Terfel

[Chris Newman]

Microphoned voices have an inhuman quality. Even the best opera recordings sound nowhere near as great as the real thing in the opera house especially because the highlighted instruments sound artificial like the voices. The bass flute is an extra special sound in the symphony orchestra because it relies upon musicianship to be heard rather than electronic fiddling. As Ferneyhoughgeliebte says real music-making depends on sympathetic conducting. If voices are squally and wobbly it is almost always the fault of conducting. Orchestral belting is usually best kept for anger rather than love as it is in most good composition. I mention Wagner and Richard Strauss as composers with large orchestras and in doing so I can think of performances where some conductors drowned singers beneath walls of misapplied passion whilst Reginald Goodall, Charles Mackerras and Silvio Varviso put the voices first and achieved heavenly effects. Paul Daniel, Mark Elder, Edward Gardner and Mark Wigglesworh are modern day examples of conductors who are sympathetic to singers.

I agree with French Frank that contemporary music that expects amplification is a different matter.

[Princess Hello]

That link is below the belt. How is a fellow to know what's coming?

My point about the bass flute is simply that it's available to the contemporary composer because it can be brought up in the mix. It wasn't available to Wagner because he didn't have a mix to bring it up in; it hadn't been invented. So it's like the contemporary composer writing with a view to electronics.

The more interesting question is whether it's right to try to improve a performance of a Wagner opera by using a medium that wasn't available to him. The answer to that is obvious. Of course it is. We use modern instruments and we have imaginative productions derived from psychoanalytic theory or set in 1970s Timbuktu or whatever. So it's entirely an aesthetic judgment. Does it sound better or worse if you make an adjustment that Wagner couldn't make but might have been glad to be able to make? Different people draw it at different places on the graph, and to judge by the other posts I am at one end...

[Nick Armstrong]

In which case ...

Chr*st on a bike, ff... Is there a more emetic clip on youtube? The words haven't yet been invented to describe how awful that is.

[Colonel Danby]

Terfel is wonderful.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The answer to that is obvious

... sure is!

Of course it is

... sure isn't!

[Princess Hello]

Thus I refute the gramophone.

[amateur51]

Thus I refute the gramophone.

Although English is not my first language, I believe that to satisfy the meaning of the verb 'to refute', merely to trype 'I refute the gramophone' is insuffiient. How do you 'refute the gramophone' Princess? By what means, what argument, what evidence?

I really do not think than an unattributed 'thus' will do either

[french frank]

That link is below the belt. How is a fellow to know what's coming?

I humbly beg everyone's pardon (Caliban - the comments underneath had a good try at critical judgements!)

My point about the bass flute is simply that it's available to the contemporary composer because it can be brought up in the mix. It wasn't available to Wagner because he didn't have a mix to bring it up in; it hadn't been invented. So it's like the contemporary composer writing with a view to electronics.

Yes, I would expect a contemporary composer to use all the resources at his disposal.

The more interesting question is whether it's right to try to improve a performance of a Wagner opera by using a medium that wasn't available to him. The answer to that is obvious. Of course it is. We use modern instruments and we have imaginative productions derived from psychoanalytic theory or set in 1970s Timbuktu or whatever. So it's entirely an aesthetic judgment. Does it sound better or worse if you make an adjustment that Wagner couldn't make but might have been glad to be able to make? Different people draw it at different places on the graph, and to judge by the other posts I am at one end...

Well, I'm nitpicking here, as usual . I suppose I wouldn't even set out to try and 'improve', merely to try something different and see how it goes. I'm pretty relaxed about (opera) directors doing their worst. Would it be the director who would decide on the acoustic issues? I suppose so. Anyway, happy for people to try things out and then I'd say well, that did or didn't work, in my opinion.

If you on the whole don't like the sound opera singers make and I do, we might very well have different opinions as to 'improvements' or otherwise.

[Richard Tarleton]

How do you 'refute the gramophone' Princess? By what means, what argument, what evidence?

Dr Johnson refuted transcendental idealism "thus", by kicking a table - is that what Princess means?

[Princess Hello]

Yes. Dr J 'refuted' the philosopher Bishop Berkeley by kicking a stone without looking at it. Berkeley had said that something that couldn't be 'perceived' (except possibly by God, since he was a bishop) didn't exist. Dr J thought he refuted Berkeley because although the stone clearly existed he didn't 'perceive' it as he was looking the other way.

Dr J was wrong of course because 'perceiving' includes touch as well as sight.

It was to his famous wrongness that I was attempting to allude rather than to get into the interstices of Eighteenth Century philosophy.

It occurred to me overnight that a better example than the gramophone might be our benevolent mentor Radio 3, a means of delivering the goods not available to Wagner, subject to imperfection at times, but not by any means to be dismissed outright on purist grounds.

[Richard Tarleton]

Ah yes, thank you , a stone. I was mixing it up with this:

"You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."

All the same something pretty dreadful seems to happen when you put a "classical singer" in front of a microphone. Hayley Westenra is a classical singer, btw.

[Princess Hello]

That seems a fair summary to me.

[Princess Hello]

Ah yes, thank you , a stone. I was mixing it up with this:


All the same something pretty dreadful seems to happen when you put a "classical singer" in front of a microphone. Hayley Westenra is a classical singer, btw.

It's hard to tell a stone from a table when neither of them exist...

Agreed. Some classical record producers could learn things from their pop counterparts too, I suspect.

[amateur51]

I remember when this thread was about Bryn Terfel and Mandryka's jaundiced views of his skills and motives

[Mandryka]

I remember when this thread was about Bryn Terfel and Mandryka's jaundiced views of his skills and motives

My views on his skills and motives are unchanged, but I'm not displeased that the discussion has broadened in this way.

I'll confess to enjoying Pop Star To Opera Star, because it has some educational value. And some of the singers on it don't do too badly.