Lloyd wrote: >To summarize it simply and, perhaps, offensively, Dawn Upshaw does not >belong in a lot of opera created prior to the 20the century except is >special roles that fit her singing style. I consider her an artist and I >admire her technique for what she does but her technique is not that of >Price or Tebaldi, etc and, therefore, not appropriate for the demands of >roles these singers created with integrity and artistry. To use Upshaw >technique voices in these roles is to deny the basic concepts of what these >roles are about. And, most interestingly, though we hear so much today >about the size of voices and the need for big voices, the fact of the >matter is that voice size is much less important than meeting the technical >demands of the performance practices of a genre.
Dear Lloyd and All, In my opinion, your analysis very clearly explores the implications and confusion which might arise from more speech-linked lower range colourations (such as Dawn Upshaw) with other artists following a tradition of operatic performance practice which assumes that the desired colour in the lower range for the female voice should be different. I wouldn't have identified Dawn Upshaw as representing tradition-based operatic performance practice, but didn't get into this at all in my response. I was thinking more about how, from the singer's point of view, people can have a negative and even unfair response to a voice colour without realizing why. The surprisingly visceral dislike for operatic singing (in the tradition of Leontine Price, Tebaldi etc.) can have extra-musical associations and symbolic meanings. A listener may read into it some kind of class-related symbolism, or some other reason why the sound is offensive to their ears. I had a friend in England whose contralto voice was naturally extremely dark, and she had a lot of trouble getting work. I thought this was terribly unfair and that she could have had a huge career, but it didn't work out that way. I think the reason was that people just couldn't handle the voluminous richness of this sound in a young person's body. Best, Karen Jensen
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