I totally agree with the two of you regarding the general observances posited. The most frustrating question that rattles around in my brain is how do we rehab opera into being a “healthy” business, and work to restore (repair?) what is broken? I am not under the impression that opera is broken beyond repair in the U.S., nor do I live under the impression that there ever was a glorious “age of opera” in music history where all of our current problems weren’t manifested in various/sundry other forms.

Violeta Urmana’s husband is the Italian tenor Alfredo Negri. I believe that the original commentator was referring to Dimitris Tiliakos as her husband with regards to the production; as in, they are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, husband and wife.

Yes, I agree totally that conductors are part of the problem and must become part of the solution. Von Karajan was a notorious voice killer, encouraging dreadfully dangerous and destructive role assumptions, and there are others in the pit who do the same.

Of company managers and/or casting directors, much the same can be said–actually, even more so. As teachers and the teaching system seems to have a poor grasp of how to develop voices, so do managers and casting directors demonstrate frequent ignorance of how to use voices.

As to singers, they’re caught in a system that is supposed to be know what they are and what kind of voice they have, but that seems to betray them with great regularity. This is one reason I become impatient with the contempt that is shown for singers so often on this forum. I truly believe our singers are ill-trained, ill-advised, and ill-cast in a system that is frequently concerned only with getting through the season and selling tickets rather than being part of a knowledgeable and mutually supportive community of artists.

Also, at least in the States, the entire set-up of vocal training is determined generally by its being part of an undergraduate four-year college major program, which all too often assumes that a voice student will be able to go out into the world in four years. This isn’t even true of business executives any more (look at all those MBAs); why should it be true of opera singers?

Marilyn Horne has said that Ponselle told her, “You know, I think I really was a mezzo. . . ” Beverly Sills said the trouble with Ponselle’s top voice was that she didn’t have enough head voice “space” in her top notes, and that is what shortened her range.

BTW, I really loved “Damnation of Faust” Met delayed telecast yesterday. You see – can have a “modern” production with dramatic and technical innovations and not have it distort the composers original intentions. Want to see it “live” when it comes to the Lyric next season.

That said, note the length of Ponselle’s career and the fact that the top began to fade early. Legend that she is and as sumptuous as the voice was, the great Normas she sang were negotiated with a lot of downward transposition. (I, for one, do not hold transposition against any singer, because I know that the 18th and 19th centuries regarded transposition as a common and perfectly normal practice. Today I hear contempt heaped on singers who transpose, but in the century that created the works that form the basis of the Italian romantic repertory, transposition was an everyday occurrence–and the orchestral pitch was lower then into the bargain.)

So, yes, Ponselle and Rysanek and Peters and Varnay burst onto the scene singing the most demanding roles in their respective fachs. But they’re the exception and creation of spinto and dramatic voices in particular generally takes longer and more intense training. The entire set-up today is geared to shorter contact with the teacher and the training costs a fortune, making it necessary for most singers to start income-producing careers far earlier in the training process than was the case a hundred years ago, far earlier than may be wise.

From my own opera-going over the past half century and my own work with opera companies designing productions, I’ve gotten to hear hundreds of potentially beautiful young voices in early stages of development already strained or with holes or in the wrong repertory. They succumb to demands for more volume created jointly by many conductors who view even a chamber orchestra as a potential major symphonic opportunity, and by a segment of the public that demands and values volume first, musicianship and other niceties being given a lesser priority.

It is generally agreed, I believe, that we live in an era of pretty good to great Baroque and Mozart singing. The voices for Bellini, Donizetti, Wagner (who revered Bellini’s vocal writing) and Verdi developed from singers trained in the Baroque/Mozart tradition, and I wonder if we shouldn’t be exploring how that development was managed and see if we can’t replicate the process–IF here are enough teachers with the brains, time enough to do the necessary work, and some way to subsidize it all so that good, strong and well-placed voices can again emerge for the big dramatic roles.

We do?

“MH said, and this is a close paraphrase, ’singing teachers don’t teach the basics as well as they should and young singers don’t work as hard as they should, and it takes time and diligence to develop a Verdi voice.’”

That would explain why Ponselle was such a miserable failure in TROVATORE Met debut at 21.

maybe not all of them. Benita Valente was apparently a Harshaw student and we all know that she has had a long and illustrious career. I am not sure who else from the 70s and 80s was a Harshaw student. Anyone can mention more?

Of the current ones before the public I think Emily Magee was one of them.

I would say that a majority of the Harshaw students I’ve encountered have always had serious technical issues.

Funny that Harshaw said those things because she didn’t turn all that many good singers after the 80′s. Her students at the time of my attendance at IU were all known for pushing their voices beyond recognition. There was a soprano (infamous for being a real bitch) who sang both (Massenet’s) Manon and Tosca in the same year, neither was pretty. I sang in Lucia with one of her baritone students and the pushing and yelling was unbearable.

Sanford, I think the problem with Urmana she actually gave up some roles that are perfect for her. Amneris, Eboli and Brangane are dramatic soprano roles and she now thinks that because she officially calls herself a soprano she can no longer sing them. She is now instead stretching her voice in Aida, which she can sing, but not as well as Amneris; plus the tessitura is not congenial to her voice.

I can see a soprano Eboli doing Lady Macbeth, an Aida is a different voice all together.

#2, the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk they did recently was quite wonderful — of course, it was the Amsterdam production so GM can’t get credit for that. Cunning Little Vixen was lovely (though could have used a better soprano), and Tristan was fine (again, an imported production). The other four productions I’ve seen so far this year at Opera de Paris have disappointed, and it doesn’t sound like Macbeth will improve the score.