recently, i have been listening to some unusually good crossover
attempts by opera singers. the two i have been listening to are rene kollo
and eileen farrell. i would include on this list, julia migenes. and
though i like what they do in crossover attempts, i would not include kiri te
kanawa, pavarotti or robert merrill. to me, their attempts might fall into
a catagory occupied by bocelli or sergio franchi- a hybrid.
what fits my requirement to be considered a good crossover (just for
clarity not universal law) is the ability to sing in a technical manner
suitable to that other style. to sing another style nicely, in the same
technical manner of the first style, is to simply rearrange (not all aspects)
a piece of music from the second style into the style of the first.
in listening to rene kollo, a singer whose wagner recordings i always
liked, sing pop songs like 'pretty women' and 'hello mary lou', i was struck
by the pretty quality of his sound as well as the ease of production. it
had always seemed to me, that when singing wagner, mr. kollo's voice sounded
a little harsh and sometimes wobbled slowly. i noticed the absence of
strain and a reduction of harshness when i first heard him sing operetta but
i never thought he had a pretty voice. now, i have heard him sing these two
pop selections and i have to say his voice is very pretty.
i remember someone talking about a study done on the relative health of
different singers from different types of music. the order of healthy to
unhealthy went, i think, choral singers, opera singers, ?, ?, country
singers, gospel and finally, rock&roll. nothing was said about the training
level of those sampled. one could conclude that the opera singers probably
had the most training and that maybe half of the choral singers had some
training. it is unlikey the rest had much training. to compare one group
to another without examining the comparitive levels of training seems a flaw
to me. and there are other factors involved than just style differences.
what would probably be a more interesting (in the sense of actually
being able to come closer to a legitimate conclusion) would be to examine the
effects crossing over has on well known singers. in mr. kollo's case, i
would suggest that he probably is best suited to pop music and got away with
singing wagner (if he was a crafty imposter, this might explain his frequent
'indispositions'). i, for one, am glad he did.
i did not see renee fleming the other night. judging from the general
concensus, if the general concensus were true, it sounds like she just
doesn't have a good idea of what is required. it sounds like she was making
an attempt to sing in another style but, without a clear idea of how
different that has to be.
my guess, if we looked at enough examples of opera singers crossing over
(and vice versa), is that we'll find singers who are succesful, singers who
sounds exactly the same but it's kind of nice, singers who sound the same who
sound totally ridiculous, singers who sound so different they can't be the
same person and people who need to make up their minds just exactly what it
is they are trying to do.
mike
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