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

[ahinton]

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.

How indeed? Whilst they're both known principlly for relatively recent music, Sarah Leonard's repertoire embraces a pretty wide range (who else sings Ivor Gurney and Brian Ferney, for example?) - and there's no limit to the distance that I'd want to travel to hear her in Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder if only she were to sing them...

[Flosshilde]

I posted that ten days ago, Flossie - is there something wrong with your Broadband speed?!

Umm, does the time lapse between you posting your statement and my question invalidate the latter? I was in Greece when you posted it, and had rather more interesting things to concentrate on. This thread does rather smack of old buffery 'singers aren't as good as they were in my younger days' complaints that crop up every generation or so.

I'd still like to know, from you or anyone else, how it's possible to compare a memory of something you heard 40 years ago with something you heard yesterday.
(of course, it is possible, but I wouldn't think that the comparison had much validity)

[Beef Oven!]

I posted that ten days ago, Flossie - is there something wrong with your Broadband speed?!

Advantage fernie.

[Beef Oven!]

Umm, does the time lapse between you posting your statement and my question invalidate the latter? I was in Greece when you posted it, and had rather more interesting things to concentrate on. This thread does rather smack of old buffery 'singers aren't as good as they were in my younger days' complaints that crop up every generation or so.

I'd still like to know, from you or anyone else, how it's possible to compare a memory of something you heard 40 years ago with something you heard yesterday.
(of course, it is possible, but I wouldn't think that the comparison had much validity)

Net

[Dave2002]

To be a little more specific in all this,has anyone been listening to the young Australian Nicole Car on In Tune this evening? Shortly to sing Micaela and Tatiana at the ROH, she sounds very good indeed to me but what do others think? Is this voice ugly?

I was going to ask a similar question myself. I certainly thought it was an interesting story, and the lady clearly has fantastic guts and determination. I rather liked the "come from nowhere" aspects - brought up in a not particularly musical family, and a diet of rock/pop music, then singing jazz. An epiphany on seeing Tosca for the first time led to an enthusiasm for opera and operatic singing.. I'd have to hear more to know whether I could really like her voice and performances, but clearly many others have already decided that she's pretty good. One to watch I think.

[verismissimo]

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

From what I've heard of her, Nina Stemme does seem to be best among the present generation of Wagner sopranos, but... not really close to the finest recorded voices of previous generations of Wagnerians - Birgit Nilsson, Kirsten Flagstad, Marjorie Lawrence, Frida Leider, Florence Austral, Johanna Gadski, Lilli Lehmann...