When and why did 'operatic voices' become so ugly?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Are there singers you've enjoyed hearing Live that you've found unpleasant to listen to?

Do you mean unpleasant to listen to via recordings/broadcasts?

If so - Sheila Armstrong (wonderful in concert, but not on recordings), Felicity Palmer, Helen Watts & Helen Field all spring to mind.

[Nick Armstrong]

As Cali says, ugly voices are "a big part of why [he] stays away from opera houses": if anything, worse than on record, as the singers are straining in Live performances to produce the volumes that come more "thankfully" with the use of a microphone.

Ah! There is something there, Alpie - as has Cali with his reference to "digital mics"; most of my adverse reactions are based on broadcast performances, rather than hearing them in the theatre. I must get round to listening to the broadcast ON Gotterdammerung - the singers were all wonderful in the Hall (so wonderful the experience that I haven't been able to play the recording of the broadcast.

Yes - there's a potential contradiction here isn't there - it is indeed broadcast performances that get my goat. Maybe (in line with my previous post), it's illogical for that to 'keep me away from the opera house'. (But there are plenty of other things which help achieve the latter - the prices, the productions, the prices, other 'opera goers' , the prices... )

A remarkably sensitive microphone picked up my distant "Bleibe gnadigs" in a way that would have chilled the blood of the coldest caller!

As nasty a case of Strangulated Marianus as I have ever heard of...

[vinteuil]

... other 'opera goers' :

... ah yes. Many years ago, I decided to become a 'nicer person'. To love my fellow man, regardless. And that very evening, I had tickets for Covent Garden. In the interval, I found myself in the Crush Bar...

On the day following, trying to explain my failure to my Jesuit spiritual director - he gently said - ah, easy stages - start with simpler options. The Crush Bar at the Royal Opera House is for Advanced Candidates only...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... ah yes. Many years ago, I decided to become a 'nicer person'. To love my fellow man, regardless. And that very evening, I had tickets for Covent Garden. In the interval, I found myself in the Crush Bar...

On the day following, trying to explain my failure to my Jesuit spiritual director - he gently said - ah, easy stages - start with simpler options. The Crush Bar at the Royal Opera House is for Advanced Candidates only...

[Nick Armstrong]

In the interval, I found myself in the Crush Bar...

... ah yes indeed - enough to make a misanthrope of the cheeriest music-lover.

[Tony Halstead]

Oh dear oh dear, there was a particularly vile, wobbly and altogether toxic lady singer ( probably a mezzo) in this afternoon/evening's 'opera on 3' from Bologna, Rossini's 'Thieving Magpie'.
Sorry I can't be more helpful with the I.D. but I simply had to turn it off... the vibrato was rather more than a semitone wide.
Why oh why do they do this?

[Nick Armstrong]

Why oh why do they do this?

[teamsaint]

i do honestly wonder how some singers get the jobs/ roles that they do.
There are doubtless some good agents around.....

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh dear oh dear, there was a particularly vile, wobbly and altogether toxic lady singer ( probably a mezzo) in this afternoon/evening's 'opera on 3' from Bologna, Rossini's 'Thieving Magpie'.
Sorry I can't be more helpful with the I.D. but I simply had to turn it off... the vibrato was rather more than a semitone wide.
Why oh why do they do this?

Is it in order to be in tune every time they slide through the correct pitch?

I must admit to having been put off not just operatic but classical singing in general ever since I can remember, wishing with a few loveable exceptions that they sang more naturally, like the finest blues or jazz singers do, or seem to, though in the end it all comes down to personnisms, I suppose. The operatic "approach" seems especially incongruous in modernist music, apart from the Neo-Classical, but nowhere more absurd than when certain Progrock bands co-opted it back in the 1970s.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is it in order to be in tune every time they slide through the correct pitch?

"A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day"

Bruce Robinson, Withnail & I

[doversoul1]

Being very much into jazz vocal in my youth (listening only), classical singing, opera in particular, sounded to me almost bordering on monstrosity until I discovered singing in early music.

Here’s one of the best examples; on Saturday’s Through the Night

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06dd0vt

[DracoM]

Couldn't agree more about that R3 Rossini on Sat night. Blimey! It was simply awful - the women particularly.

With regard to OP, I would add two words to rectify the attack on current opera singers: Jonas Kaufmann.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

S_A's and dovers' posts suggest a slight offshoot from the Thread topic, in that their answers to the question in the Thread title appear to be "they were never otherwise". I understood Cali to be referring to more recent "operatic" voices, as contrasted with those (on record) from earlier. Lats suggests that there has been a gradual "decline" as recording/playback media have developed - I disagree with this: the sound of many voices recorded in wax and shellac times often seems ridiculously "hammy" to me - equivalent to watching early sound films with actors playing working class roles either with very clipped received pronunciation, or as mockney clowns. (I won't name names, as some of these singers have been cited as Forumistas' favourites ever on various Threads. I will merely point out that I have said "many" and "often", and that of course your particular favourite is one of the exceptions!)

But I would not describe these voices as "ugly" in the way that I respond to so many singers in this/these repertoire/s around today. The insecure intonation, wide vibrato, screeching, shouting, and squawking that ruins so many operatic and concert performances and recordings appears to be a very recent phenomenon. There must have been bad singers, of course, before 1990 - but they didn't feature in my radio listening or concert-going in the fifteen years before then in anything close to the regularity of today, and they weren't recorded then (Florence Foster-Jenkins excepted).

Of course there are exceptions - and I really resent having to take on this "ahh, they don't make 'em like they used to" role (especially as there are so many fine instrumentalists amongst their contemporaries who give their predecessors a real run for their money) - but broadcasts and concerts featuring singers performing the repertoire of the Nineteenth Century have become something to dread - almost to the point of avoiding; and frequently to abandon after the first ten minutes.

[verismissimo]

...

With regard to OP, I would add two words to rectify the attack on current opera singers: Jonas Kaufmann.

Yes. And in the Lied, Christian Gerhaher.

[Nick Armstrong]

Jonas Kaufmann.

Christian Gerhaher

Roderick Williams. Oh yes - there are a few exquisite singers around, thank heavens.

Alas it doesn't seem to be the norm; and one opera specialist is hardly a regiment. Perhaps it never was - we just never hear the awful rank-and-file of previous eras.