Subject: Interesting Renee Fleming quote from Opera News...
From: "Richard Barrett"
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

"Today the houses are bigger, and the demands for vocal splendor are higher.
If you listen to the early recordings, the sound is much brighter. Pointed.
More focused. People today want a warm, round, rich sound. There's less
emphasis on clean, healthy projection."

I guess I'm not really sure I understand where she's coming from. I suppose
my teacher is one of the ones who goes for a "warm, round, rich sound", but
I've also been with teachers where the emphasis was all on brightness and
point, and it was a heck of a lot more work and a heck of a lot more tiring
than what I'm doing now. For me, anyway, producing a "warm, round, rich
sound" *is* "clean, healthy projection", so I guess I don't relate at all to
what Fleming is saying here. Maybe when she's talking about a "warm, round,
rich sound", she's really thinking of singers who go way too far in the
other extreme, and produce *too* dark of a tone, who are too covered, and as
a result wind up straining like the dickens in higher registers. By the same
token, however, when I listen to singers like Hadley or Alagna, I'm
definitely *not* thinking that they're producing a "warm, round, rich
sound", and (especially in Alagna's case) what they do certainly doesn't
exactly sound like "clean, healthy projection." It Hadley's case it isn't
unpleasant (all the time, anyway), but Alagna sounds unpleasantly bright a
lot of the time - plus, he sounds like he's working too hard most of the
time.

Interestingly enough, while I'm not the biggest Fleming fan in the world, I
do tend to think of her voice as being on the warmer and richer side of
things. Go figure.

Thoughts?