Dear Mike and Vocalisters:
The reaction to female voices singing in their upper registers in classical
vocal mode or, as some call it, "opera style", is often related to the
female voice as it is used when a woman is hysterical.
Male voices used in an equivalent male range is still an octave lower and,
typically, an hysterical male does not usually scream in the upper
registers of his voice. I believe this is one of the primary reasons that
many who do not care for opera frequently complain about the quality of the
upper registers in the female voice.
Please do not confuse my comments on teaching singing as an endorsement of
singing as a kind of speech. As I stated most clearly "Singing is
different from speech". And the singing required of a performer who must
be heard over an orchestra in a large hall is even more removed from most
of the qualities of speech.
Opera is a highly refined and, in that sense, a most abstract performing
art. Opera should never be the same as real life even if it uses a story
from real contemporary life. Opera is, and should be, a synthesis of those
parts of life that give life a deeper meaning. Opera must have a primary
concern with the means that will bring such fundamental parts of life into
a new and more poignant focus.
One of those means is to have the actors sing rather than speak and the more
that their singing is different from speech the more complete is the
synthesis necessary for the opera form to be successful. To complain that
opera is too far removed from what is natural on stage (singing high in the
female range included) is to miss the whole point of what opera is about.
Opera should not be natural; it should be the synthesis of what is natural.
In so doing opera can more clearly define the essence of what is natural
without considering the causes or processes of naturalness.
Opera attempts to create a kind of distillation of those natural elements
which give life meaning. This is a most lofty and extremely difficult
goal. When opera is successful in achieving this goal it is the most
sublime and meaningful of the performing arts; when it fails to meet this
goal opera is the most destitute and ridicules of all the arts. The bar is
very high; misses are easily discerned.
Regards
--
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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