graham,
my first conscious exposure to the heldentenor voice was ludwig suthaus
on the old furtwangler 'tristan'. the kurwenal, fisher-dieskau, made
suthaus sound like a giant bass by comparison. the second heldentenor i
remember making an impression on me was james king. from then until this
very moment, my preference in heldentenors was for the 'baritonal'
heldentenor (suthaus, king, vinay, schock, cox, svanholm, volker and i'd even
include lorenz in this group) as opposed to the 'tenorial' heldentenor
(vickers, windgassen, kollo and my former teacher, the late richard
cassilly). naturally, there are some singers who are more easily identified
in one of the two groups than others, making those others debatable.
i suppose, in concert with your complaint, one could make two groups of
heldentenors who are (NOT)!; tenors who can sing really loud and baritones
who can sing really high. of the 'tenorial' group, the only one i would
consider a true heldentenor would be windgassen. perhaps i am too used to
hearing vickers in the rest of the dramatic repertoire to include him.
kollo, even though i like him very much, is an operetta tenor who can sing
really loud. and, although cassilly had enormous power, i never considered
his sound that of a true heldentenor.
then there are the singers who never sang well enough to tell, peter
hoffman and siegfried jerusalem. hoffman started singing wagner too early
and jerusalem started singing anything too late. to me, they both sing with
pop singer techniques (and not very well at that. rene kollo can sing with
a pop technique and very well. i highly recommend his covers of 'pretty
woman' and 'hello mary lou' ). it is hard to say just what their voices
would have turned into given a good development.
finally, i can't stand ben heppner. he sings well but, i can't take
his voice. it certainly is no vinay.
mike
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