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In Reply to: RE: Not "operatic" posted by Bill Way on April 04, 2019 at 11:53:42
The first singer - Tarja Turunen is an opera singer - hence operatic.Nightwish is an Opera/Metal band.
This is Tarja - she is an opera singer. Arguably not a great one but solid enough and certainly better than anything the metal industry is likely to put out - which probably explained why Nightwish became so popular - take one level down Opera singer - and mix that power with metal and you have a different kind of blend of sounds. The whole becoming greater than the sum of their parts sort of thing.
I am someone who isn't a particularly big fan of opera or metal. But I kind of like the blend.
The second singer was not operatic.
Edits: 04/06/19Follow Ups:
I think we can agree to disagree on this. She is classically trained and has sung lieder. It's certainly a pretty voice. But she sings with microphones and amplifiers. If you can't sing opera, unamplified, in an opera house, you're probably not an opera singer. You may be a great singer and a great performer, but you're not an opera singer.So she ends up, for me, in that gray space with Andrea Bocelli. Classically trained, beautiful voice, good technique, and completely miscast in an opera house. (His attempts were disasters.) If you can't sing opera in an opera house, it's a stretch to call yourself an opera singer. Still, Bocelli was so good that Tony Bennett went to *him* to record their duets in his Tuscan home.
There's nothing magical about being an opera singer. It's just different from pop singing, and pop singing becomes a little different when done by a performer with classical training. Sometimes that's good, as here, and sometimes it's awful, like "Placido Sings the Broadway I Love."
FWIW, the Met broadcast today is Tosca, with Jennifer Rowley, Joseph Calleja, and Wolfgang Koch conducted by Carlo Rizzi. I think it's pre-recorded. The consistently best-sounding link for the broadcasts I've found is below. It starts at 1pm Eastern time.
Cheers,
WW
"I'd crawl over twenty miles of bad country to listen to you pee in a tin cup on the telephone." (Jo Carol Pierce)
Edits: 04/06/19
She certainly is a very good singer, and seems to be able to do what she wants expressively. She's a real performer. That takes some technique.
I can't be sure from a recording just how big her voice is but it seems big enough. I have linked to a video of a concert in Moscow, and she can sing without a microphone.
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"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
I don't think we actually disagree - I think you probably just have a higher set of standards than what is commonly accepted and i don't think there is anything wrong with that.
There probably should be some other term used to describe Tarja and Bocelli because perhaps they are not quite good enough to sing Opera unamplified but they are a very clear cut above pop singers like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.
So it's probably unfair to lump them as POP singers. Perhaps a term like Operatic-Pop (or "Light-Opera" to mean a lighter weight voice as in needing amplification) is fair just as Sade is often referred to as a Jazz-pop singer.
An opera house is also designed to aid in the projection of vocals so the actual venue serves to amplify the human voice for Opera singers. If any Opera singer was in a stadium the size of the ones Nightwish is playing to - you won't be blown away by their voice in the back row of a football stadium without amplification. So it's sort of a necessary thing depending on the size and design of the venues.
My view there is a clear difference to the actual vocal sound (regardless of power to get to the back row) of Tarja's voice to the second singer in the video who can't make that vocal sound.
So I believe it's probably a good idea to have some other middle ground term for those singers who can clearly sing The Ava Maria versus the Swifts who clearly can't. And then there is probably another level which would include Celine Dion, Lady Gaga, Glennis Grace, Whitney Houston and perhaps Ariana Grande who have a cut above the pop singer level vocals who might be able to do opera-pop but have chosen to make more money in pop.
So that's it - we need a term - "Opera-Pop" vocalist - not quite pop and not quite opera.
Dear RGA,
It's not a "more or less" thing; it's a difference in kind. Opera singers create a column of air starting at the bottom of the lungs, supported by all the muscles around their middles. It really does start down around the belly-button. It this support that enables them to use their larynx, which is about the size of a dime, to fill a large hall with sound. This gives them their "chest voice". Above a certain note, the way they produce sound changes, with the chest resonance dropping off - that's the head voice. (The supported colume of air is still there, just not as obvious in the sound.) Where that passagio exists is how we define whether the singer is a soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone, or bass (and all the various sub-divisions.
Tarja and the others you mention are pop singers. It's a great thing to be. I never denigrate pop singers or pop songs. A good pop song has an arc, maybe a whole story with a resolution, and it happens in four- to seven-minutes. Operas can take as many hours.
I listened to the Traviata telecast from the Met the other day. Diana Damrau was the Violetta, which is a tough role, as she is on for pretty much the whole three hours, singing and acting, and has to be able to do that without strain or damage to the voice.
Opera singing and pop singing are different *in kind*. They are different ways to sing. Some pop singers (especially country singers) will sometimes dip a bit into a chest voice, though it's never fully-supported the way opera singers voices are. Pop and opera are both art, they are both valid, they can both make you cry, and that's what it's all about.
I will say this: if you've never heard a good opera performance live, GO. The last time I brought a singer/songwriter friend to the opera, she was wrecked for days. I went to her gig the next day and she apologized to her audience for being out of it... then started to cry again... then pulled it together and played her gig. And that's what it's all about.
WW
"I'd crawl over twenty miles of bad country to listen to you pee in a tin cup on the telephone." (Jo Carol Pierce)
Hi Bill - I admit I have not been to an opera in many years so I have a couple of questionsFrom what I recall there are main parts and secondary and tertiary parts. Not all the singers sing for three solid hours - in the secondary roles someone may intermittently sing for a combined total of 30 minutes. Are these singers NOT opera singers because their secondary careers in secondary parts limited by time?
Looking up Nightwish the term more appropriate or common is "Symphonic Rock" not Opera Rock.
Tarja is said to be a "a professional classical lied singer .../...At eighteen, she moved to Kuopio to study at the Sibelius Academy."(She is a lyric soprano and has a vocal range of three octaves.)
So I guess I am not totally sure the difference between a lied singer and an opera singer.
I am more Marty Crane than Frasier Crane when it comes to Opera I must admit (Largely because I prefer to listen to music in English). I'm not much a fan of musicals on stage or on screen either.Thus I tend to respect Opera singers more than enjoy opera singers. I'd prefer listening to Eva Cassidy over Mariah Callas or Tarja or Julie London or Renata Tebaldi for example. Even though all of these singers may be viewed as better singers.
Edits: 04/07/19
"Are these singers NOT opera singers because their secondary careers in secondary parts limited by time?"
--> Nope. Time on stage has nothing to do with it. And there are, thankfully, few roles that keep any singer on stage and singing for most of the performance. Think about the stresses involved: the singer is filling a 3,000-seat house with sound generated from the larynx, which is about the size of a dime.
"a professional classical lied singer... Sibelius Academy"
--> Lied, or lieder is a genre of art song best known through pieces that set German poems to music. Singers who perform it are opera singers.
--> I'm happy to do a 180 here. I said she was a pop singer because I looked her up on youtube and that was what she was doing. Apparently she can do more.
WW
"I'd crawl over twenty miles of bad country to listen to you pee in a tin cup on the telephone." (Jo Carol Pierce)
I wonder what kind of extra training it requires for a very good singer to make the leap to opera and whether it is a born in quality (the shape of the larynx) or can it be learned?
For example - had Mariah Carey who was said (past tense) to have an elite voice and "operatic" could have been trained to have become an opera singer. Or Charlotte Church or Hayley Westenra?
Nature versus nurture kind of thing.
My my, the leaps are a-leaping!
Singing opera or lieder or other art songs is just a technique that uses the entire torso to produce the sound. Anyone can be taught. Not anyone, once taught, will have a voice you want to hear. I don't know if Mariah Carey, Charlotte Church, or Hayley Westenra (had to look that one up) would sound good as opera singers, and I don't care.
There are so many great opera singers today it's a shame so many go through their entire lives avoiding opera houses. Family Circle seats at the Met are mostly $30 and the sound is terrific up there. (Bring binoculars.)
The unamplified human voice is the greatest instrument ever. Go hear it at its best.
WW
"I'd crawl over twenty miles of bad country to listen to you pee in a tin cup on the telephone." (Jo Carol Pierce)
The $30 ticket isn't the problem - it's the $2000 air and hotel costs to get to the Met that is the problem :)Although I suppose I could venture out and see Don Giovani coming to Hong Kong.
Living in New York definitely has advantages. The double edged sword - if I taught in New York my crappy teacher pay would not let me afford to see plays. Living in Hong Kong I can afford to see them but they don't come around very often.
Edits: 04/08/19
That's often true, but not always. Lied singers can often be quite successful with relatively small voices. And sometimes, a singer of Lieder tries to make a leap to operatic singing, and it ends in disaster. I think of the famous Conrad L. Osborne review of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (known for his singing of Lieder) attempting to sing one of the heavy Wagnerian roles. He just didn't have sufficient voice for it, and, as Osborne reported, attempted to compensate "by blowing additional tone out of his ears" (!) with unfortunate results. ;-)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was one of the great operatic baritones. There is no "leap" from lieder to opera. It's more likely he had the wrong voice for it, rather than insufficient voice.
There *are* opera roles that are better suited to some singers and not others. Wiki for once gets it right: "He dominated both the opera and concert platform for over thirty years." The notion that he failed to make an imagined "leap" from lieder to opera is fantasy.
When a singer takes on a role ill-suited to his/her voice, the end will not be a happy one.
WW
"I'd crawl over twenty miles of bad country to listen to you pee in a tin cup on the telephone." (Jo Carol Pierce)
Sure, he could have restricted himself to Mozart roles and the like. But, in fact, Wikipedia has it wrong: there's no way he "dominated" opera in the sense of breadth of roles. To contend otherwise is just silly. And, yes, his voice was insufficient for certain roles, as Osborne correctly observed. And no amount of engineering balancing and tricks could fool a knowledgeable listener into thinking his voice was of sufficient weight for some of the operatic roles he presumed to sing.
Elly Ameling was another singer who wisely stuck to Lieder, except for some of the lighter Mozart operatic roles. (Wonderful lady BTW - I participated in one of her master classes.)
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