http://www.amazon.com/Great-Singers-Singing-Interviews-Technique/dp/0879100257

Great singers don’t all agree on vocal technique. (even ones who all have it)

Jerome Hines wrote great singers on singing, or… well, it’s something like that – I can’t remember the title – but it’s really interesting to read what a cross section of truly great artists has to say on singing technique.

Sill’s Stuarda is vulgar, filled with cheap and hollow high notes. I feel like I’m shopping for a pair of Reeboks on Flatbush Avenue every time I listen to it.

I heard Dame Joan’s first two Trovs in SF (or anywhere) with Pav and Wixell; only the Azucenas (Obrastsova and Verrett) were awake. Or one charitably assumes Ricky was asleep. At the time I wanted to stick a cattle prod in his butt, but he’d just have enjoyed that. It was not a happy night for anyone. (Except me; I made a couple of lasting good friendships that evening.)

My first Trov was Price, Bumbry, McCracken and Milnes; ten days later Arroyo, Dunn, Domingo, Bruson (Met debut). Mehta banged the bejeesus (okay, Ahura-Mazda) out of it. Who noticed the sets? The next year it was Caballe, Cossotto, Tucker, Merrill. Three years later I went again and finally noticed the production: yuck! (I suspect Di quella was transposed for ALL those performances, but I didn’t care. High notes are like orgasms in sex — it’s a really nice part of it, but if that’s all you’re there for, you’ve missed the point.)

Considering that for years Trov was the first or second most popular stage piece on earth and had tens of thousands of productions, I am bewildered at the problems any house has in doing it justice today. It can’t be THAT hard! Or can it?

The last time I heard a good one was in Prospect Park with June Anderson and Larissa Diadkova; I sat up front so as to get the voices not the reproduction, and bathed in wonderful sound, exemplary technique.

Leonora is a tricky role, and if Azucena doesn’t steal the opera from her, you’ve got a bad mezzo. (Price in her prime was, perhaps, another story.)

- Hans Lick

I never meant to be perceived as an expert on vocal techique. I merely stated certain facts based on anatomical and physiological givens, like lung capacity, exhaling, inhaling, diaphragm movements and vocal cord configuration. Nice chat anyway.

Thank you for your usual, long-winded response to my posts. In the interest of educating someone who is obviously a heartfelt opera fan, I will be direct here (as opposed to my previous attempt to lighten the mood with humor) – merely being an opera fan, or even being a non-ENT specialist Dr. who has looked at vocal cords,does in no way make you an expert on vocal technique, especially when speaking of the usage of the diaphragm. In this regard, you are as equally “expert” as Tommasini, who, having never even looked at a vocal cord (we can assume), has less ground to stand on than you. That is to what my comments were referring, and why your paragraph concerning the wonders of the soprano vocal cords was besides the point. It’s lovely, although financially questionable, that you would close your practice just to go to the opera. That doesn’t make you an expert on singing technique.

As for you spelling mistakes, I’m famous myself for them, so I’ve got no problem with that.

Note – I was at the NYCO “gala” last night – lots of empty seats, and a basically empty affair – Flanigan sang from Comte Ory, and it was typical – really fun, great performance, some passages much fleeter than expected, others yelped and screamed out, but she was a hoot and it was good time. Miricioiu got a great ovation for truly horrible singing (the Robert aria from Robert le Diable (sp))- underpitch, yelled top, thin old-lady-ish middle, weak attempts at arpeggi. The only truly memorable voice was Meaghan Miller in a Taborro duet – really great full lyric voice with a terrific top. The rest was totally forgetable. This is their ‘gala’? They are in big trouble.

Adam (Paris)

Luckily life went on and they all recovered (Shirley, perhaps, not so much)but that was an unlucky opera for Pav, I seem to recall a Marton Trovatore with him, after the run of which she fled New York, and was he in the Joan performance where Livia Budai was booed to the echo and with such force that Joan got upset (I think it was Pav)?

I have only seen two great Manricos, Franco when I was in Junior High (I actually don’t think he ever matched the three performances I bullied my father into taking me to that year — fabulous enormous D flat but B’s in the pira, no trill but GREAT infamia, infamia) and more or less the same period, Carlo, who trilled TWICE (and shocked me senseless since I was following with score and flashlight), phrased like an angel, mixed head and chest like a miracle and did a good pira too (B, but I heard him sing C’s, and of course Franco would just pop them out when in the mood but not in Trov). McCracken believe it or not (when I was in the Opera Queen club in High School) got out two very loud high C’s and carried on well but neither he nor the well equipped Tucker quite did it. I did see Bonisoli’s circus act (real high C’s too) and Domingo lower the pira far (but he actually stood and delivered the B flat to the audience rather than singing it into the wings or upstage, which was his usual trick) – and cracked.

Lee was the greatest Leonora for a few years, and Stella was part of a thrilling event — Bergonzi, Simionato, Bastianini — and in Philly Cerquetti and the greatest Irene Kramarach but after that it’s hard to think of who? Millo maybe, I think it was one she went on for Marton and it all worked (an official video tape survives). Goodness, except for Zajick an impossible opera!

But to my main point- Nellie is a kind, lovely colleague, much beloved by her family and friends, and for a poster to suggest she needs to be shot against a wall because they don’t “like” her singing is reflective of some of the recent posting on this site, by posters, named and unnamed alike. It isn’t neccesary, nor humorous to write about singers like this. Save your hatred for politicians.

My response was for Balabanov 11, on this blog, concering RAS, vocal technique and “support from the diaphragm.” I did not mean to “show off,” but since the validity of my opinion was questioned, and rightly so, I had to respond.

Crutchfield is the best writer on voice that the Times has had in my lifetime. Nowadays, for vocal issues in New York, I stick to Jorden and Shengold, who DISCUSS such things and are usually right besides.

In days of yore, of course, there was Henderson, still a great read.

I heard Scotto in SF in Butterfly and a lousy Trovatore with the French ending (one of Verdi’s worst afterthoughts) well before 1979. She was not a great Leonora. (A tricky part.)

Reneigh is the Lucrezia? I think you just saved me a trip to D.C. (That would be a good role for RAS.)

- Hans Lick

This is an informal site, and I don’t do proofing, plus I’m a two- finger untrained typist and I make mistakes. Next time I’ll be more careful. At least, with all respect, I have the guts to use my real name!

Really, I have rarely been so fascinated as when I read your bio just now. Honestly. No really, I mean it. Thank you for sharing. But what did this have to do with RAS singing Stuarda in Lyon and/or Paris?

I never read “Voice Technique” for Dummies, and I didn’t even know that it existed. I responded to your previous note regarding to vocal technique and “support from the diaphragm.” Since the age of five, when I heard old recordings of Caruso’s and Gigli’s arias, I got hooked and obsessed with opera and the human voice. I’m a physician (MD), and although not an ENT specialist, I have been fascinated with and a lifelong student of the singing human voice and its anatomical and physioligical infrastructure. If you look, and I have, at someone’s larynx it would be impossibe to comprehend that two simple folds of tissue- the vocal cords- have the potential to become an instrument of deity. My attendance of live operas at the Met, Lyric of Chiago, Houston, Ceveland, Europe, and including recitals, is way above one hundred-I’ve stoped counting-and my collection of complete opera LPs and CDs is vast. When the Met was in Cleveland for its spring tour, I closed my my office for the entire week, attending evry single perfotmance. Last weekend I was in Nwe York City and saw the opening of Aida and the second performance of Romeo et Juliette. In my time, I’ve seen, live, all the great singers of the past 45 years. I hope I answered your question concerning my intrest and experience in vocal techique.

Thank you so much for reprinting the introduction to ‘Vocal “Technique” for Dummies’, in your response to my post, although what it actually had to do with my post escapes me.

Aren’t you the fan who takes long airplane flights to experience Netrebka performances? If so, what possible interest could you have in vocal technique?

Anyway, sober, I still think Angela is a truly great soprano.

Regarding Miricioiu: I agree 100% with Krunoslav – she is emphatically NOT a fake. Eccentric, sure, undisciplined, well yes, but a fake? Not at all. Those MET Vespris were AWFUL. But mainly, I think, because she is past her best years now – she’s lost some of her former confidence, and the voice doesn’t respond as well as it once did. She has always seemed an emotional creature – volatile in fact – and it shows in her singing. If you go back to the 80s and get your hands on many of her pirates: Bolena, Stuarda, Borgia from Amsterdam, Tancredi, Armida, even Lucia – there are some very high quality moments and some of the performances (specifically the Amsterdam Bolena) are among the very best EVER by ANYONE. It is a shame that she made such failures at the MET, but that doesn’t negate a career that verged on greatness from time to time.

Mrs. Clagart said of Scotto that “Her ‘return’ Vespri in ’74 was an incredible evening and the audience went mad.” True. I was there and it was a truly electrifying performance. That’s when Levine fell in love with her. In the musical way, that is.

I also agree with JF in his comments about Andrew Porter. How I miss those New Yorker articles!!

She was contracted to return in LA VOIX HUMAINE the following summer but bailed when she learned that in effect she would be curtain-raising for Regine Crespin in THE MEDIUM. Karan Armstrong was the not altogether satisfactory replacement.

I fell in love with Thais from my tape of the live radio broadcast of Sills’ and Milnes’ ’76 opening night broadcast in San Francisco. (Reel-to-reel, back then, but I had it converted to cassettes in the 90s.)

It was a year or two prior to their Met outing (which I never heard) but this performance and the one I attended the following week had few rough patches for either, the passion of the final scene as moving as anything any opera performance has ever produced for me.

And, apropos Maria Stuarda, after all is said, Sills’ recording DOES have the Elisabetta of Eileen Farrell.

La Scotto had a mere five roles in San Francisco, the one I remember most fondly being her ’79 debut Gioconda, with Pav (their last outing together, I believe), Toczyska, Lilova. A splendid Suicidio! What has become of that videotape? – it was televised on PBS but never released. We always thought the feuding diva & divo blocked it somehow.

After that, a moving Charlotte opposite Krause in the 80s, Adler retired as intendant, and her SF appearances were over.

Also a remarkable performer at DC Concert Opera in BORGIA and BOLENA and PIRATA, which she really understood. Also try the Wigmore Hall recital CD.

Not knowing what to expect at NYCO in Handel…

Freni’s Elisabetta was NOT impressive from the Family Circle- “quite adequate”, no projection, so how “enormous” was the voice? Fantastic as Manon Lescaut in San Fran, though.

Irving Kolodin was another of my favorites and of course Andrew Porter’s New Yorker years produced some of the best criticism I’ve ever read.

Our Chicago Mimi sounds a tad nervous, at least in the third act. I find her voice rather vinegary. The Rodolfo is doing nicely …