Beverly Sills (American Soprano)
Beverly Sills, (Belle Miriam Silverman) was born in 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Ukrainian immigrants, and as a child Sills was exposed to many languages at home, including French, Yiddish, and Russian, along with her native English. This exposure gave her a very natural facility with foreign languages, which was helpful in her later career.
Sills was precocious in the extreme as a child. Starting by winning a child beauty contest at the age of 3, she began performing on the radio at the age of 4 as "Bubbles" Silverman. She started taking lessons with Estelle Liebling, and by 1937, when she was 8 years old, she had appeared in a film, released the following year, which fortunately is preserved and viewable on Youtube. Because it tells us so very much about her, I think that here is a good place to see it. The film is called "Uncle Sol Solves It," and it is far more than a vaudeville shtick because of the difficulty of the piece, and the serious way Sills sings. Notice the extraordinary presence and charm of this little girl! Also, watch the video to the very end and notice Uncle Sol's final advice to her.
Now how adorable is that!? The amazing thing is that she handles the fioratura quite well! Also, she has been taught, or naturally understands, what the great bel canto tenor Fernando de Lucía once told his student Georges Thill: "...per cantare bene, bisogna aprire la bocca!!" Which little Bubbles did! It's not hard to see why they called her "Bubbles," is it:-) Also, one other thing needs to be noticed. Did you notice Uncle Sol's advice at the end? Stay right here and study in this country., no matter how hanxious your hancestors are to do otherwise:-) .....we have great teachers here. That was one of the first things I noticed. It is important, because this was the grateful and patriotic attitude of so many at that time. The culture these Jewish immigrants, largely from Russia and Eastern Europe, brought to this country was enormous, beyond measure. You can see it in Sill's life-long attitude and work, and also in the attitudes of Jan Peerce, Roberta Peters, and many others. What they went on to contribute—and still do—is a story in itself, one of which every American can be proud, and for which all should be grateful.
Gianfranco Cecchele: A Great and Under-Publicized Tenor
Gianfranco Cecchele ws born in 1938 in Padua, Italy. Even as a child he showed a precocious interest in opera and operatic singing. His interest was steadfast, and by 1963, when he was 25 years old, he decided to give it a try, and took some voice lessons. His teachers were impressed with his vocal potential, and in the same year he won a singing contest organized by the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. His debut followed quickly, and in the following year he debuted at the Teatro Bellini in Catania, in a relatively obscure work, a one-act pastoral poem by Giuseppe Mulè entitled La Zolfara.However, possessed of a heroic voice, he quickly (within the same year, actually) moved on to La Scala to sing no less than the leading role in Wagner's Rienzi! Next—and this is all in 1964—on to Rome and Aida. Clearly, this young tenor with a stentorian voice was making a quick and powerful impression on audiences and critics alike. In rapid succession he accumulated a repertoire that included, in addition to Rienzi and Rhadames, Don Carlo, Turridu, Don Alvaro and Calaf. In the following year he appeared at the Paris Opera, with Maria Callas, in Norma. It is hard to imagine a more rapid rise in a very demanding repertoire, and that of course was a double-edged sword. He was, after all, only in his 20's! He reputation spread throughout Europe and he gave 241 performances between 1964 and 1969. Of course, the inevitable happened, and toward the end of the period, around '67 and '68, he seriously strained his voice, causing vocal inflammation. Too many big roles too quickly. He had to quit singing entirely at that point, at least for a while, to undergo a long and painful recuperation from swollen and seriously strained vocal musculature.
He temporarily dropped off the map, so to speak, and not much was heard of him. After a few years, however, he was re-establishing himself, and adding some less demanding roles to his repertoire and singing less often, having learned the lesson that many tenors do. Had he displayed that wisdom earlier on, there would likely not have been an interruption in his career. Also, the fact that he sang very largely in Italy made him an opera singer who, while enormously popular there, was not much known in America. This is also the case with two other fine Italian tenors, Mario Filippeschi and Salvatore Fisichella. (Giuseppe Giacomini, also less well known here than he should have been, was nevertheless very active outside Italy.)
Listening to a bit of Cecchele erases all doubts about the greatness of the voice and his abilities as a singer and actor. One of his signature roles, from the beginning, had been Calaf, and here is a superb rendition of "Non Piangere, Liu"
Isn't that wonderful! The clarity of the voice, along with the richness and fullness, is positively thrilling. This is a great voice, no doubt about it. And, not coincidentally, Cecchele was a handsome man, and restrained in his acting. This is a 1968 TV video, when he would have been 30. I do not have sufficient information to know if this was during the period of recuperation from his vocal troubles or not; judging from the relative ease of the production, I would assume he was learning how to take it a little easier...there does not appear to be any stress in evidence here.
The Great Jacques Urlus
Jacques Urlus was born in 1867 near Aachen, and grew up in Tilburg, in The Netherlands. As was—and is— so often the case with great artists, entertainers and sports figures, his family was poor, so much so that they could not afford to give him any musical training. The result of this is that Urlus was essentially self-taught, and a mighty job he did of it, for he was to become an extraordinary technician, with a near-flawless vocal technique that made it possible for him to sing Mozart, Wagner (with which he was particularly associated), and Lieder. In a word, like Franz Völker and Leo Slezak, he could sing anything he put his mind to. Essentially, it is always the same voice, and it always works well! More on this subject in a moment.His debut was at the Amsterdam Opera House, in 1894, in a small part. After singing around Amsterdam for a while, he had the chance to go to Hannover, Germany, where he appeared in Lohengrin, to considerable acclaim. He sang for Cosima Wagner, but was not at that time given any opportunities at Bayreuth. So, it was back to The Netherlands, where he continued singing where he could. His next big move was in 1900, to Leipzig, which became his artistic base for many years. Debuts from farther afield soon came, and he went on to perform in Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt and other houses in Germany and Austria. He also appeared at Covent Garden at this time. Finally, in 1911, he did get the chance to go to Bayreuth, where he sang Siegmund , which was well received.
It was on to the Met the next year, and Urlus was now established, having sung in all the major Northern opera houses. I do not know that he ever sang publicly in any language except German, or, I assume, Dutch in some of the performances in The Netherlands. After the Met engagement, it was back to Germany, where he essentially spent the rest of his career.
Urlus is a good example of what I talk about often in these pages, and that is the unsatisfying vagueness of our current terminology for voice types. He was a great tenor. To me that sums it up. We are so besotted with ever-finer vocal definitions, that they lose meaning after while: Heldentenor, heroic tenor (the same thing) dramatic tenor (the same thing), spinto tenor, leggiero tenor, lyric tenor, etc. ad infinitum. They are all in fact tenors, men with high singing voices. We burden our vocabulary with endless definitions, to almost no avail. Most of these definitions, when you stop and think about it, describe the color, size, intensity and flexibility of the voice. It does not invent a new category every time one tenor sounds different from another. Let's look more closely at Urlus, a good example of what I am talking about. Commonly called a "Heldentenor," a term I somewhat uneasy with in his case, here is his rendition of a popular Mozart aria, Tamino's "Dies Bildness ist bezaubernd Schön"
It is beautiful, and reminds me of what a well-known New York opera coach once told me: "Everybody likes to hear these great Mozart arias, but they don't want to hear a church tenor singing them." Indeed. Urlus' voice sounds different here, of course, from that of Fritz Wunderlich, Jussi Björling, or Alfredo Kraus, but so what? They are different people, each with his own voice. If it resembles anyone else's rendition, it would be Franz Völker's. Both were eminently successful singing Mozart. And Wagner!
Léopold Simoneau: The Art of Elegant Lyricism
Léopold Simoneau was born in St. Flavien, Québec. After beginning studies in Québec City and Montreal, he went to New York to study with the well-known American tenor and teacher Paul Althouse. His first important debut was in 1949 at the Opéra Comique in Paris, in Gounod's Mireille. His lovely, elegant singing was an instant hit with the French, and in the next two years he went on to debuts at the Paris Opera, Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Vienna and Milan. He was quickly establishing a reputation not only as a brilliant Mozartean tenor, but as a near-perfect exponent of the elegant style of older opera in general, including Gluck's Orfeo, Delibes' Lakmé, and Rameau's Les Indes galantes. In the US, he sang at the Chicago Lyric from 1954 to 1961, and one season at the Met, as don Ottavio, in the 1960's. New York was not a fertile artistic field for elegant tenor singing in the Franch style at that time, being heavily invested in Italian verismo opera. Simoneau's superb lyric craftsmanship won him many honors in Canada, and he was, during his entire career, greatly respected for his musicianship and sense of high style.His sense of style and finely tuned singing technique is something easily appreciated from hearing it, as opposed to someone talking about it! Here is the lovely "Un'aura amorosa," from Mozart's Così Fan Tutte:
Isn't that lovely! The legato line is perfect, and the smoothness of his singing is truly astonishing. This little aria is much trickier artistically that it might seem. The back and forth movement over the passagio can be treacherous, and it is not at all easy to maintain a smooth legato in the process. This is exemplary Mozart singing, and in fact Simoneau was praised throughout his career as one of the very greatest of Mozart singers.
Ezio Pinza: One Of The Greatest Singing Basses
Italian-American Bass Ezio Pinza was born in Rome in 1892, and grew up in Ravenna. Like so many famous artists, he was born in poverty. Such individuals often strive to succeed in sports or show business, largely because their poverty frees them from ordinary middle-class expectations, and, to put it simply, they can afford to take the chance. He showed musical promise early on, and was able to take some lessons at Bologna's Martini Conservatory. His operatic debut was in Norma in 1914.His operatic career began in earnest after WWI, when he made his La Scala debut, in 1919, under Arturo Toscanini. From the very beginning, his voice was uncommonly smooth and beautiful, a great asset for a singing bass, especially one with matinee idol looks, which Pinza possessed in abundance. His lack of formal education meant that he was not a particularly well-schooled musician. He was not able to read music, for example, but he had a very sharp ear, and could memorize music accurately, even to the point of being able to hear—and absorb—stylistic nuances. His musical instincts were superb. The result of this was that he began his musical career to considerable acclaim, coming across to audiences and critics alike as a very good-looking and sophisticated singer and actor, with a brilliant and beautiful voice. His career soared as a result, and by 1926 he had been invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Engagements at Covent Garden and Salzburg soon followed. He was particularly successful in the Italian repertoire, including Bellini, Verdi and Donizetti.
Like other Italians before him, he felt most at home in America, where he was an idol of the huge Italian-American audience that had so warmly embraced Caruso, Galli-Curci, Martinelli, and so many others. He was a favorite at the Met, where he sang for 22 years. In 1948 he switched gears, so to speak, and embarked upon a successful Broadway career, becoming a popular and well known matinee idol, largely through the success he enjoyed in South Pacific and, later, Fanny. It was in South Pacific, however, that he first became known by America's popular music audience, and it brought him great fame. He was frequently heard and seen on radio, TV and in the movies, and found acceptance as an essentially popular singer. His was one of the broader and more successful American singing careers.
Here is the quintessential Pinza in one of his most popular operas, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, singing "Non Piu Andrai."
Notice the extreme smoothness of the voice. The wonderful thing about Pinza (inter alia!) is that he was first and foremost a singer. He put the "singing" in "singing bass." Many, less endowed vocally, will sometimes bark their way through even lyric arias like this. Pinza never did that. He was always the consummate singer and musician.
In the Italian repertoire, Pinza was very much at home, and the opportunity to display his elegant and musical singing was never greater than in operas such as Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. Here is the beautifully dramatic "Il Lacerato Spirito."
It is hard to imagine this aria better sung. It displays Pinza's operatic gifts perfectly. It is all there: the musicality, the stylistics, and—always—the flawless technique and beautiful, flowing voice.
Jonas Kaufmann: The All-Purpose Voice
Jonas Kaufmann was born in Munich, in 1969. He started his musical studies as a piano student while still a small child. He began vocal training at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich when he was 20, singing small roles at the Bavarian State Opera at the same time. He ran into vocal problems as a young singer, but had the good fortune to make friends with an American baritone, Michael Rhodes, who showed him a proper way to sing, and Kaufmann responded quickly and successfully to Rhodes' suggestions. His professional debut was in 1994 in Saarbrüken, and he was very soon invited to sing throughout Germany. International debuts followed in quick succession, and a major career soon blossomed for him. Because he is so well known and actively singing, there is no need to speak much of his career, since such information is easily obtained. In this case, we may go directly to a discussion of the artistry.
The most amazing thing about this popular and successful tenor is that he sings an extraordinarily wide repertoire, from Mozart to Wagner, and all the bread and butter spinto roles in between! This is most unusual, and made possible to a large extent by his vocal technique, which is essentially Italian. In the past, German trained tenors were often accused of throaty and muscular singing, a phenomenon almost certainly related to the German language. Most operas performed in Germany are performed in German, and that has implications for vocal production. Kaufmann, on the other hand, sings in a dark and covered way reminiscent of Domingo, and—even more—Giuseppe Giacomini. Kaufmann is basically a spinto tenor, and this has opened the whole range of popular Italian operas to him. Other German singers have managed the Mozart/Wagner leap, but fewer have, in the process, shone in the Verdi/Puccini middle. Here is an example of Kaufmann in a very light and lyrical piece from Così Fan Tutte, a repertoire more characteristically inhabited by lyric and leggiero tenors:
This is absolutely impeccable singing! It is beautiful, the line is there, the Italian is perfect, and the performance, as I see and hear it, is flawless. Yes, the voice is darker than one usually expects in this aria, but so what? I have always contended that sub-categories of voice genres are ultimately a bit silly. How about "tenor." It works for me!
Bel Canto And Verismo: A Matter of Style and Vogue
[I am pleased to present for a second time our guest writer Mr. Gioacchino Fiurezi Maragioglio, Italian industrialist from Naples, opera critic, and musical historian. His photograph appears to the left. Mr. Fiurezi Maragioglio was an intimate friend of the great Italian tenor Giacomo Lauri Volpi, and is a life-time subscriber to the Teatro San Carlo, one of the world's historically great opera houses. Mr. Fiurezi Maragioglio possesses that rarest of critical gifts; a vast knowledge of the subject matter and a straightforward and common-sense style of presentation. The following piece, on the vexed issue of bel canto vs. verismo, is one of the best and most convincing essays I have read on this subject.]
Because it was created in Italy, it is Italian opera that enjoys the greatest historical heritage of all the different and worthy national schools. Like all living art, Italian opera has continued to change and develop since the first works were premiered in the early seventeenth century. Perhaps the most notable are those composed between 1875 and 1920; the period when, following the overwhelming successes of Giuseppe Verdi, the giovane scuola, or new school of Italian composers tried to fill the enormous hole left by this god of Italian Romanticism.
Status as a pre-or post-Verdi composer is a very different thing. Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Pacini and others are widely recognized as belonging to the bel canto school. For post-Verdians it is not so easy. Many composers of the giovane scuola, such as Zandonai, are immediately classed as verismo composers and viewed in the same light as Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Giordano.
The grand, noble and elegant style of the bel canto composers had been in fashion for more than half a century when the music dramas of Wagner began to attract serious attention from Italian composers and critics. His ideas about tessitura, musical motifs, orchestration and libretti became influential across Italy, even if the length of his works did not!
Around the same time, (1875), Georges Bizet premiered Carmen, a work both popular and interesting which also came to influence the giovane scuola. The results are well known. In 1890, three years prior to Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, Pietro Mascagni’s one- act opera Cavalleria Rusticana was premiered. Works by Giordano, Leoncavallo, Cileà, Alfano, Catalani and also Puccini followed over the next thirty years. This was the age of verismo.
This new style was very different from the bel canto style that Verdi had adapted and championed throughout his long career. The traditional virtues of clean attack, long legato lines, elegant and intelligent phrasing, coloratura passages, very high notes, and celebrated bravura pieces ceased to be fashionable.
The post-Verdian ( and specifically verismo) vocal line takes a much simpler path, generally with greater emphasis on declaiming the text than with executing florid music, and with emphasis moved away from the upper register to the upper-middle. Very few notes above high C, either tenor or soprano, were written post-1880. There were some, certainly, but few compared to the bel canto period, which favored the top.
Verismo composers generally provided thicker orchestration than was customary for the bel canto period, and thus singers tended to be trained to focus on projection and volume in the middle of the voice more than on agility and the upper register. The stories and characters found in verismo scores are typically passionate and viril; people in the grip of powerful and often violent emotions and circumstances. Some singers who appeared in verismo roles created superb and affecting characterizations alongside excellent vocalism. Others essentially let vocalism take over, giving their all in the performance. Some voices could sustain this treatment, while others could not.
In this interregnum, say between 1890 and 1910, some singers, such as Fernando de Lucia and Nellie Melba, continued to sing with their earlier vocal technique (which had permitted them to sing roles such as Almaviva and Lucia) while also singing roles such as Canio and Mimì. Others, including some that became extremely famous, rejected their bel canto training for the verismo approach, with varying degrees of success.
The older school of singing was never totally eclipsed by verismo, and singers such as Giovanni Malipiero and Toti dal Monte continued to sing with bel canto technique and teach this to their numerous students, who adapted it to suit their own vocal facilities. The verismo school produced many excellent artists, such as Licia Albanese, considered the greatest Violetta of the `40s and `50s, who, however, also sang Cio-Cio San so well that it was considered her signature role. She sang all roles to the best of her ability, even when that meant the transposition and adaptation of the coloratura in the Act I finale of La Traviata, for which her voice was untrained and unsuited.
Like all vogues, verismo faded and departed, having become thoroughly old-fashioned by the 1930's. As the new generation of singers such as Zinka Milanov and Jussi Björling began to train and then establish careers, their teachers essentially taught a technique that would be useful in singing a wide repertoire of congenial roles that had come to comprise the standard repertoire: in other words, the “middle” between bel canto and verismo: largely late Verdi and the most popular of Puccini's works.
Style had triumphed over vocalism. In 1954, when Zinka Milanov sang the title role of Norma at the Metropolitan Opera, the critics were cruel. Once again the fashion had changed, and now Norma had to be sung as Callas did it: lots of voice with lots of bel canto ability. Milanov, of course, did not pretend to be a bel canto stylist. She sang Norma as herself: the finest dramatic soprano of her time, and she sang it very well, transposing where necessary and lingering on few of her top Cs, but providing all the voice needed for this challenging role.
Indeed, singers like Milanov are often accused of taking a “hammer and tongs” approach to bel canto roles. Mirto Picchi, a great dramatic tenor and master vocalist, frequently partnered Callas in the challenging roles of bel canto, such as Pollione in Norma. Filippeschi was another. These singers were not concerned with missing some piani markings or taking fortissimo high notes or applying portamento or rubato differently than bel canto stylists might have. What they were concerned with was providing a vocally solid performance that met the challenges of these roles. Of course there are compromises, but that is the nature of performance. What good is a Pollione who follows the score faithfully and executes florid music easily but cannot be heard?
Bel canto and verismo represent two different styles and repertoires of Italian opera that must coexist. One is not better than the other. Everybody has favorites. All that we can ask for is understanding and education to flavor the appreciation and assessment of operas and their performers.
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