“It’s easy when you do it badly.” (Zinka Milanov)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17VwRHEwTSM
"Oh, no, he is talking about this goddamn chest voice again! UGHHH!! I'm doing just fine without that hideous break in my perfectly-placed-in-the-mask head voice! And if my voice is not audible enough, that's because the orchestras are playing too loud! They should have more respect for my delicate instrument! And if nobody can understand the words I'm singing, that's their problem, not mine! I'll just add a little bit more consonants and that will fix the pppprrrrrrobbbbbblllllllemmmmmmm! See?! Everyone is against us singers today: orchestras are playing deliberately louder than before, the conductors and directors are choosing singers by their looks more than before, the theaters are huge and have poorer acoustics then before (old ones too!!!), languages are becoming more difficult to sing clearly than before, and last but not least, audience want opera to sound louder than it can because of that loud electronic music and earphones!!!!!! In the past that wasn't the case. People were living in silence then, they didn't know for loud sounds!! But there is no doubt that singing schooling and technique of today is incredibly advanced than before! It has evolved, and is now at its peak!!! Chest voice? Who needs that junk!" LOL There is a reason why old female opera singers sounded different and why they sang in a way they sang. It's not just "matter of taste". 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒚𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒚 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒄 A very common teaching these days is placement, or “placing the sound”. Some teachers advocate placing the voice “forward”, or “in the mask”. Others advocate placing the voice “at the back”. The truth is that you can’t place the voice anywhere. Sound is a vibration, a wave of energy that transmits through a material substance. It can’t be placed because we have no control over the transmission of these energy waves. So let's see what the different "placements" really are. "Forward" or "in the mask" placement seems to be the most common teaching and people have the false idea that this is how old-school singers were singing. Of course no one is actually placing their voices like this, as explained above, even if they think they do. The usual result of attempting to place the voice forward or in the mask is nasality. It's one of the most common flaws nowadays. When a singer is nasal, the soft palate doesn't close completely to separate the oral cavity from the nasal cavity and this results in an unpleasant distorted sound. The singer might feel that they have placed the voice forward, but that's because there is air leaking through the nose. Placement "at the back" has its negative effects too. Again, the voice isn't really placed anywhere but singers who attempt to do that usually end up with a woofy or guttural sound. A common side effect is tongue problems that distort the vowels. The larynx is usually too low (depressed larynx). So if great singing isn't a result of placement, then what makes a singer great? The answer is: development and coordination of the registers.
Reaction of ZINKA MILANOV on Marilyn Horne singing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo5v3aeSigc
MODERN OPERA SINGING vs. OLD OPERA SINGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5cW3E_OqTQ
Modern opera singer we all know (pirate live recording) vs. Cristina Deutekom (pirate live recording) - draw your own conclusions.
(Cristina Deutekom was good. Not the greatest but good. She had the right foundation, two registers, and she was a real coloratura soprano with legitimate super high notes, not whistles, she sang most of the time in a full voice. Unlike Sutherland, Deutekom's middle was clear and you can hear in this recording of Turandot's aria that she even had a bit of coordinated chest voice.)
Universities don't teach real operatic singing! (difference between modern and old tenors)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id971YS7_V8
Covering happens as a result of the male voice needing to keep a thryoarytenoid dominant sound (chest) all the way up through the passaggio and into his high notes. Covering is a muscular switch that happens which allows men to achieve this. As a man reaches the passaggio he has to make this muscular switch to ensure that his larynx stays in a lower position while the TA dominates. The cricothyroids do become more and more active, but the sound stays TA dominant (chest dominant). So physiologically what happens is in the passaggio the CT's work more while the stylohyoid muscle as well as the infrahyoid muscles are engaged so as to keep the larynx stable in a low to mid low position. If they did not engage the larynx would either rise, giving a strangled sound that lacks any scuro (depth/darkness) or the larynx would drop down too far and the hyoid bone would push onto the thyroid cartilage giving an overly dark, woofy sound." J. Silver
Jerome Hines:
"I went to a major university to do a series of master classes. They had a recital the first thing when I got there. The worst singer on the program was a tenor. He was just a disaster. But he had a couple of notes that really got my attention. I heard buried in there another Mario Del Monaco. I took him aside and told him to come for a voice lesson within the next day or two. He came in with "Nessun dorma," and "Ch'ella mi creda." I started working with him. I said, "Don't be afraid of it. Sing with some real guts," and I started showing how to do it, how to correct the high voice. Within an hour he was just knocking the socks off of it. So I spoke to the chairman of the department and said, "Come to this guy's next lesson. I want to get your opinion." So she did, and he just sang up a storm. At the end of the lesson she said to me, 'I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED THAT HE HAD THAT VOICE IN HIM, AND IF I HAD SUSPECTED IT, I WOULD HAVE BEEN AFRAID TO HAVE LET HIM SING THAT WAY FOR FEAR HE WOULD HAVE HURT HIS VOICE AND I WOULD HAVE LOST MY JOB." Then she said, "YOU KNOW, I THINK I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE. I THINK THAT WE VOICE TEACHERS IN ACADEMIA ARE DESTROYING A WHOLE GENERATION OF SINGERS. WE ARE AFRAID TO LET THEM SOUND LIKE OPERA SINGERS FOR FEAR THAT THEY MIGHT HURT THEIR VOICES AND WE MIGHT LOSE OUR JOBS.' And that was her confession to me."
Renata Tebaldi about decline of singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnPAH ... https://youtu.be/m_bw_UFSlw4
GIUSEPPE DI STEFANO goes mad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEZaV-95Il8&list=PLWMZSlbdmkVuaGZH4yC4s26FLNZKW6NsW
Universities don't teach real operatic singing! (2) (chest, from bottom to top)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07rs7S5m0y0
MIXED REGISTRATION in opera? NO!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa4qEeUqWTk
LYRIC/LEGGIERO doesn't mean nasal/constricted/powerless!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aoXrnanvTw