From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Das Lied van der Erde ( was Re: Mahler 1)
Date: 9 Oct 92 19:26:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.BvvCnG.MIC
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <9OCT199209032977@portal.lasc.lockheed.com> le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel) writes:

>In article <Bvrp88.C7p@news.udel.edu>, conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) asks...

>> Hm.  Is there *any* recent example of a singer
>>who maintained cleanly defined tone into his/her later years?  Alfredo
>>Kraus maybe -- it's dry, but it's steady, and he's been at it since the
>>50s.
 
>Fischer-Dieskau seems to be holding fairly well.  

I haven't heard anything he's done in the last few years.  But his crazy
choice of roles through the latter part of his career (say, 1970 on)
definitely hurt his voice, and a comparison shows that a lot of the
spring and resilience left it after about 1975.  He's a superior artist
of course, so he can still make a fine effect under the right
circumstances; I'd go see him anytime if I could.  But I wouldn't put
him forward as an example of good vocal management.

>I thought that Birgit
>Nilsson sounded very good up to her retirement as well.  

Not I.  Her last decade or so of performing was undercut by pitch
problems of a sort she never formerly had, and a lack of focus and
projection.  The ELEKTRA video from the Met shows this clearly.  She
still outsang her competition of course, and I'm not saying she sang
badly in her early years, in any fundamental way.  But there was a 
definite deterioration in her last decade or so.

>How about Elisabeth Soederstrom?

The last time I saw her at the Met, in MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, she began
"Porgi amor" a MINOR THIRD low.  It took her a minute or so to crank
herself up to pitch, and even then there was a flutter that kept pitch
ill-defined.  I was torn between wanting to make allowances for a
beloved veteran artist, and thinking "this is intolerable."

>And then there's Hans Hotter.  He's had a troublesome wobble for some
>time, do you think he has been singing inmproperly?  Or was his age?

Yes, I think there was something amiss in his singing.  I'm hardly alone
in the opinion.  It says something for his awesome interpretive powers
that he managed to convey so much despite it, but nobody has ever called
him a model of good voice production, that I'm aware of.  The wobble
marred his singing from quite an early age; there was some technical
problem he never got straightened out.

>On the one hand it may be that singers are not singing as well as they used
>to, but I also think that the amount of singing they do nowadays is too
>taxing on their voices.  

What's the difference?  Singing too much, too taxingly, is bad singing.
You seem to think the two halves of your sentence are opposites, but
they are in agreement.

>And they just can't say no to all those booking dates.  

Nonsense.  Of course they can.  The more conscientious ones do.  If you
say yes to things you shouldn't be doing, you are compromising your own
artistic and vocal standards, and have nobody to blame but yourself.

>I think of Kollo in this regard as well.  Not only did he keep
>up a rigorous opera schedule, but he frequently sang nightly at jazz clubs
>for long periods.  He nearly ruined himself very early on, say by '77.  He
>then supposedly cut back, and I was able to hear an improvement in some of
>his video taped opera perfomances.

And he's an example of what I was just talking about, someone who had no
care for his limitations and chose to sing things that wrecked his
voice.  When I first heard him in 1971, it was as lovely a
"jung-dramatisch" tenor as I'd heard in a long time (listen to that
Karajan MEISTERSINGER).  He pushed it and squeezed it, and sang heavier
and higher parts, and turned it into a loud piercing instrument --
serviceable, but no pleasure to hear.  It was his choice, but that
doesn't mean we have to endorse it.

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical