No pushing from the diaphragm, onlu support.

Bergonzi started as a bass-baritone, then sang as a baritone and matured into a tenor. Again, a wonderful, effortless technique. His recording of Ballo shows a voice that moves with ease through the passaggio. I know of very few tenors who can do that today. Perhaps the closest to being able to produce that kind of thrilling noise is Misha Didyk.

We have no decent Verdi baritones – the last, Zancanaro, sings rarely. And very few really good tenors. And what happened to all of the tenore di grazie?!

Anyway, I SHALL be glad to see Tote stadt staged in London at last – even with Nadja Michael! – and there’s an end of it.

I’m not being touchy, I’m mocking your changing of the rhetorical goalposts, to be pedantic about it.

I don’t think it’s pedantic to say that a far smaller percentage of the population can afford, or get into, Garsington than they now can to Glyndebourne (where you can stand for a tenner, I think it is, if you’re so keen to see something)

This is getting silly. I was merely mocking the idea that one of the very last operas written in the 20th century that was a box office hit took 89 years (!!) to make it to a British stage while some inferior (in my view) Strauss operas had and for British Straussians to complain about where or how easy it was to get tickets or their price was silly. Even the stodgy Met did Die Tote Stadt 12 times from 1921-23.

La Cieca, from what I heard from two different sources researching her life, she was especially well known for that ‘attribute’. Belief is: she died though post operative complications brought on by that said ‘past-time’, following her face lift operation (around 1930 a time of no antibiotics, let alone penicillin!)

As a kid, I heard old people tell me (who had heard her live) that her voice sounded like ‘a pure crystal bell’. Family legend has it, I was nearly related – only stopped by her father not allowing her sister to marry into the family!

Cocky Kurwenal Comment #107:I realise these old recordings do not give an accurate likeness of what a singer sounded like in the theatre, but they do give one a jolly good indication, taken collectively, of what was desireable in a voice to the audiences of those times.

I realise these old recordings do not give an accurate likeness of what a singer sounded like in the theatre, but they do give one a jolly good indication, taken collectively, of what was desireable in a voice to the audiences of those times.

Put terribly simply, what is evident and indisputable when comparing De Luca’s recordings with Keenlyside is that the modern singer has a far more prevalent and consistent vibrato, something which you touched on above. This applies when comparing Dal Monte, Schipa and Turner with modern singers in their respective fachs also.

What an audience expects, and what they can reasonably expect a singer to deliver, are two very different things. This industry cannot carry on sacrificing singers on the altar of amplified sound.

With regard to de Luca and Keenlyside. You cannot possibly make a clear comparison of the two from de Luca’s recordings, which in no way reflect what he sounded like in the flesh.

Francis Robinson wrote a very illuminating book, Celebration of the Metropolitan Opera, which gives details of his reaction to many of the great singers that he heard in the flesh.

According to legend, Melba knew all of them!

The same applies to the men. Compare De Luca with Hvorostovsky or Keenlyside – the two modern singers have a much richer, fuller sound. De Luca’s singing would seem rather incongruous in today’s opera house.

I have never enjoyed Lorengar’s singing, but that doesn’t matter – point is I would strongly dispute the assertion that she sang in the same way singers from 50 years before her sang. We can’t, obviously, reliably make comparisons with people from prior to the start of recording history, but I think the changes in the 20th century alone were immense. Even from Tito Schipa to Luigi Alva is a very long way in terms of refulgence and colour.

There are no reliable recordings of Melba in her prime, so I don’t think she should be brought into it. Think of a singer like Pilar Lorengar – started as s soubrette, worked her way into the lyric coloratura rep and finished with the lyric rep. She sang well into her sixties, very successfully. We may not see a singer do this again. Bergonzi is another case in point. The techniques both served to protect the instrument, not to force it beyond its limits.

Re listeners’ tastes changing: too many audiences expect to hear on stage what they hear in a studio recording. These recordings are made under very different conditions; the two do not marry.

One important change is the increased size of theatres and of orchestras. You can blame Karajan for the latter.

the one major change in vocal taste that may be the limiting of vibrato. Reviews of Simms Reeves (one of the great tenors of the C19th) talk about the lack of vibrato in his vocal production. This might have had more to do with his physiognomy, rather than his technique, though.

What needs to be acknowledged by people who think there is only one right technique which should not change for 200 or 500 years is the fact that listeners’ tastes change. Any soprano who auditioned for Mimi sounding like Dame Nellie Melba would not be well received these days. In order to produce the sound we expect now, as opposed to that made by celebrated singers from the first years of the 20th century, singers must sing in a different way. Compare Tagliavini with Corelli – they are not going about things in the same way at all, but they are both considered the leading spinto tenor of their respective eras. We’d all be pretty disappointed these days if we went to hear Trovatore at the Met and got a Manrico who sings like Tagliavini. We’d be clamouring for Marcello Alvarez, not dissing him as being a size too small.