Conrad Osborne: High Fidelity Critic/Blogger - Specialty: Opera

[André]

Yikes.

It's true that Aida/Radamès/Amonasro-size voices are in extremely short supply these days. If Opera Houses were limited to 1500 seating and ticket prizes were frozen, things might be quite different.

As it stands, patrons who pay large sums of ill/hard-earned money want to be wowed. A wowing Aida may last 4-5 years, after which she'll become a shrewish Tosca, then a dramatic mezzo before she is relegated to the Countess in Pique Dame.

Hall size is inversely proportional to vocal health. So critics should be directed to the House's Manager's Office and stop complaining about the singers. They got what they paid for (i.e. nothing: they get to complain for free).

[Cato]

Yikes.

It's true that Aida/Radamès/Amonasro-size voices are in extremely short supply these days. If Opera Houses were limited to 1500 seating and ticket prizes were frozen, things might be quite different.

As it stands, patrons who pay large sums of ill/hard-earned money want to be wowed. A wowing Aida may last 4-5 years, after which she'll become a shrewish Tosca, then a dramatic mezzo before she is relegated to the Countess in Pique Dame.

Hall size is inversely proportional to vocal health. So critics should be directed to the House's Manager's Office and stop complaining about the singers. They got what they paid for (i.e. nothing: they get to complain for free).

Thanks for the comment, André!

Conrad Osborne is positive that modern singers have been taught classical-music singing incorrectly for most of the twentieth century, with part of the problem being the invention of the microphone.

Since he is 90 or 91 years old, and recalls Metropolitan Opera singers who had been taught their craft from 1900-1920, he is appalled more and more by what he is hearing today, and has heard for decades.

For some years he has sponsored workshops on proper technique - with an emphasis on breathing especially, as he deplores current trends in teaching the special breathing needed for opera.

But other things are involved: he suspects that chemicals in the environment have damaged current generations hormonally, thereby affecting the masculinity or femininity of maturing voices.

...I'll be offering thoughts about the state-of-being of today's beginning singer⎯⎯the teenager with a nice voice, some musicality, and some indicated interest or ambition⎯⎯as he or she starts professional study.

That person may be very talented and vocally mature for his or her age, but I can safely promise you that he or she will present a radically different set of strengths and weaknesses, vocal and personal, (from) those of the 19-year-old Fyodor Chaliapin, the 18-year-old Rosa Ponselle, or, as I suggested in my post of Sept. 30, the 16- or 17-year-old Lotte Lehmann.

I'm not going to rank these considerations yet. I'm quite sure that "microphones" escapes my lips first-off because it assuredly belongs at or near the top of any such ranking, along with several broad socio-cultural influences that can be, at one and the same time, socially progressive yet also sources of collateral damage when it comes to great singing.

See:

https://conradlosborne.com/2017/10/27/before-the-first-lesson%e2%8e%affirst-in-an-occasional-series/

[Florestan]

That person may be very talented and vocally mature for his or her age, but I can safely promise you that he or she will present a radically different set of strengths and weaknesses, vocal and personal, (from) those of the 19-year-old Fyodor Chaliapin, the 18-year-old Rosa Ponselle, or, as I suggested in my post of Sept. 30, the 16- or 17-year-old Lotte Lehmann.

So what? I think I can safely promise that the 19-year-old Fyodor Chaliapin, the 18-year-old Rosa Ponselle or the 16- or 17-year-old Lotte Lehmann presented radically different set of strengths and weaknesses, vocal and personal, than Nicolas Levasseur, Giuditta Pasta or Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient at corresponding age.

It's the same old and tired canard: past times were better times. False. Past times were different times, that's all that can be safely promised to us.

I firmly believe people who say "40/50/60 years ago things were better/simpler/calmer/whatevererer (sic!)" simply mean "40/50/80 years ago I was young, handsome and had a whole life ahead. Today I'm old, ugly and rapidly approaching the end." 

[Florestan]

I don't imagine we're going to see controlled studies of scale on the vocal effects of endocrine disruptors. There's no money in that. But think about this de-virilizing trend (as I did, the instant I first heard about it) in relation to the dearth of dramatic voices and the absence of deep voices (weakened "chestiness" being the technical component in both phenomena), to the apparent cultural preference for lighter voices and  for male voices that behave and sound more like female or androgynous ones. .

Nihil novum sub sole. Castrati, anyone? 

And btw, post 1850 Rossini deplored the loss of the art of fine singing and the dearth of beautiful voices (kind of a Conrad Osborne avant la lettre, one is tempted to add) and blamed it on two things: disappearance of castrati and bad teaching. I wonder what Osborne would make of that. 

[Cato]

Nihil novum sub sole. Castrati, anyone? 

And btw, post 1850 Rossini deplored the loss of the art of fine singing and the dearth of beautiful voices (kind of a Conrad Osborne avant la lettre, one is tempted to add) and blamed it on two things: disappearance of castrati and bad teaching. I wonder what Osborne would make of that. 

Nihil novum sub sole is possible of course: on the other hand, he did hear Kirsten Flagstad in her prime, along with Ezio Pinza, Robert Merrill, and many others.

Perhaps his memory is lionizing those people: comparing a modern performance of "aria X" with a recording from the 1940's would, of course, be difficult, as one would need to ignore the technical imperfections in recordings from that era.

To be sure, he has written about listening to early recordings of the most famous singers from c. 1900 and beyond.

e.g. Concerning Fyodor Chaliapin's early recordings (now on the MARSTON label):

...There soon follows, though, one of Chaliapin's greatest records, of Pimen's Act One monologue from Boris Godunov. From the opening words, we are aware of a different sort of person from any of those he has brought before us—one of infinite gravity and patience, old but still fully in command of his powers, who, as his lamp gutters, approaches the end of his great mission as chronicler. If we have been listening to the brilliantly ringing, varicolored high bass of his other recordings, we are startled by the depth and darkness of tone we hear, and then the consistency with which it rolls through the music, giving and taking with the dynamics and setting forth the words with bardic clarity and purpose...

See:  https://conradlosborne.com/2019/03/22/chaliapin-phenomenon-part-two/4/

[Cato]

Conrad Osborne reviews Salome by Richard Strauss, recently performed at The Metropolitan Opera: he begins, however, by reviewing the score and the composer's "micro-managing" aspects detailing the kind of singer needed for the main role.

e.g.

"... Salome, with the orchestra chromatically moaning beneath her, intones the drawn-out passage (at a very slow tempo) during which she fondles and kisses Jochanaan's severed head and sings about it to writing centered on the F sharp above middle C, just at the upper edge of "the break."

She emerges from that into a brightening environment... and she sings her triumphant final lines ("What of that? I have kissed thy mouth, Jochanaan, I have kissed thy mouth.") before Herod orders her crushed beneath his soldiers' shields.

And... for rapid-fire description in the lower range,...the most prominent... example... of piercing lower-to-upper midrange chatter is Salome's glee over the silencing of Jochanaan's tongue, with its wonderfully onomatopoeic settings of "this scarlet viper" ("diese Scharlachnatter," sixteenth notes, quick tempo, back and forth between E and G sharp) and "this red viper" ("diese rote Natter," higher, same note values and tempo).

...Strauss was something of a dreamer with respect to his expectations of voices...with his command of the orchestra far advanced over his voice-orchestra expertise....But I don't think he was so unrealistic as to make demands far out of line with what he had heard around him in the forty-one years that preceded his work on Salome, which included plenty of high-level opera-house experience as conductor...

...(The Germanic tradition) has historically embraced a more blended, "governed from the top" way of incorporating the chest register into female voices. It thus reduces the danger of a more open, defined chest voice creating a discrepancy with the long stretch of range lying above it, resulting in a weak patch just above the passaggio. But it runs the risk of insufficiently developing the lower register at all, so that there is no stability to the bond in that same area, and the third or fourth above the break must be treated very cautiously and/or "covered." Now comes Strauss, asking his "Isolde voice" to jab through his huge orchestra in passages like those noted above.(II) Whom might he have had in mind?..."

The answers seem to be (possibly, because no recordings or descriptions of her vocal technique exist) Marie Wittich and (more likely, because she trained with Lotte Lehmann) Olive Fremstad.

"We can sum up our imagining of the ideal Salome voice as being that of a dramatic soprano of the Wagnerian type with total command of the line, the chiaroscuro, and the messa di voce over a pitch range from the low G-flat (which, incidentally, Isolde does not approach, her lowest note being B) to the high B natural. But to this we must add the requirement, already noted, of a strength and alacrity of quick-firing declamation, the registering of many small verbal points, in the lower and lower-middle range, which no Wagnerian soprano faces. And that changes the voice's functional set-up to a degree. Of course, as with all great roles, there have been singers who have succeeded as Salome without possessing all, or even most, of these virtues. "

In modern times, Birgit Nilsson is his choice for the ideal Salome.

As to the recent Metropolitan Opera production, it presents an "interpretation" where Herod has been sexually abusing Salome for a long time:

"Child sex abuse"

 "There are many indications that she [Salome] was sexually abused by him [Herod]," Guth tells us.

 Oh? Where? Her second line ("Warum sieht mir der Tetrarch," etc.) is not that of a girl accustomed to encounters; that girl would know why. That Herod has developed a lust for her is obvious—so has Narraboth, don't look at her!—but trawling the text for these indications, I don't find any. We will discover them, I believe, only in the fevered brain of our auteur."

As for the performance...

"There could be more, but that's enough. I used to feel sorry for serious performers caught in schizoidal circumstances like these. No more. In their failure to recognize what they're aiding and abetting and/or their absence of any willingness to try to do something about it, their normally admirable commitment to the artistic task has become a significant part of our problem. First among them this time was the Salome, Elza van den Heever. I think she is a good artist, and have written positively about her as Marie in Wozzeck and Elizabeth in Tannhäuser. She worked away diligently, and acted her assignment as given intelligently. Her voice sails out nicely at the top, has difficulty penetrating in the middle, and is virtually absent at the bottom. Overall, its format is not sufficient for the role...

...As is so often the case with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his orchestra, the performance was perfectly decently played and proportioned, but seemed lacking in suspense and dramatic urgency. These talented players don't sound as if they have the score in their bones."

For the entire review:

https://conradlosborne.com/2025/06/10/fremstad-nilsson-welitsch-and-others-and-the-mets-new-salome/

[brewski]

"As is so often the case with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his orchestra, the performance was perfectly decently played and proportioned, but seemed lacking in suspense and dramatic urgency."

Listening online, that was not my impression at all. (Was going to make another comment about opera culture, but will hold my tongue. ) The performance was totally thrilling, which the audience reaction only confirmed, and I only wish I could have seen it live.

[Cato]

"As is so often the case with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his orchestra, the performance was perfectly decently played and proportioned, but seemed lacking in suspense and dramatic urgency."

Listening online, that was not my impression at all. (Was going to make another comment about opera culture, but will hold my tongue. ) The performance was totally thrilling, which the audience reaction only confirmed, and I only wish I could have seen it live.

Thanks for the review!

I saw a production in Dayton when I was in high school, and recall the performance in the pit being rather ragged: things have greatly improved since then, and a concert by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra is now an excellent experience!

Anyway, YouTube offers this: Nilsson at La Scala in 1967.

[brewski]

Thanks for the review!

I saw a production in Dayton when I was in high school, and recall the performance in the pit being rather ragged: things have greatly improved since then, and a concert by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra is now an excellent experience!

Anyway, YouTube offers this: Nilsson at La Scala in 1967.

No offense to Dayton, but incredible to ponder a production there — and seeing it in high school! I was maybe 40 when I first saw it (in Amsterdam) and was transfixed. But the idea that you saw it as a teenager...heavens. Thank goodness you recovered. 

(And thanks for tha Nilsson link, which I'll certainly watch.

[Cato]

No offense to Dayton, but incredible to ponder a production there — and seeing it in high school! I was maybe 40 when I first saw it (in Amsterdam) and was transfixed. But the idea that you saw it as a teenager...heavens. Thank goodness you recovered. 

(And thanks for that Nilsson link, which I'll certainly watch.

A friend of mine had a connection to the ticket!      So, they were even cheaper than the usual "student discount."

I recall the theater being fairly full, and to be fair, most of the time the orchestra played decently, but too often, which was also the case in symphony concerts, the brass failed to play without burbling a thing or two in climaxes or sections where they were exposed.

I am trying to find out more information about the performance: a spotlight using various colors on Salome during the Dance of the Seven Veils and ending with an icy blue on her, struck me as something Scriabin might have liked!

I also saw Lohengrin either a year before or after: the spotlight put a swan on the curtain for Lohengrin's arrival...while he walked onto the stage and, with the chorus, pointed at Der Schwann!   

Cheaper to do it that way!   

[brewski]

Man, Salome and Lohengrin in Dayton! Who knew? Those brass parts in Salome are brutal. Years ago, I asked a violinist in the Met Orchestra, "What's the hardest music you play?" and without blinking an eye she said, "Richard Strauss." The music sometimes sounds easy, but when you look at the printed page, not so easy.

And as for the inexpensive lighting, well, at least they did it! I didn't start seeing any opera regularly until my late twenties in New York. You are really lucky.

[Cato]

Man, Salome and Lohengrin in Dayton! Who knew? Those brass parts in Salome are brutal. Years ago, I asked a violinist in the Met Orchestra, "What's the hardest music you play?" and without blinking an eye she said, "Richard Strauss." The music sometimes sounds easy, but when you look at the printed page, not so easy.

And as for the inexpensive lighting, well, at least they did it! I didn't start seeing any opera regularly until my late twenties in New York. You are really lucky.

Yes, I consider myself quite fortunate!  Right now I live among 5 groups of classical musicians: two world-class orchestras (in Cleveland and Cincinnati) with three other excellent ones even closer in Toledo, Columbus, and Dayton.

And yes, those brass parts in Salome are not easy by any means, so I should not be too hard on the orchestra: back then a good number of the players were amateurs.

I should mention another concert in Dayton with the Philharmonic in the 1960's: I saw 22-year-old Itzhak Perlman "walk" - with the assistance of crutches (I recall his legs being dragged more than they moved) - onto the stage for a performance of  Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole.

That was quite an experience!  The conductor, I should mention, was Paul Katz, who did his best to establish the orchestra during the depths of the Depression in 1933, and to develop it into a competent group.  Further development to increase the audience and the expertise of the musicians occurred later under Charles Wendelken-Wilson and most recently, with a big leap in the quality of the sound and the playing, under Neal Gittleman.

Mrs. Cato and I went to a Dayton Philharmonic concert a few years ago featuring one of her favorite works, The Planets by Holst, and WOW!  A great performance all-around!