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

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not sure if she's what you have in mind ferney, being in her early 50s, but I'd single out Nina Stemme as a notable exception among present-day Wagner singers [in her Wagnerian prime, of course]. I've heard some pretty grim Wagnerian sopranos and tenors at ROH in recent years but she holds her own against previous generations. I've heard several of your list live

[jean]

??? - not on my computer:

Sorry, my mistake - it was this, well into the thread, that I was thinking of:

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'.

[aeolium]

Well, here's a contemporary opera singer singing bel canto operatic repertoire (not sacred music) and doing it pretty well imv:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyeBssmt_g

I think it stands up to the level of Rossini singing of previous eras, at least as far as I am aware.

But there still appear to be differing opinions as to when the rot apparently set in for operatic singing - for Caliban it may be the 1960s/1970s, the period from which fhg lists a number of singers he admires and with whom current singers cannot compare. And the question now seems to have changed from the one "when and why did operatic voices become so ugly?" to "why aren't there great operatic singers around now to compare with those from the past?"

Like jean I haven't noticed any real decline in standards over my opera-going years, and I am talking about opera-going not listening to operas on record (fewer operas in any case seem to be recorded to CD these days - why would they be when so many fine recordings are available for next to nothing?) Of the singers fhg lists as the benchmark I heard none of them live in the opera house - I could not afford to when they were in their prime - and most of my live experiences have been going to see repertory companies like (in the 1980s) Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Kent Opera and (more recently) WNO where there were not often star names but up-and-coming talent. I think the way in the 1960s-1980s the big record companies assembled stellar casts for their recording projects, with multiple studio retakes to ensure absolute flawlessness gives a false impression of what opera is like for most people who go to see it - much more imperfect, with more variable casts but often, particularly in repertory companies, very good ensemble performances by casts who often work together. They may not compare with great singers like Lisa della Casa and Gundula Janowitz - and don't get me wrong, I love listening to recordings of singers of the highest quality - but that isn't necessarily what most opera performances are about, any more than it is what most concerts are about.

So my view is that there are still wonderful singers around as well as very fine repertory performers - like Fflur Wyn at the WNO whom I have seen this year and last in Rossini and Handel.

And I'd like to see that E*** K***** sing that Rossini aria!

[jean]

Well, here's a contemporary opera singer singing bel canto operatic repertoire (not sacred music) and doing it pretty well imv:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyeBssmt_g

Indeed! I wonder who represents the standard from which Joyce di Donato has declined?

I'm going to WNO's I Puritani at the end of this month. I didn't know anything about Rosa Feola, but the signs are good:

The Italian soprano Rosa Feola, a protégé of the great Renata Scotto, sings the dippy heroine Elvira with all her mentor’s questing intelligence. Warm and easy in her top register, she phrases sensitively, shaping the line into expressive meaning and colouring words with imagination. Her Mad Scene in Act 2 was exquisitely done, as was the miraculous (if implausible) recovery of her senses that ensues...

I'm also considering Opera North's Barber, though they're doing it in English. Rosina is Katy Bray, also unknown to me.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, here's a contemporary opera singer singing bel canto operatic repertoire (not sacred music) and doing it pretty well imv:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyeBssmt_g

I think it stands up to the level of Rossini singing of previous eras, at least as far as I am aware.

Note too that she hardly departs from the pitch, and sings in tune - almost a chuckle, though not as pronounced as Aznavour. Perhaps one can describe this as tremolando singing rather than vibrato?

[Darkbloom]

I haven't read the whole of this thread, so apologies if I have jumped in and said something already mentioned by someone else.

I am often struck by how different a voice can sound 'live' to when it is heard on a recording. Domingo always sounds a lot more tenor-ish on records than he does in the theatre, where you can appreciate the baritonal, dark qualities of his voice. Too often he sounds odd and strained at the top. There are some weird production decisons on a few of his recordings too. I am thinking of a moment in the Kleiber Traviata where he sings a top note falsetto because he couldn't have got there any other way, and it just sounds embarrassing. Also, there is a moment in the Karajan 'Ballo' where he gets a phlegmy throat and muffs a note, and you actually hear him clearing it afterwards. Amazing sloppiness! I would have loved to have heard Boris Christoff live, but I wonder if I wouldn't have been slightly disappointed. His great rival Ghiaurov probably outshone him there, although I much prefer BC's performances on disc. I am tremendously envious of those who heard the great Wagner voices live. I don't think anyone can truly appreciate Hans Hotter, for example, or Jon Vickers fully unless they have got those amazing instruments full in the face at some point.

I am not sure that voices today are actually uglier though. They certainly seem lighter, for the most part. I think voices of the past were also much more likely to indulge themselves in scoops and all sorts of unmusical habits, which would then develop into mannerisms. There was also the tendency of German-speaking singers of the past to be lazy when singing Italian, so many records are marred by poor pronunciation. I am not the biggest Callas fan, but I don't think 'beauty' is the first thing that comes to mind for most people when recalling her. It is probably easy to listen to the best that records have to offer and then use that as the yardstick to compare all that we hear today, but I don't think that is fair. Verdi voices are pretty thin on the ground - or true Verdi singers at any rate, not some fabricated item - as are Wagner ones, but it's just a case of things going in cycles, I think, and we are surely fairly well provided for when it comes to singers in the lighter repertoire.

I think there is always a tendency to underrate singers in our own time and overpraise the ones of the past.

[gradus]

Well said.
Re great Wagner voices, Vickers was by some margin the most intense and compelling singer I have ever seen on the operatic stage, Callas not excepted, but Hotter was past his considerable best imv in the sixties when I saw him. Nilsson's voice was not beautiful in the flesh, again imv, but if Wagner wanted his Brunnhilde always audible, she could do it.
I really don't agree with the 'ugly voice' observations of today's singers put forward earlier in the thread but so much in all this is highly subjective.

[jean]

I hadn't (still haven't) listened to the Verdi Requiem BAL from which this this thread was a spin-off and didn't really pay attention until about #21 where the singing of the Rossini I'd just enjoyed was slammed as 'vile'and 'toxic'. When I read the first few posts more carefully later, I saw that one of the criticisms of more recent singers was

...It's a pity that Toscanini made no recordings in his pre-WW1 years, when his singers (eg Frances Alda) had been trained in bel canto techniques and skills...]

What I'd really like to know - since this is the part of the operatic repertoire that interests me most - is who exactly were the great bel canto singers of the past, that such as Joyce di Donato are thought to fall so far short of?

More Rossini from Pesaro on R3 this afternoon. Did anyone (but me) manage not to switch off? What did you think?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think there is always a tendency to underrate singers in our own time and overpraise the ones of the past.

I really don't agree with the 'ugly voice' observations of today's singers put forward earlier in the thread

Examples of singers that disprove the premise in the OP eagerly awaited and will be gratefully received.

[verismissimo]

... What I'd really like to know - since this is the part of the operatic repertoire that interests me most - is who exactly were the great bel canto singers of the past, that such as Joyce di Donato are thought to fall so far short of?...

Not sure I'd want to compare with DiDonato, but two singers who were trained as bel canto singers and were recorded were Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini, who were great rivals around the turn of the twentieth century. Plenty of examples of both on Youtube. Not hifi, but real bel canto.

And mid-century, Joan Sutherland emerged...

[Bryn]

Examples of singers that disprove the premise in the OP eagerly awaited and will be gratefully received.

How about Sarah Leonard and Lore Lixenberg for starters? O.k., they are not known principally for their operatic roles, but both have sung in operatic productions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How about Sarah Leonard and Lore Lixenberg for starters? O.k., they are not known principally for their operatic roles, but both have sung in operatic productions.

I'll just recap what I said in #61:

it is in the "19thC" repertoire (say from non-HIPP Beethoven to Puccini or even Britten [yes, I know - that's why there are inverted commas]) that I find a very clear deterioration in the quality of "Operatic" singing from what I heard (broadcast and Live) in the '70s & '80s. Period performance of repertoire up to Mozart and "post-Darmstadt" 20th & 21stC Music - to say nothing of other Musics - aren't as blighted by the sort of performance problems highlighted in this Thread.

... aren't both SL and LL (like Barbara Hannigan and the Komsi twins and others) more associated with the post 1945 repertoires than with the 19thC? (Indeed, it was the memory of specifically Sarah Leonard's wonderful singing in The Great Learning that made me make this distinction.)

[gradus]

The OP referred to voices from the 60s and 70s starting the trend of ugly operatic singing which is apparently continuing today for some listeners. I disagree but think it is all so subjective that examples (per ferney above) really aren't going to persuade either side but here goes anyway!
I really didn't hear any ugly voices in the Cardiff Singer of the World this year, perhaps young and inexperienced but ugly, no.
For attractively voiced more or less contemporary operatic singers the following spring to mind: Gheorgiu, Netrebko, Alagna, Vilazon, Mattila, Kaufmann, Dessay, Terfel, to name but a few.
It's not so many years that some critics thought that both Janet Baker and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau had ugly unmusical voices - any takers for that argument now? Similarly any champions for Lotte Lehmann, Frida Leider? Or how do the committed vibrato-phobes regard the inimitable Conchita Supervia or more recently the brilliant (imv) Gwynneth Jones?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Or how do the committed vibrato-phobes regard the inimitable Conchita Supervia or more recently the brilliant (imv) Gwynneth Jones?

The latter wins my wooden spoon.

[jean]

And mid-century, Joan Sutherland emerged...

Indeed! But who else? I would say there are more singers around now who can tackle this repertoire. We've been talking mainly about sopranos, but it goes for tenors as well.