Bryan Caplan has been lending me CDs from the splendid series Lebendige Vergangenheit (and here), so I’ve been hearing or rehearing the best opera singers from the past. I’m no cultural pessimist, but I share the common opinion that opera singing has declined since, say, 1935. Why might this be?
1. Opera is less culturally central, and so the best voices do something else, or they are more likely to be narrow technicians rather than inspired musical creators and interpreters.
2. The best voices grow up watching TV, rather than reading Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann. The Zeitgeist makes them dull.
3. The average voice is much better, there is simply less individuality in approach and thus lower peaks. This sort of culturally mysterious process also seems to be governing fiction.
4. The best voices came from Germany and Italy and Austria, and World War II destroyed the musical and vocal training networks of those countries.
5. Conservatories and agents choke off musical individuality in the interests of technique and conformity.
6. Opera is now more heavily subsidized and more organizationally bureaucratic. The programs, while still excellent, are biased against individualistic, crowd-pleasing singers and biased toward singers who don’t make many identifiable mistakes. It’s a bit like the advent of peer review in economics.
Your thoughts?
Mr. Cowen, sometimes you have so good taste that it’s positively offensive. Well, at least I find something I can disagree with: I think the best voices were Russian. We have the lebendige vergangenheit for Zara Dolukhanova, and they simply don’t make contraltos like that anymore.
One thing that is amazing about the Russian singers is how long they lasted. For most opera singers in history, their careers go downhill after 40 for women, a little later for men, but have you seen the recording of Mark Reizen singing Gremin’s aria on his ninetieth birthday? And the women lasted almost as long.
They knew something about technique, those Russians, that we have forgotten today. Otherwise they couldn’t possibly have kept so good.
I’m serious. For most fields, we expect knowledge to be passed on to the next generation more or less improved, but the vocabulary for singing technique has been so vague and non-standardized that the opposite has happened for singing. Singing has relied 90% on an oral tradition (no pun intended!), so studying historical recordings is a “must” if you want to be truly good – at least that’s what my wife says, and it seems to have worked for her!
I flatly disagree that opera singing has declined.
First of all, an argument like this smacks of general nostalgia and the usual “the world’s gone to pot” argument.
Second, how much do we really know about the singers of those times? Sound recordings were not nearly as easy to make at the beginning of the twentieth century, so it can simply be the recordings that were made were of above-average performances. And there’s been decades to lose all the bad recordings and keep on listening to the good ones.
Third, the voices might not have deteriorated so much as the orchestra has changed. I don’t remember the specifics, but in her “Inner Voice” Renee Fleming writes a considerable amount about the increasing volume and pitch of the orchestra. It’s simply harder to hear the amazing voices over the pit nowadays.
Of course this doesn’t mean that the old classics aren’t classics – it’s just that our generation is just as capable of creating classics as any other.
7. Your memory of the past is skewed. Stumbling on Happiness, blah blah blah.
Electronic amplification.
I’m not sure decline is the right word, it’s always been a truism that quality of opera singing has peaks and valleys. Strong in the Caruso and slightly earlier era, strong again in the 50′s – 70′s, not so strong at other times like the 30′s. Also, different types of voice are emphasized at different times — the heavy sopranos of the 50′s Met are definitely out now.
And if you want to hear some really bizarre stuff, try the 1904 (?) recording of the once highly praised Gemma Dusignani (may have spelled the name wrong — but she sang the first modern dress Traviata) singing Sempre Libera — but apparently a contemporary described it as cruc’ e niente delicioso.
In response to Half Sigma, I have a working knowledge of Italian and German, so I can sort of follow opera in those languages, but I can still recall performances of opera in Russian and Czech that were unforgettable. It’s not the language is the artistic idiom and conventions one needs to appreciate. Rather like knowing the grammar of silent movies.
According to a Swedish singing teacher that once gave me a few lessons, the downfall of opera singing was the generalized use of tight jeans.
Godawful boring, pretentious music, sung in grating style… who listens to that crap anyhow?
Tyler,
What do you think about this?
Joshua Bell. ’nuff said.
Okay, maybe not enough. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a top violinist with an extremely rare violin
played an extremely difficult “very beautiful” piece at a train station and was promptly ignored.
Lesson: all of the quality of music above a (suprisingly low) threshold is socially constructed. Whether you
like it depends on how much you’re influenced by snobs, not your own independent judgment.
No one likes a sad ending these days, which disqualifies most of the operas from the 1800s.
See this: http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/Paden.html
Tyler,
Since 1935, we have had the great generation of the 1950s and 1960s: Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Mario Del Monaco, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Franco Corelli, Ettore Bastianini, Cesare Siepi. In Germany, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. In America, Richard Tucker, Leonard Warren, and Beverly Sills. If you want to go for elegance and style, Carlo Bergonzi, Alfredo Kraus, and Teresa Berganza. We have had the absolute and dominating voices of Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballe in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the Rossini Renaissance stemmed from the unique singing by Samuel Ramey, Marilyn Horne, Chris Merritt, and Rockwell Blake, in addition to the aforementioned Caballe and Sutherland. What about Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras? For the Wagnerians, Nilsson and Windgassen. From Eastern Europe: Nicolai Ghiaurov and Boris Christoff. Currently on stage: Mariella Devia and Edita Gruberova. Currently on stage, and likely to last in the foreseeable future: Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay.
I would agree, only to some extent, on #5 and #6 as drivers for #3. But overall, I think we still have a strong case for cultural optimism here. Opera is a very resilient form of art. You may want to rethink your assumptions. I will be glad to send a few recording your way if it can help.
but I share the common opinion that opera singing has declined since, say, 1935. Why might this be?
How can we begin to tell? Recording technology has changed beyond belief since then.
Now, what is true is that the sound of recordings has changed. I have a friend who hates classical CDs because CD encoding involves cutting the waveforms, and CD production tries to be very smooth.
Though I don’t feel so strongly about it, I also like the feeling I get of ’30s recordings. I wonder if what’s happening is that classical recordings sound better to many with whatever kind of aural fuzz recordings from the 30s had.
It’s true that opera singing has steadily declined in popularity over the years. It’s just a boring undertaking that not many people these days can appreciate. It also doesn’t help that most children with any kind of talent these days never sing without with some kind of instrumentation behind them.
Interesting points. The problem of nepotism has also worsened. Another problem is that many of the opera theaters are compromising their architecture for the sake of selling more tickets. The metropolitan opera has become a much wider theater, for the sake of fitting more seats, but as a result, acoustically, it is almost impossible to be heard without a microphone, so most of the singers (contrary to what the met will tell you) are using microphones, and the dependency on microphones compromises the standards for technique greatly. This is just one example of how technique is being compromised. The reality is, if your technique is very very strong, you don’t think about it, and it allows you to interpret with passion, and really exercise your artistry. But if there are not standards for proper technique, the singers are too busy struggling with their technique to interpret the roles in such a way that will move the audience.
Have you heard Kiri TeKanewa? She’s excellent, in my book anyway, and she’s still alive and singing as far as I know.
The Golden Age of Singing defines the Art of Singing. Voices were projected without FORCING or SHOUTING, as heard on the contemporary opera stage which is notable for its lack of artistry. The universities/colleges, impressarios are all responsible for the decline of singing. Listen to CDS of John Charles Thomas, Stracciari, Gigli, Schipa, who had a ‘small’ voice, but one who could paint a picture with his phrasing also being an artist about Gigli stated, “All singers should take their hats off to Schipa,” and so many others Elisabeth Rethberg, Muzio, Thebom, Pinza, Ada Sari, Nezhdanova, Vallin,Georges Thill, Heldy, Tibbett, Capsir. Robin, Kerstin Thorberg,Flagstad, the list is continuous.The ability to hear the “frequencies” in these singers of the past is revealing. A great violinist can be heard in the last row. The voice should match that approach. Singing does not exist today. Singers are selected by their appearance and power, which is a cover for a lack of knowledge. There is also a profit motive to sell sets, costumes, lighting, “enhanced electronics,” and contemporary operas, of no worth. Are the latter not extremely lucrative for composers (?) and opera companies? The 2.5% of the public who attend operatic performances, are unsuspecting. Read “The Decline of Bel Canto” by Leonardo di Ciampa and books by Herbert Caesari about the Vocal Art.
I do agree that opera has declined over the years. However, in listening ot various singers of the past–Muzio, Galli-Curci, Pons, Peters, Nilsson, and so on–I think that we’ve not only been told to sing louder and louder but we’ve also been encouraged to sing darker and darker in order to achieve that illusive chiaroscuro.
It could be the recording quality, but I don’t think that by today’s standards muzio would’ve sung half the roles she did simply due to her voice not being big/dark/whatever enough.
My comment is really way out in left feild. I just wanted to say how much I love the videos with FREDDY MERCERY. My heart fills with joy seeing him do something he was so proud of the duet with you Ms. Montserrat and my eyes fill with tears because I love him and wish he was still with us. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND IF YOU CAN WOULD YOU E=MAIL ME WITH YOU THOUGHTS OF HIM.
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