Some Operatic Myths Worth Busting: On Vibrato, Bel Canto Singing and Wagnerian Big Voice
Oct 22 '08 (Updated Jan 05 '09)
The Bottom Line Stylistic conventions are overrated. Let's hear it for the return of originality and artistic exploration in opera!
I have previously noted my displeasure with intolerance of different styles of singing and would like to rant some more about it (just to fit in with the very heated pre-election atmosphere here in the USA this October). Opera is for everyone, and there is no accounting for taste. But many potential new fans are scared away by a faction of operatic audience; a bunch of obnoxious more-musical-than-thou snobs who squeal in archaic Italian/German/French/etc when any attempt is made to popularize the genre or make it more easily appreciated by people who don't read music and/or don't understand the opera's original language. It reminds me of those who chant 'USA! USA!' at political rallies as if the other candidates from other parties aren't also from the USA... At some point one should stop and ask oneself; am I really defending to the artform or am I trying to impose my own preference of how that artform is to be done on others?
But why should new generations of artists be stuck with the ideas of past generations in the first place? Why shouldn't they explore new ground? Why should they stick to the same old singing style that pleases only the loudest (though probably not that heavily populated) segment of the audience while leaving the rest of us in the cold? And what if the 'convention' isn't even accurate and/or as long-lasting as they would claim it to be in the first place?
Vibrato in Baroque Opera:
Many fans of Baroque opera (composed between 1600-1750) who should actually go to the library once in a while insist that the music of Händel and his contemporaries are to be sung in a vibrato-free voice that is devoid of any natural tonal pulsation, and that the melodic line is to be done in a squeakily clean and beautiful manner no matter what mood it is supposed to project...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=czo9BG2cAtA&fmt=18
(conventionally correct Phillipe Jaloussky sings Ruggiero's ‘Mi lusinga il dolce affetto' from Händel's Alcina)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx5Snp0b3iY&fmt=18
(Vesselina Kasarova sings the same aria very unconventionally)
But read what the musicians and critics who know a thing or two about music of the Baroque period have to say about that:
"It should perhaps be added that with the voice, as with the strings, vibrato is a natural and historical, not an artificial or recent resource. - Vibrato should not always be present, particularly in early music, but requires excellent technique and very great discretion. At no period, however, does the pure and uncoloured voice, without vibrato, and sometimes called voce bianca, white voice, appear to have been recommended or tolerated except for rare and special effect."
- Robert Donington, Music and Its Instruments, p.173-174.
"Bénigne de Bacilly (c.1625-90) describes cadence (translated as vibrato) as a gift of nature that sometimes becomes too slow or too fast. For Bacilly, a pretty voice,' is very pleasing to the ear because of its cleaness and sweetness and above all because of the nice cadence [here vibrato] which usually accompanies it (cited by Miller 1998, p.301)."
- Karen Sell, The Disciplines of Vocal Pedagogy.
The Baroque period was the era of the castrati (young men who were castrated as they reached puberty for the sake of preserving their soprano singing voice). Those mutilated singing geniuses sang in natural voice rather than in falsetto, and so it is practically impractical to expect them to not have vibrato in their voice! Vibrato was actually considered as one of the integral parts of singing... And the audience of the older days weren't so different from us either. They were moved by opera performance then because the music was performed in a dramatically gripping manner rather than in the bloodlessly pretty ways some modern fans would have everyone perform in.
If you don't believe me, go look up books on music from the 17th and 18th centuries... or consider a great Baroque singer's point of view: http://juliannebaird.camden.rutgers.edu/Opera-News.htm
Bel Canto Singing:
Take the characterization of what bel canto singing is from the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_canto);
"Bel canto singing characteristically focuses on perfect evenness throughout the voice, skillful legato, a light upper register, tremendous agility and flexibility, and a certain lyric, "sweet" timbre. Operas of the style feature extensive and florid ornamentation, requiring much in the way of fast scales and cadenzas. Bel canto emphasizes technique rather than volume: an exercise said to demonstrate its epitome involves a singer holding a lit candle to her mouth and singing without causing the flame to flicker."
Now... Bel canto music is the music of the late 18th to mid 19th century Italian opera... mainly those composed by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti (and extending to the Mozart and the early Verdi operas). This was the era of singers like Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran-Garcia, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Isabella Colbran, Wilhelmina Schroeder-Devrient, Giovanni David, Giovanni Battista Rubini, et.al. And much of bel canto music was composed to fit their voice and singing capability. The Wikipedia description pretty much states the modern popular convention of how the music of this period is to be sung; in a voice that is perfectly even through out its range (same timbre on all notes), with easy fluidity and heavy emphasis on flawless technique and tonal beauty (hence bel canto... beautiful singing).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V48shT_xGDU
(Teresa Berganza's beautiful conventional singing of Sesto's 'Deh, per questo' from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSxMYkJ87Qc
(Kasarova does it in a devastatingly unconventional way)
But what did the most celebrated of singers of the bel canto period sound like?
"The characteristics of Madame Pasta's head-notes are almost diametrically opposed to the characteristics of her chest-notes; her falsetto is brilliant, rapid, pure, fluent and enchantingly light. As she approaches the lower part of this falsetto register, she can smorzare il canto (diminish her tone) to a point where the very fact of the existence of sound becomes uncertain. Without such a palette of breath-taking colour deep within her own being, and without such an extraordinary and compelling natural gift, Madame Pasta could never have achieved the over-mastering force of natural expression which we have learnt to associate with her - a miracle of emotional revelation, which is always true to nature and, although tempered by the intrinsic laws of ideal Beauty, always alive with that unmistakable, burning energy, that extraordinary dynamism which can electrify an entire theatre. But think how much pure artistry, and how much discipline and training has been necessary before this enthralling singer learned to harness the restive secrets of weaving such divine enchantments out of two different and utterly contrasting voices."
- Description of Giuditta Pasta's voice by Stendhal, her contemporary critic in his The Life of Rossini.
(translation: the upper half of her voice was very different from the lower half, exhibiting many timbre variation. It was an energetic voice that she managed to control and exploit to mesmerizing effect)
"It was not a creamy voice but had a distinct tang, rather like the bitter sweet taste of Seville oranges. What struck her audience most forcibly, however, was the intensity with which she sang. --- Alfred de Musset described her voice as 'a mixture of soprano and tenor, the lower part reminiscent of a cello, the higher that of a piano.' Viardot's voice was resonant and clear, at once both bitter and sweet, but it was more than a voice, it was a soul singing."
(translation: the top of the voice sounded very different from the lower, and the most compelling quality is her ability to use it expressively)
and also....
"The critic and writer, Julien Budden, observes that: the real explanation lies in the nineteen century attitude to vocal registers, a subject that has not so far received the attention it deserves. Musicologists who are eager at all cost to revive the performing traditions of a past age would do well to remember that some of them might prove unacceptable today, as for instance, the alternative method of portamento that Niccola Vaccai advocates for fast movements in his singing method of 1833 and which now exists only in pop and folk music. The ideal of an even quality from top to bottom of a singer's compass was unknown to Verdi's contemporaries. A sharp break, like a change of gear, between registers, so objectionable today, was tolerated then and indeed this yodeling effect can still be heard in certain pre-electric recordings, such as those made by the contralto Clara Butt."
- Barbara Kendall Davies, The Life and Works of Pauline Viardot-Garcia
And so, never mind what the modern convention is, the documentary evidence from the bel canto period shows that the most acclaimed of singers of that era had a voice with distinct vocal registers (and does anyone remember that three-voices-in-one-throat and utterly divine stage-animal named Maria Callas?), that their most celebrated qualities were their vocal coloring, their florid agility, and their drama-oriented style of singing and acting. Stendhal devotes an entire chapter of his biography of Rossini to describing Pasta's voice, asserting that; "No voice whose timbre is completely incapable of variation can ever produce that kind of opaque, or as it were, suffocated tones, which is at once so moving and so natural in the portrayal of certain instants of violent emotion or passionate anguish. Mme. Pasta may indeed sing the same note in two different scenes; but, if the spiritual context is different it will not be the same sound."
Wagner Operas Require Big Voice:
Well... big enough, yes, but not extraordinarily big. Looking only at the score one can easily draw the wrong conclusion about the size of the singing voice Wagner requires to compete successfully with his 115-plus instrument orchestra. The conclusion would be wrong because it fails to take into account the specific venue that those operas were composed for; Wagner's Bayreuther Festspielhaus.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY8zGYe5W5g
(Behind the scene with a good look and description of the auditorium)
As you can see... Wagner placed such premium on the voice-friendliness of that place he even makes his audience sit on uncushioned wooden pews! The auditorium is an echo-chamber par excellente, and the pit is so far below the stage (much of it is actually underneath the stage) that opera goers wouldn't even be able to see the conductor!
Where is all went wrong, I'd posit, is the practice of going strictly by the score without any adjustment in instrumental requirement at houses outside of Bayreuth (it's pronounced like Bai-hoyt, by the way). For anyone to have to sing audibly over a blaring full-size Wagner orchestra for hours on end (his operas are 3.5 to 5 hrs a piece) at less acoustically friendly venues is just suicidal for the vocal chords. Add to that the modern conductors' tendency to let the orchestra play too loudly and the modern pitch being tuned around a half-tone higher than in the time of Wagner... No wonder Wagnerian singers go all wobbly after only a few years of singing this repertoire nowadays.
Shall I say 'Case closed' on the notion of any long-lasting time-tested 'convention' of how a piece of music is supposed to be sung? While Julien Budden would caution that the accepted technique of the bel canto period wouldn't go over well with today's audience, I am compelled to add that it is utterly unreasonable to retroactively impose the modern conventions onto the music that was composed specifically for the voices of a older pre-recording era.
As I said before, there is no accounting for taste... and there is nothing implicitly wrong about loving music just for music's sake. What I am objecting to is the practice of applying one's own personal preference/taste as if it is the universal standard that others are obligated to adhere to. All the clips mentioned in this essay are done by great singers... who happen to have different notion of how to interpret the same piece of music. If you are looking for a beautifully sung Ariodante or Ruggiero or Sesto or Romeo or Charlotte or Carmen or Rosina, there are many lyric mezzo-soprani out there with a beautiful voice and technique that will please you. Go and give them their well-deserved accolade, but QUIT coming to crap and complain on postings and clips of singers who are clearly after something else, who see music as transmission medium of a story that can't be told in a more moving manner than in song.
The operatic stage is big enough to accommodate more than just one type of singers. Flawlessness is only in the ears of the behearers. There are many who appreciate it when the so-called flaws are turned by an artist into dramatic tools that effectively differentiate her from every other chirping Jane Doe's out there. There are enough singers around that sound so alike that I can't tell who is singing even after listening to the entire show. I want someone who not only has a personality, but is actually able to portray it, in all its shades, with a voice that I can identify within the first two notes I hear. I don't care if she isn't the prettiest or the vocally heftiest or the most adept at virtuoso vocal pyrotechnic around. I do care that when she opens her mouth and sings, I hear the utmost inner thoughts of a mythical character that has miraculously been restored to life even though he isn't called Lazarus, rather than just someone with a beautiful voice singing prettily about something somebody else should be feeling. If that's good enough for Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pasta, Malibran, Viardot, Colbran, Callas, et.al, well... it sure is good enough for me!
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Member: Smorg
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The photo is Vesselina Kasarova, not me. See profile page for reviews.
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