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World of difference and a wonderful showcase of growth! 😊

Ya got a new sub

This is a fascinating thread, and for what it's worth I am 53 and came back to singing only in the past few years. I can hit notes I could *never* as a tenor in his 20s and 30s, and I chalk it up to knowing my body and not treating my voice as a Faberge egg. Snging is an athletic endeavor and when I treat it as such, I give myself permission to take chances. Coming back to music in midlife was one of the best things I ever did for myself. And fun fact: my mother and Beverly Sills both studied with Estelle!

Would you do a video of Sumi Jo? As she has one of the best techniques

For me the greatest of all=Mirella Freni!

You have a picture of Caballe on the front, but considering she sang from 23 to 49 exceptionally well, and only then started to lose it, I think she did quite well for herself.

it is sad to read "Some people still have giant careers, even with their technical issues" because technical issue will shorten their career. sigh. A lot of the theaters nowadays, MET in specific, want "Super Star" with strong social media presence rather than "opera singer", we will have less and less operas to go to

Why did my brain immediately notice the clorox wipes 🤣🤣

Go Evannnnnn 🎉 I'm finally doing my homework and binging your channel 😂🙈

🙄🙄🙄🙄I wish ppl would leave Netrebko the fuck alone…she wasn’t going to stay in pretty lyric roles.

The ending of the Tebaldi aria in that recording (not heard here) is ecstatic. Actually in part thanks to the imperfect sound which makes the percussion sound more desperate! czcams.com/video/wOk0TU4-pQA/video.html&ab_channel=adolfocagorno Would have liked to hear how long the applause went on for.

I really loved the perspective of this video. I definitely think it’s a combination of both; but technique is crucial. I had lousy technique for a long time and the moment I really started focusing on it is the moment my voice really began to blossom. I still have a way to go ((don’t we all)) and my teacher is very strict about repertoire which isn’t always a bad thing; I’ve sung a lot of different rep from Rossini mezzos to currently a full lyric soprano role (which is where my voice lies) and I’ve been okay singing both rep; I get cast as a mezzo very often for the sake of having a strong chest voice though I’m very much a soprano. Picking the right repertoire is important but when you have good, solid technique, it allows your repertoire to expand. Really great video!

The worst wobble I've ever heard in a soprano is from Maria Callas, when singing loud at the top of her voice. BTW, a vibrato is the natural pulsating of the voice on the same note. If it wobbles from note to note, it isn't a vibrato, it's a tremolo.

So grateful to youtube algorithm that brought your channel to me. Thank you so much for your enlightenment. As an amateur, it puzzled me so much about the fancy of Nett and now I know. I only heard voice going from bad to worse. Could not believe the first part was from hers. Can't agree with you more. not the choice of repertoire but the flaw in the techniques.

wobble is not a technical term. TREMOLO is the term.

Altri motivi possono essere quelli che toccano i nostri sentimenti, i pianti, le urla, tutto fa, e incide tantissimo sulle corde vocali, quindi non solo una tecnica sbagliata o un repertorio non idoneo😢

Speculators like you are messing with the young people's minds, offering them easy results with easy "technique tricks" just to get their money. That's why it is full with fake singers on stage today. Shame on you and the all others like you. Instead of "trying to help" people to solve their vocal problems, show to the world how should real singing should sound like with your voice.

Thank you for this very informative comparision!

Entonces todas deberíamos sonar a sopranos ligeras, haciendo repertorio de dramáticas? jejej es lo que entendí...

At her peak Eva Marton was untouchable

It is not fair to compare Stemme in the late state of her career (aged 53 by the time of her Met-broadcast of Turandot) to Dimitrova and Marton at their peak. I heard both live singing Turandot relatively late in their careers. Dimitrova was by that time skipping all the C's and had a quick tremolo (which you can hear in your recording as well) due to too much pressure on her voice (that caused her to pause for almost a year in the early eighties (around age 40) due to voice issues and vocal cord surgery). Marton had a huge, slow tremolo throughout the last twenty years of her career, and sang constantly too low. You can her early signs of this in her Met -"Turandot" (1987, at age 44), and more so in her second "Turandot"- studio recording (at age 48). czcams.com/video/4wgvV71ybUM/video.html. In her return to the Met 97, she could no longer sustain the high notes properly. The tiring of a voice, due to the constant demands of this heavy repertoire is a completely normal process. Listen to Leider, Tebaldi, Varnay, Callas, Scotto, Lindholm, Behrens, Marc, Linda Watson, Herlitzius, Voigt, Merbeth ....to be continued. Nilsson, of course, was a unique exception of a truly dramatic voice, starting her career relatively late and blessed with an incredible technique plus very strong vocal chords. There is an interesting remark by Christa Ludwig, who had vocal issues throughout her whole, long, career, whose phoniater compared her slim, sensible vocal cords to that of Nilsoon. He pointed out, that Nilsson's vocal chords were exceptionally and uniquely strong and thick.

And yet Eva Marton started out strong - singing definitive Toscas and Turandots, but she developed a horrible warble and lost the qualities that originally made one believe she was the heir apparent to Nilsson - which , naturally no one is because Nilsson’s voice and artistry as a Dramatic Soprano was a gift and is unparalleled - never to be equalled or surpassed…… We thought perhaps Nina Stemme, but no.

German singer is Anne Roselle, my favorite Turandot 🙇

Wow, I couldn't even tell the first two clips were Netrebko until I heard Vieni t'affretta. I forgot what she used to sound like in her early career. World of difference, but yes, even early on you can clearly hear the technical issues waiting to develop into a monster.

This is quite stupid, amateur analysis.

This video is so important! It's 99% a matter of technique and not repertoire. Great singers of the past sang a Wide repertoire. Caballé was a lyric but she sang Norma or Salomé! Maybe not her best roles (that is personal taste). Steber sang also a lot of different roles and they could do it because of their well developed technique. Thank you for the video! ❤

I think the speed and wideness of my vibrato is usually just right, but I've always had the tendency to go a little bit flat sometimes. I feel like it's my vibrato dragging the pitch down. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's enough that it's bothersome. I think it's less of a problem with the vibrato action and more than I need to think "let it spin upwards" more consistently. Thoughts anyone?

Vaya!, veo que hay mucho experto en voces operisticas por ahí.....sólo hace falta darles una excusa para que suelten todas sus sandeces.Que facil y gratuito resulta criticar.

Have you heard Radvanosky much in the theater? The voice is enormous, and commands every dynamic to a shimmering pp. The sound itself is an acquired taste, and she does not have a firmly settled ‘voce di petto’, but currently she is the only singer I would travel to hear. Hearing voices in the theater is the only way to make really informed judgments.

Sills’ husband was extremely wealthy, so this idea of her wrecking her voice for money is absurd. What she said was she was willing to sacrifice a longer career for the artistic possibilities that heavier operas like Norma and Roberto Devereux gave her.

How long does it usually take for a singer to perfect their voice? I want to learn opera and I’m in my mid 20’s

Thanks for this video. Was the last German singer Frida Leib?

People love to bash Anna Netrebko. It's quite boring at this stage.

Great video! You're shining a strong light into some dark corners. Keep it up!

For an example of using vibrato as an expressive tool, varying the speed is Lawrence Tibbett. Genius. Vibrato can be controlled to some extent. And it's an indicator of vocal health

" she has a wide vibrato and that gown makes it seem even wider"

Someone said "who can make music, simply is the one who does it, who can make it a little bit worse, is the one who teaches it, who makes it even worse is the one who manages it, and who is not able, just criticises it" this video has clearly been made by someone who doesn't sing, it is so obvious. If this person is singing, that means he/she doesn't truly make music

Thanks for this. It is overdue. Terrible vibrato is my constant complaint, especially against today's singers. Whether the vibrato is too wide and slow or too fast and veering sharp, the tone does not zero in on the pitch. It is bad enough when one is aware of what the note should be, but, in unfamiliar music, the ear is baffled by too much noise around the pitch. It constitutes musical failure, and, along with other elements of poor tone production, hammy acting, inappropriate casting, and way too much post-modern staging, it is killing opera.

In the early days of modern music, vibrato was considered to be just another ornament, both for the voice and on the violin. It was therefore only applied to certain notes for expressive purposes. Later, it went from being intentional to systematic and, for some singers, beyond their vocal control. I will always appreciate more musicians who are able to control and vary this ornament according to the expressiveness of the music, than those who apply vibrato in automatic mode.

I was expecting good technique from your videos but this isn’t good or a natural sound

Some names come to mind... Katia Ricciarelli, José Carreras (who were both mentored by Karajan who encouraged them to sing rep beyond their voices). Also Jerry Hadley comes to mind, who at one point said that opera houses wanted him to sing lighter - and who later on in his career moved into surprising, heavier repertoire with a voice that, from what I heard, for a variety of reasons had lost the quality and shine of his heydays. Listen to a recording of him in the 80's, mid 90's, late 90's and early 00's and the differences are very obvious. Unfortunately he wasn't able to cope, unlike someone like Villazon who's had tremendous vocal challenges as well, but seems to have a found a fulfilling second career.

You should have used Callas as your example. Love her drama and attention to the music, but I still find many of her recordings difficult to listen to. She would have been a perfect example for this exercise.

It's Anne Roselle (thanks someone in the comments!) and Nilsson for me. Great singing.

She never developed the chest voice (thyro aretenoid muscles that brace the thought open) and never weaved it up throughout her entire range. It takes time to learn that. Pavarotti did a demo one time and said it might take you 10 years to take a good belted sound and have it be deep enough to be a great sound. Because of microphones, singers have been allowed to cheat and to not have to develop their instruments properly. Most singers aren’t sending the sound out into the hall these days. They’re giving a private concert inside of their own skulls to themselves and ruining their voices at the same time. The sound is swallowed, muffled, strident, wobbly, and wrong. Their posture is completely wrong, too; they don’t establish the acoustic box underneath their voice and sing on that air. They’re singing collapsed all the time and grinding their cords because of it. If you watch Birgit Nilsson, Mario Del Monaco, and Ghena Dimitrova, you’ll see how they stand and breath. They breathe all the way up to their first ribs establishing the acoustic box, stay upright, not pointing their heads downwards, and even lean back a bit to get the pipe as long as possible for high notes.

Hi there. I'm an opera student at state conservatory. I'm learning garcia method and I wanna use that echol. But I'm trapped between old and new technique. I see methalic, voices. They can acting with that, they voices are big and strong. Well, I want it too. To be honest the garcia method is not simple. I know. If we learn this technique, we have to find true teacher. I'm still searching, what is the true method? I'm 20 now. And I met many teachers, but at this point everyone saying different things, unfortunately. Not so diffrent by the way, they are talking about same situation but also they are not. Someone says, you have to use core area. Someone says we have three rezonator areas. head, larynx, diaphragm...someone says just two. diap and head. I don't understand really I'm gonna cry. Teacher's technique is everything for you because they learn something and teach you the same thing. Leyla Gencer was so lucky...She is my queen and she was the queen in opera world. I'm from Turkey by the way. Hiagain... I'm Azra Ada Akan. In the future, I want to be a great opera singer. I can't speaking english very well because it's 03.08 am here...I'm still working :(

After 15 years! You are absurd.

Muchas veces el vibrato sale de forma natural. No debes estudiar para tenerlo. simplemente tu voz vibra sola en ciertas notas.

Using Caballe to end the video was awesome.

Una de las causas es que todo envejece. Fin.

Thanks for this video. Particularly singers are reluctant to acknowledge any fault on their sides for their vocal problems. It’s quite sad and painful.