Don't listen to Madonna - she had a lot of the music transposed DOWN in
the film version because of her very limited vocal range.
The original Evita was the quintessential belt mezzo, Patti Lupone. That
said, I do not suggest that you attempt to become a full-blown belter!
Other less "belty" singers have done the role quite successfully, and
they cast you with YOUR voice, which I suspect is what, in
musical theatre parlance, would be considered "full legit" (i.e.,
operettic if not operatic).
This said, there are ways to move away from sounding too "legit" - which
really wouldn't be right for the music, nor what the audience would expect
to hear - into a kind of musical theatre "voix mixte", typified IMO by
musical theatre singers like Mary Martin, Judy Kuhn, Edith Adams, Maureen
McGovern, Kim Criswell, Maria Friedman, and (in a lower tessitura) Karen
Akers and Linda Kirk. Ute Lemper doing Kurt Weill's Broadway songs is also
instructive, though I think she goes too much to the extreme of trying to
sound "non-legit", and the result is a somewhat harsh, pinched soprano
sound. But it's interesting to contrast it with her full-legit renderings
of Weill's operetta songs. Barbara Cook, in her most recent cabaret and
concert performances has struck the kind of legit/non-legit balance that I
think you might want to strive for - and remember that Cook was the
ULTIMATE legit Broadway singer in the '50s and early '60s when she
originated the roles of Cunegonde in CANDIDE and Marian the Librarian in
THE MUSIC MAN, among others.
The kind of "voix mixte" I'm thinking of is a more "easy going",
"natural" and slightly more nasal sound than pure "legit", with less
vibrato, and fewer overtones, but without the brassiness, intensity,
and "whiteness" of a pure belt. I think if you can achieve this kind of
"voix mixte" you'll have just the right sound for Evita.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
***************************************
In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths.
- Proverbs 3:6
|
|  |
