Dear Margaret and Vocalisters
Margaret wrote >Upshaw as opera singer - her production is compared to Leontyne >Price and Renata Tebaldi >and found wanting. I submit that's comparing apples and oranges as >the voices are alike >only in their being called soprano. Upshaws is a much brighter and >lighter instrument. >While I also am not always a fan of the way she sings, I think she >makes choices based on >a valid esthetic, and which get the most out of her lighter >instrument. My main complaint >about her singing is that she "futzes around" too much - uses too >many special effects >which by their overuse become not only not-special, but annoying. I >love her voice when >she sings a line "straight" (not sans vibrato, but sans >affectation). I had the good >fortune to hear her singing like that very early in her career (at >Wolf Trap Opera) and it >is one of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard - pure silver.
COMMENT: Your description of what you disliked about Upshaw's singing is exactly what I was expressing when I stated that she frequently does not sing a good "vowel line". I was not, in any way comparing different voice types but rather how they used their voices to convey the music. It is my feeling that many different voice types can sing the same literature if the conditions are right but each voice type must maintain the essence of that literature. Opera, and to some lesser extent, classical singing, requires that vowels be as consistently maintained as possible throughout the duration of the note value. Some would use the term "pure vowels" to describe this same quality. This characteristic of vowel use is not as consistently found in any other kind of singing. When Upshaw "futzes around" she is abandoning this vowel use requirement for the literature she has chosen to sing and I find that unacceptable.
Singing with a good "vowel line" allows the musical quality of the song to be emphasized. The text, which usually inspired the musical setting, is now recreated within the body of the music and is not just "carried" by the music but is transformed by the music such that it is given new and unique meanings that it previously did not possess. But if the singer emphasizes text above the music that new "meaning" is lost and all one can say is that the text has been "carried" by the music. For many, I would guess, this is all that song is supposed to be; for me it is most unsatisfying.
I hear the same qualities when Shakespeare is done well. There is a "music" to the spoken poetry that gives it a unique meaning that is more absorbed than understood. It is for this reason that reading Shakespeare is so different from hearing it read (if the reading is good, which, I am sorry to say, is not always easy to find).
-- Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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