in opera, new or old. There may be some truth that the Millennial generation finds it impossible to concentrate on anything for longer than 52 minutes or what constitutes the length of most TV programs, but that’s one problem that shouldn’t now affect most ticket buyers who are generally older. In America opera companies spend a great deal of money educating the young, knowing that in their twenties and thirties when\u00a0men or women\u00a0are establishing careers and trying hard to find the money to educate their children, they have neither the money nor the time to buy opera tickets. But over the last half century\u00a0 those who were educated as young people come back to opera in their forties and fifties. This is not happening as readily as before, and opera lovers therefore have a real problem.<\/p>\n

Some may say it is a stultification of repertory, but I don’t agree. Since opera began, some works disappear because they lose currency, others remain vital. Meyerbeer was the toast of Europe and America in the 1800s; his work has rarely been performed since 1900. When I was young, no opera had greater popularity or more repetitions everywhere than Aida<\/em>. But the grand opera format with elaborate sets, ballet, and spectacle has become dated because it encouraged standing and singing. Audiences now look for opera as theater. Look at the explosion of interest in Handel who had virtually no American performances thirty or forty years ago. As recently as 1970 Charles Rosen, one of the most distinguished musicologists of the time, declared Handel operas much less successful than his oratorios. Today the frequency of Handel performance is so great that a singer’s\u00a0audition in which a Handel aria is not offered is rare.<\/p>\n

I think the problem with audience comes in part from something James Levine said quite a while ago. He pointed out that the coaches who worked with Puccini, Verdi and Wagner are long dead. Even their grandchildren are gone so the contact with the composer and what he wanted is pretty much non-existent.\u00a0 All through the letters and writing of Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini are comments about the need for singers to convey emotion, to express feelings, but opera today is too often coached and prepared by those to whom technique is valued over expression. The American singer is almost always well trained, but correctness is where the training stops.<\/p>\n

\u200bObviously one must have the notes, but\u00a0the most successful singers of the past who filled opera\u00a0houses involved their audiences emotionally in the way they sang. If a soprano can handle all the runs in Lucia’s Mad Scene brilliantly, if a tenor has the right legato for “Una furtiva lagrima” or a baritone the vocal power and accuracy for “Cortigiani”, they are deemed ready for the roles of Lucia, Nemorino, and Rigoletto. Did an audience censor Maria Callas for leaving out the first high E-flat in the Mad Scene? Or Franco Corelli’s throwing in high notes because he could sing them? Or Leonard Warren’s varying the tempi and holding high notes longer than the score indicated?<\/p>\n

Another problem with correctness is who it excludes. My firm belief is that two of the greatest artists of the past century, Maria Callas and Leonie Rysanek, would find it hard today to find a job. Why? Both of them, because they were so emotionally involved in what they were singing and acting, were extraordinarily variable. Both could on some nights hit every note, and on others give downright painful performances.<\/p>\n

\"Rysanek\"<\/a>Rysanek once said to\u00a0 me that she had never succeeded in Tosca<\/em> the way she wanted to because in Act II she always got too carried away and had too little to give in Act III. I also remember nights when her pitch went crazy in that very opera. But did anyone care? No, because even if she was not hitting every note on the nose–and this was certainly the case with Callas–she was pouring her whole personality, her whole soul into what she was doing, and the audience lived the drama with her. When Rysanek finished her long aria in Elektra<\/em> and she pounded the stage as though she would die of frustration, the audience loved it. She brought home to everyone what it meant to live with an evil mother, her consort, and her crazy sister. Would anyone do that today?<\/p>\n

I have dwelt on two sopranos but there were singers in every voice range who were deeply personal, whose personality hit an audience in its ears and eyes and made them come back for more. Recently Lorraine Hunt Lieberson could certainly do this as could Carol Vaness and Tatiana Troyanos.\u00a0 Male\u00a0artists\u00a0usually\u00a0don’t vary quite so much, but certainly Placido Domingo and Jon Vickers\u00a0packed houses wherever they sang\u00a0as much because they were\u00a0dramatically thrilling\u00a0and individual\u00a0as that they were great singers.\u00a0\u00a0And I cannot complete such a list without mentioning\u00a0Franco Corelli, whose fidelity to the text or the production might\u00a0have been\u00a0questionable but whose vocal and physical personality\u00a0sold out every seat\u00a0in any house in the world.\"Corelli\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Opera is first, last, and always an emotional art form, and today we are not getting nearly as much personal emotion from those who are creating the art as we should. I see this as more of a problem for those who are presenting opera than for the artists. Too often the singer who is just correct, who can always keep the curtain up, is praised while the more emotional, variable singer is considered not worth the gamble. Succeeding in an opera performance never fails to be chancy; the human voice is always at risk. But those who play for the biggest stakes keep opera thrilling and involving.<\/p>\n

\u200b \u200b<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In America today there is a strange anomaly: more and more young men and women studying to become opera singers and a decline in subscribers to opera companies. I specify subscribers even though single-ticket buyers are down, too, because opera companies live off of the committed subscriber. Though the recession is over, most company’s bottom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":898,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}