I'm halfway through Miller's book, Training Soprano Voices, and thought I'd give my impressions his faching system given at the beginning of the book: it's fabulous.
In the first section of the book, Miller speaks about the categories of the female voice (he gives nine, including mezzos). The rest of the book addresses just sopranos.
His discussion of fach is wonderful, and ought to be read by every female singer in America. He divides sopranos into nine categories: soubrette, coloratura, dramatic coloratura, lyric, lirico spinto, spinto, Jungendlich dramatic, dramatic, and Zwischenfach.
He lends support to the often-heard European stereotype that Americans always think of themselves as two fachs bigger than they are. Miller points out that houses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries weren't necessarily smaller than they are now (citing numerous examples of two- and three-thousand-seat opera theaters), challenging the argument that smaller voices sang bigger parts in the past.
[Side note: This may be true, but haven't the instruments in the orchestra gotten louder and more plentiful?]
Soubrette (which I've known as light lyric) and coloratura (which I've heard called lyric coloratura) often overlap, and their roles are fairly self-evident. He gives the dramatic coloratura Cleopatra, Queen of the Night, Konstanze, Semiramide, Norma, Lucia, Violetta, Abigail, and Trovatore's Leonora, emphasizing that, although the roles above are of different weights ("like Norma!" I thought to myself in exclamation points) these roles are NOT suited to the coloratura voice. He says that Gilda is best suited to the dramatic coloratura, often sung by the lyric with extension, and less successfully sung by the coloratura or soubrette.
Lyric sopranos sing most of the medium-sized heroines of Mozart, the bel canto composers, Verdi, Massenet, and Puccini; he puts into the lyric fach Micaela, Manon, Onegin's Tatiana, Mimi, Liu, Nedda, and others. I would say that most people singing this fach today call themselves spintos (wrongly).
He gives the lirico-spinto fach (which I've never seen separated from spinto, but he makes a good case for it) as an in-between fach for the heavier full lyric with bite -- Stravinsky's Anne, Susannah, Marguerite, Desdemona, Fiordiligi, Rusalka. He points out that many of these arias are excerpted by the lighter voices for auditions and competitions, although in terms of matching Rusalka's orchestration or Otello's tenor, they are inappropriate for the lyric.
Spinto he reserves for the big Puccini, Donna Anna, Aida and Amelia and the Forza Leonora, Lady Macbeth, Adriana Lecouvreur, Minni, Butterfly, Tosca, and others. He calls Strauss' Ariadne, Salome, and Arabella "ideal for the spinto soprano." This I totally agree with. Far too often, medium-to-big lyrics call themselves spintos (or even dramatics!!) who would never make an Amelia or Salome in a big house over a full orchestra.
Jugendlichdramatisch, the "young" dramatic, gets the Italian spinto rep plus Agathe, Elsa, Sieglinde, Sente, and the Marschallin (among others; I'm excerpting).
The dramatic soprano Miller reserves for Santuzza, Elisabeth, the Brunnhildes and other heavy Wagner, Strauss' Frau, Elektra, and Turandot. How many singers have you met who bill themselves as "dramatic sopranos" who wouldn't stand a chance in a Turandot or a Walkure? I am in complete agreement and championship of Miller on this point.
And the Zwischens get to sing the pseudo-mezzo roles, Lady Macbeth, Kundry, Ortrud, Santuzza, Carmen, Amneris.
He lists dramatic mezzo (Eboli, Azucena, Dalila, Charlotte, Fricka, Brangane, Carmen) and lyric mezzo (the Rossini, Dorabella, Adalgisa, Mignon, Hansel, Octavian), and generic mezzo roles (Suzuki, Traviata's Flora, Otello's Emilia).
He emphasizes that the true contralto is the rarest fach, with a very limited repertoire -- Third Lady, La Cieca, Ulrica, Dame Quickly, Onegin's Olga, Suor's Countess, Schicchi's Zita, Pelleas' Genevieve, and Menotti's Madame Flora.
I think my main problem with Miller's technical approach is that he puts "imagery" as one dismissable, small part of teaching voice, rather than a large part of communicating technical ideas. For example, he writes: "The goal of efficient breath-management technique is not to try to sing on a column of breath that starts in the region of the navel, but to allow the exiting tracheal air to be turned into tone through appropriate degrees of natural phonatory resistance offered by the vibrating vocal folds." Well, obviously you can't breathe *into* your belly or take a deep "diaphragmic" breath, but imagery like that has been used with success for hundreds of years. Discounting it as unscientific doesn't help anyone learn to sing.
Also, I find his description of "appoggio," like Ian's description of natural breathing, a little soft. Perhaps in person, Miller gives more energy to the appoggio technique than is coming across in his writing, but I find that it really takes quite a bit of firmness to sing a decent high C. Also, I find techniques such as the inward pulse of the lower belly for staccato exercises (like the yoga "breath of fire" expulsion of air) and the use of either "in-and-up" or "down-and-out" to be helpful, despite the fact that Miller discredits them all.
Of course, as Richard Allen would say, he's nationally prominent and I'm sitting on the back of a bus. But that's why these are my opinions. And I'm still curious about Miller's students and what they have become.
Who was it who first said they are put off by Miller's writing tone? Here is an example of over-academic bog: "When physical impediments intrude, free vocal timbre cannot be readily conceptualized, regardless of a meritorious tonal intent."
However, keeping in mind (Judy's?) comments about his humorous personal style, I did chuckle when I came across: "Both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira, despite current tendencies to cast the latter character as a flaming sex-mad lyric, are best suited to the spinto."
I will also add that I am in agreement with his apparent theory that one learns to sing opera by singing opera; the vast majority of his exercises are excerpted bits of arias.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
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