Where Have The Great Big Wagner Voices Gone?

Andrew Moravcsik

Many critics, fans and opera professionals agree that the heights attained

by Wagner and Verdi singers in the “Golden Age” of the mid-20

century

have eroded.

Today most perceive a severe shortage of great spinto and

dramatic opera voices—the vocal types for which Wagner, Verdi, Puccini

and other late 19

or early 20

century composers wrote most of their

music. These are “great big voices”: the most powerful, expressive and

weighty in opera, able to project over a massive orchestra for three to six

hours at a stretch, while maintaining the sharp edge, dark resonance

and precise diction that express bold and direct emotions.

In the area of Wagner performance, many have sounded the

alarm about this recent decline. Nina Stemme, one of today’s ﬁnest

Brünnhildes, speaks for many when she describes Wagnerian standards

seventy-ﬁve years ago: “Flagstad and Melchior really ruined everything

for later Wagner singers. No one today comes close: we can only modestly

attempt to approach the score in other ways.”

At the Metropolitan Opera,

a house that consistently attracts the world’s best singers, the late 1930s

and early 1940s are almost unanimously viewed, in Paul Jackson’s

words, as a “concurrence of artists and repertory which ﬁnds no equal

within memory.” Wagnerian singers of this period are “benchmarks of

performance history.”

Table 1 compares cast lists during ﬁve three-year

periods over the past century—illustrating how, with a few individual

exceptions, quality has generally declined.

This paper presents preliminary results from the ﬁrst academic

study to examine this perceived decline. It seeks to answer two

questions. Is there really an unprecedented shortage of Wagner singers

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Table 1: Top Wagnerian Singers at the Metropolitan Opera in Five Eras

1933-1935 1967-1969

1989-1991 1999-2001

2011-2013

Dramatic

Sopranos

Kirsten Flagstad, Anny

Konetzni, Marjorie

Lawrence, Frida Leider,

Maria Müller, Göta

Ljungberg

Birgit Nilsson Hildegard Behrens,

Gwyneth Jones, Waltraud

Meier, Deborah Polaski

Jane Eaglen, Deborah

Polaski, Violeta Urmana,

Katerina Dalayman,

Deborah Voigt

Young Dramatic

Sopranos

Lotte Lehmann, Maria

Müller, Elisabeth

Rethberg

Régine Crespin, Ludmila

Dvořáková, Leonie

Rysanek

Anne Evans, Mechthild

Gessendorf, Karita

Mattila , Jessye Norman

Solveig Kringelborn,

Karita Mattila, Nina

Stemme, Deborah Voigt

Eva-Maria Westbroek

Mezzo-Sopranos

Rose Bampton Christa Ludwig,

Josephine Veasey

Helga Dernesch, Christa

Ludwig, Tatania Troyanos

Katarina Dalayman, Jill

Grove, Hanna Schwarz,

Birgitta Svendén

Patricia Bardon,

Stephanie Blythe

Contraltos

Karin Branzell, Maria

Olszewska Kerstin

Thorborg

Lili Chookasian -------- ------- - - - - - - -

Tenors

Paul Althouse, Max

Lorenz, René Maison,

Lauritz Melchior

James King, Sándor

Kónya, Jon Vickers

Francisco Araiza

Siegfried Jerusalem,

Rainer Goldberg, Gary

Lakes, William Johns

Stig Andersen, Johan

Botha, Poul Elming,

Plácido Domingo, Ben

Heppner

Stephen Gould, Jonas

Kaufmann, Jay Hunter

Morris, Simon O’Neill,

Stewart Skelton

Bass-Baritones

Friedrich Schorr Theo Adam, Walter Berry,

Otto Edelmann, Thomas

Stewart

Donald McIntyre, James

Morris

James Morris, René Pape,

John Tomlinson

Mark Delavan, Greer

Grimsley, René Pape,

Bryn Terfel

Deep Basses

Ludwig Hofmann,

Emanuel List

Karl Ridderbusch Martti

Talvela

Kurt Moll, Jan-Hendrik

Rootering, Matti

Salminen

Eric Halfvarson Hans-Peter König, Franz-

Josef Selig

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or have they always been scarce? And, if a decline has occurred, what

caused it? The empirical research to answer these questions, which is

ongoing, rests on over 130 conﬁdential interviews in ten countries (so

far), an analysis of trends in recordings over 80 years, and many other

types of historical, biographical and sociological evidence.

This paper summarizes preliminary research ﬁndings from this

study. It reveals that the decline in numbers of great spinto and dramatic

singers—notably those with voices appropriate to heavy Wagner operas—

is real, beginning in the mid-20

century. Such a decline in quality is

almost unique across the traditional performing arts, including most

other types of opera. The deterioration, however, is less pronounced

than the parallel decline in Verdi singing.

Explanations widely held among opera professionals do not explain

the decline. Empirical evidence shows that it is almost certainly not due

to bad teachers, bigger auditoriums, louder orchestras, changes in pitch,

ignorant managers, clueless casting directors, or a decline in the salaries

and prestige of musicians. Instead, it appears to be caused by deep

sociological factors that impact the “life-cycle” of a Wagnerian singer. These

include the disappearance of non-ampliﬁed singing by young people, the

uniquely late age at which spinto and dramatic voices mature, and the

greater attention paid to visual and theatrical values in opera performance,

enforced by ever more powerful stage directors. These three trends have

intensiﬁed over the past two generations, and they especially disadvantage

spinto and dramatic singers. Taken together, they obstruct the traditional

path upwards for a potential young Wagnerian: he or she is less likely ever

to begin singing in the requisite manner, to stay in the opera profession long

enough to realize his or her vocal potential and, if he or she exceptionally

sticks it out, to reap the full reward for vocal excellence.

Assessing Quality: Has Wagnerian Singing Really Declined?

To assess whether the number of great spinto and dramatic voices—

speciﬁcally, voices suitable to heavy Wagner roles—has fallen in recent

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decades, we employ two methods specially designed to track long-term

trends in the quality of singing. One is to consult leading ﬁgures in the

opera world; the other is to trace the quality of recordings.

Interviews

We have conducted controlled interviews (so far) with more than 135

leading opera professionals: they include current and retired singers,

conductors, impresarios, casting directors, consultants, coaches,

accompanists, vocal teachers, academic administrators, critics, scholars

and agents, resident in ten countries. Almost all work at the highest

levels of the opera world.

Among the questions we ask each interviewee

is whether he or she perceives “any change over recent decades in the

quality or quantity of the very best spinto and dramatic singing, for

example in heavy Verdi and Wagner.”

Over 95% volunteer that they

perceive a signiﬁcant general decline in the quality of the top (“the

very best”) singing, that is, singing by the most important spinto and

dramatic artists in any given period. In social scientiﬁc research, 95%

support for a given response to an open-ended, unbiased and evaluative

survey question is an extremely rare level of consensus.

This near-unanimity is no coincidence; it reﬂects deep and well-

considered professional consensus. Our interview subjects agree on at

least four more details of the decline.

1. Uniformity across Repertoire: Almost all believe that decline vari-

es across different types of operatic repertoire. The best Wagner

singing, while of notably lower quality than in generations past,

remains at an acceptable though diminished level. Most inter-

view subjects perceive a greater decline in Verdi singing.

2. Timing: Almost all agree that most of the decline in dramatic

Wagner singing appears to have taken place in the third quarter

of the 20

century, but a decade or two earlier than with Verdi.

Some (though not all) observers maintain that while Wagner

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singing bottomed out in the ﬁnal quarter of the 20

century,

it may have improved somewhat since then, even if it has not

regained the level prevailing in the 1930s. Some believe the de-

cline is limited to full dramatic (“Helden”) Wagner voices, not

slightly lighter (“jugendliche dramatische”) ones.

3. What is Missing? When asked (again in an open-ended form)

what modern singers lack, most respondents agree on a dearth

of intrinsic vocal capacity, color and technique. They miss

voices large and resonant enough to project an appropriately

warm and dark timbre comfortably in major houses, across a

suitably wide range from high to low registers, loud to soft dyna-

mics, and various expressive timbres.

Singers with voices that

past generations would have viewed as too light, bright, limited

and stressed for heavy Wagner (or Verdi) roles now sing them

routinely.

4. Average Quality: While respondents consistently believe that the

“very best” spinto and dramatic singing has declined, they do

not consistently report that the “average” quality has done so.

Indeed, the basic level on an average night in a mid-to top-level

house may well have improved. Singers are more competent

professionally: almost all can read music, sing on pitch and in

the original German, approximate the appropriate style, memo-

rize roles completely and avoid catastrophic failures. Yet among

them, historically great voices seem to have all but vanished.

Recordings

The second technique we use to measure changes in spinto and dramatic

singing is to track trends in the perceived quality of (audio and audio-

visual) recordings over time. Such recordings offer the best continuous

documentation of the greatest modern singers at work, dating back to

the beginning of the 20

century. Our research team has conducted

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a systematic study of published reviews of every extant commercial

recording—audio and audiovisual—since 1927 (the advent of electrical

recording) of any part (aria, excerpt or complete performance) of two

operas by Wagner (Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre), alongside two

by Verdi and one each by Handel, Mozart and Rossini. We then asked

multiple individuals to rate, using a standardized scale, how positive

they found the reviewers’ judgements of individual singers in speciﬁc

roles (with the names of singers kept anonymous), adding a battery

of controls designed to limit potential biases.

Of course, recordings

differ from staged opera, and so we controlled for some differences

removing singers from consideration if they never actually sang the

role in question on stage. Overall, we believe that this indicator to be

strongly biased (as it should be) against ﬁnding a decline in quality—

for example, because both recording quality and editing technology has

greatly improved over the years.

Our study of opera recordings conﬁrms the perceptions of

interviewed opera experts. We see the same decline in both Verdi and

Wagner singing, and the same differences between the two in timing

(Verdi later than Wagner) and relative severity (Verdi now more scarce

than Wagner). Full presentation of this data would exceed the space

available here, so one example must sufﬁce: Figure 1 presents the scores

of recordings between 1927 and 2009 of the tenor role of Tristan.

Two ﬁndings are revealing. First, the number and height of the

very best performances of Tristan (above a score of 14) have declined

slowly from a peak in the 1930s, just as our interview subjects perceived.

Second, the two outliers—exceptional data points representing high-

quality performances in the 2000s (marked with vertical arrows in

Figure 1)—are both in fact spurious. Both refer to recordings by Plácido

Domingo (one of excerpts and one complete opera), who never sang a

complete Tristan on stage.

A common objection to measuring the quality of vocal performance

over time by using subjective perceptions, whether drawn from interviews

or reviews, is that opera-lovers might be compulsively nostalgic. Many

suspect that the widespread perception of decline simply reﬂects a

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culture among opera lovers that socializes them to exaggerate the virtue

of youthful memories, old recordings and ageing divas.

We take such potential “nostalgia bias” seriously and guard against

it in a number of more ways—most importantly by imposing a strict

set of “controls.” For example, in questioning interview subjects and

examining trends in recordings, we inquire not only about the quality of

performances of operas by Verdi and Wagner, but also about operas by

Handel, Mozart, and Rossini. We also ask about the perceived quality of

opera orchestras and conductors. Similarly, in our study of recordings,

we evaluate not just reviews of heavy Verdi and Wagner operas but also

one opera each by Handel (Giulio Cesare), Mozart (Le nozze di Figaro)

and Rossini (Il barbiere di Siviglia).

If nostalgia bias (or almost any other measurement bias) is at

work, critics and interview subjects should perceive a decline in all

types of opera, and in opera orchestras and conductors as well.

Yet they

do not. Both in interviews and in reviews, observers maintain almost

unanimously that vocal standards in Baroque, Mozart and bel canto

Fig. 1 Tristan und Isolde: Tristan (tenor); 1926-2009 (n=57).

Quality of Singing as reviewed

Years

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opera have remained steady or improved. Some insist we currently live

in a “Golden Age” in these areas.

Almost all respondents also judge

that operatic conductors and orchestras perform better than ever. The

consistency of these controlled results suggests that the perceived

decline in spinto and dramatic singing is probably real.

Before we turn to possible explanations, this last point deserves

emphasis: the most puzzling aspect of the decline in spinto and dramatic

singing is not its existence per se but its uniqueness. A nearly inﬁnite

number of potential explanations could exist for a general decline in

the quality of one or more performing arts. Yet what makes this process

truly puzzling is that the decline has occurred only in one narrow artistic

domain. Not only have performance standards in other types of opera

(Handel, Mozart, bel canto) and opera orchestras have remained steady

or improved, but the same is true of solo instrumental playing, chamber

music and orchestral performance, conducting, new music composition,

and even jazz instrumental playing and ballet.

In our wealthy,

globalized and multi-cultural societies, a decline in standards of any

traditional performing art for which reasonable demand still exists is

in fact exceedingly rare. Spinto and dramatic singing comprise a nearly

unique exception.

Explaining the Changes in the Quality of Wagner Singing:

A Brief Note on Method

So how can we explain the unique decline in the very best spinto and

dramatic singing, speciﬁcally in Wagner operas? In the absence of

any academic literature on this subject, we proceed in three steps.

First, we have culled from daily and specialized opera publications,

informal chats, our interviews with opera professionals, on-line

forums and our own theoretical imagination all available conjectures

about why the decline may have taken place. Second, we discard those

explanations that, after general background research, lacked prima

facie plausibility. For example, a distinguished singer leaned over to

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me in California and conﬁded, dead seriously, “We know […] it’s that

stuff they put in the water”—a view echoed by a Russian colleague.

After several days of research, we discarded this conjecture.

the third and decisive step, having narrowed the analysis to prima

facie plausible explanations, we assess their validity by collecting

and analyzing a wide range of detailed historical, sociological and

ethnographic evidence.

We collected such empirical evidence

bearing on four questions.

1. Premises and Cause: Do the hypothesized basic causes and pre-

mises actually exist?

2. Causal Process: Do the hypothesized causal “mechanisms” lin-

king basic causes to a decline in spinto and dramatic singing

actually exist?

3. Time and Space: Do the hypothesized causes and processes

emerge at roughly the time of the observed decline, and not be-

fore or after, and in places where those causes are strong?

4. Uniqueness among the Performing Arts: Can the theory explain

not just the decline of spinto and dramatic singing, but also the

absence of a decline in other types of opera, classical instru-

mental performance, and traditional performing arts?

With these criteria in mind, we now turn to potential explanations.

Red Herrings:

What has Not Caused the Decline in Wagner Singing?

Before considering more plausible causes, this section assesses and

ultimately rejects ﬁve factors that many opera professionals believe

have caused the shortage of spinto and dramatic singers. Each of

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these factors arise often in our interviews, yet the balance of evidence

leans strongly against them as plausible causes of the decline in great

dramatic Wagner singing.

I. Has the Cultural Marginalization of Classical Music

Depressed Salaries and Prestige?

Traditional classical music, including opera, comprises an increasingly

marginal element in Western elite and mass culture. Since the mid-20

century, “no-brow” pop culture, especially music, has spread across the

globe. One might conjecture that, as a result, opera singers receive neither

the generous pay for performances or recordings, nor the high social

prestige, that they once did—and that this dissuades talented people from

entering the profession. In 2015, for example, Adele’s latest album 25 sold

3.4 million copies during its ﬁrst week on the US market, whereas the

top classical recording that same week (Yo-Yo Ma’s 60

Birthday Album

entitled Songs from the Arc of Life) sold 493 copies in all formats.

While the cultural, social and economic marginalization of opera

may be a background condition for the decline of spinto and dramatic

voices—a point to which I return below—it almost certainly has not

directly reduced the supply of singers by dampening pay and prestige.

The premise is false: the real income of successful opera singers rose

signiﬁcantly over precisely the period over which spinto and dramatic

voices have declined. In 1956, the MET offered a top fee of $1000

per performance, but by the 1980s, according to one historian, “the

maximum had reached $9000 per performance, and in the nineties fees

blasted off into monetary hyperspace.” Today the Met offers $17,000 a

night as a top fee (with up to $30,000 reputed for special singers and

occasions) and some publicly-subsidized European fees reaching even

higher—reputedly up to $75,000 in extreme cases.

This growth over

six decades is double the inﬂation rate, and faster (at least for men)

than the rise in their median income in the US.

In addition, many

leading singers also hold concurrent teaching positions at universities

and conservatories, teach master classes, and sing at private events.

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To be sure, only a few opera singers make much money with recordings

and solo concerts, just as only a few popular singers do. Yet the upside

for opera singers has surely improved over the past 50 years. The last

quarter of the 20

century was the heyday of Luciano Pavarotti and the

“Three Tenors,” who earned tens of millions of dollars and attracted

hundreds of millions of fans—something unequaled since the early 20

century. Today Andrea Bocelli is reportedly worth $40 million.

One might yet conjecture that opera singers, though well

remunerated, have suffered declining social prestige. Popular artists

are highly visible today, whereas classical ones far less so—even if

Pavarotti and Bocelli, and in a few countries Anna Netrebko and Jonas

Kaufmann, are close to household words. Yet if prestige (or material

rewards) were critical, why are other performing arts, including other

types of opera singing, ﬂourishing? The piano, for example, has been in

cultural decline for a century now and it is quixotic to expect to make

a living as a concert performer. Yet ever more extraordinary young

concert pianists come through the pipeline.

Among opera singers,

spinto and dramatic singers are often among the most prominent and

prestigious stars and are paid up to twice as much per performance

as other types of singers. Performances of late 19

century repertoire,

our interviews reveal, sell more tickets and generate more audience

enthusiasm than performances of Baroque, modern, bel canto, or even

Mozart opera—yet the latter are in good shape.

To judge by the size and

age of its audiences, opera in general also remains relatively fashionable

compared to other traditional performing arts.

In sum, less money or

attention cannot explain the exceptional nature of the decline of spinto

and dramatic singing.

II. Has Baroque and Early Music Performance Practice

Eroded Wagner’s Popularity?

Some believe that Wagner and other 19

century composers have

simply gone out of fashion. The “authentic” and “performance-practice”

movements are shifting operatic taste toward Baroque opera. More

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subtly, a subset of opera singers increasingly adopts a cleaner, “whiter”

and lighter mode of vocal production, with less vibrato, chest voice

or laryngeal manipulation—a style less appropriate to the spinto and

dramatic repertoire. This trend, one might conjecture, may discourage

potential Wagner singers from entering or remaining in the profession.

The “performance-practice” movement certainly has expanded the

range of acceptable classical singing styles. Yet the fact that Baroque is

in does not necessarily imply that Wagner is out. Recent improvements in

Baroque orchestras and solo instrumentalists have not triggered a decline

in traditional symphony orchestras and soloists, so why should better early

music singing imply worse traditional operatic singing? While the canon

of operas has expanded, over 40% of performances worldwide still require

spinto and dramatic voices—with Wagner ﬁrmly in fourth place among

opera composers performed today, and both Verdi and Puccini ranking

even higher. Certainly more performances of heavy Wagner operas occur

than in years past. In any given year of the 1950s, for example, only a

handful of houses performed Wagner’s complete Ring; in each of recent

years over a dozen have done so.

Teachers and singers report, moreover,

that insofar as young vocalists enter opera with a speciﬁc operatic

motivation, most aspire to sing late 19

century opera—and their voice

teachers generally seek to enlarge and darken their voices, not lighten

and “whiten” them.

As we shall see in more detail below, singers with

intrinsically lighter voices are migrating to spinto and dramatic roles—

which they would not do if they viewed them as unfashionable.

III. Has the General Quality of Vocal Training Declined?

Quite a number of our interview subjects—not least those who work

in opera houses—believe the fault lies with vocal pedagogy. Since the

mid-20

century, advanced training has migrated ever more to formal

universities and conservatories. One often hears that academic vocal

instructors today lack real-world professional experience as singers,

and that such teachers tend to be incompetent. In generations past,

so the claim continues, most teachers were either retired professional

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opera stars with genuine knowledge or experienced old conductors and

coaches who took young singers under their wing. The young Maria

Callas’s relationships with her mentors—ﬁrst the retired soprano Elvira

de Hidalgo and later the conductor Tullio Seraﬁn—are oft-cited examples.

A few observers maintain that universities teach students to sing in a

style suited to small practice rooms and choruses, but not to project a

big voice in a big opera house, as the older tradition did.

Yet the conjecture that the overall quality of vocal teachers has

declined lacks persuasive empirical support.

Inept instructors have

always been with us. As the Wagnerian soprano Marjorie Lawrence

described of her vocal education in the 1920s: “For every honest person

who teaches singing there are a hundred charlatans.”

Many Golden

Age singers, including Lotte Lehmann, Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli,

insisted that some or all of their teachers were incompetent or harmful.36

Nor is there any evidence that experienced singers consistently make

better teachers. The truth is no one knows what makes for a good vocal

teacher, but our research on the biographies of singers reveals no

evidence of a correlation between prior excellence as a vocal performer

and later excellence in teaching.

Blaming teachers also fails to explain why the same pedagogues and

educational establishments that are purportedly responsible for spoiling

spinto and dramatic singers have recently helped recreate a brilliant Baroque

and early music performance-practice tradition. Modern music education

also helps maintain high standards in Mozart and bel canto opera, prepares

singers for technically challenging repertoire of modern and contemporary

music, fosters a ﬂourishing tradition of Lieder singing, and produces

generations of ever-better instrumental musicians. Basic technical skills

like reading music, knowledge of basic repertoire, diction and languages,

acting and professional decorum have all clearly improved among singers.

(This helps explain why most of our interview subjects seem to believe that

the average level of singing has improved in all areas, including spinto and

dramatic singing.) If teachers in institutionalized music education systems

can achieve all that, it seems implausible to accuse them of professional

malpractice solely with regard to Wagner and Verdi.

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A ﬁnal piece of evidence against the claim that bad teachers have

caused a decline in spinto and dramatic singers is that those countries

with the extensive formal and professional educational infrastructure

grounded in conservatories and universities continue to produce a

disproportionate number of singers, even of a spinto and dramatic type.

The US, UK, Australia, the Nordic countries, and even Germany and

Russia export many singers and train the nationals of other countries.

This suggests that strong systems of conservatories and universities

help improve the quality of a nation’s spinto and dramatic singing.

IV. Do Agents, Casting Directors and Teachers Push Singers

into Heavy Roles Too Young?

Many in the opera world believe that agents and casting personnel

(and perhaps teachers) push young singers to perform heavy roles

before their voices are sufﬁciently mature, and this untimely

“overparting” of young singers ruins promising young singers. Many

interview subjects, especially in Germany and Austria, mention this

as a likely cause—perhaps the cause—of the overall decline in the

best spinto and dramatic singing.

Herbert von Karajan and Valery

Gergiev are often cited as offenders. Of course, overparting is hardly

unique to the last ﬁfty years: singers in every generation have

damaged their voices by attempting heavy roles when they should

not, and some agents, casting directors and teachers have always

been myopic, greedy or musically illiterate in encouraging them to

do so.

This argument gains some plausibility, however, from the fact

that today, most observers perceive more overparted singers taking

on spinto and dramatic roles than in decades past. Indeed, this is

part of what has led observers to speak of a “decline” in spinto and

dramatic singing.

Yet three types of empirical evidence casts doubt that premature

overparting is a primary cause of the shortage of spinto and dramatic

voices. First, while some agents and casting directors may tempt

some young vocalists to sing beyond their means, today’s operatic

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professionals, especially teachers and coaches, nearly unanimously

advise the opposite. It has become a universal taboo in the opera world

for young singers to move beyond the Baroque, Mozart and bel canto

repertoires until they are at least thirty, if not older, lest they damage

their voices.

Young singers do not just hear these warnings; they

heed them. Our preliminary statistical analysis shows that singers

begin studying and performing heavier (spinto/dramatic) repertoire

at an older average age today than their counterparts did 50 or 100

years ago.

Second, while performing and learning heavy roles at a very early

age is exceptional, it is unclear that it necessarily shortens a singer’s

career.

Among many counter-examples is the legendary mid-20

century German bass-baritone Hans Hotter. He sang Wotan for the ﬁrst

time on stage at 22 and subsequently in 400 performances of Walküre

alone—including three of the greatest studio recordings of it ever made,

respectively at the age of 29 (under Seidler-Winkler), 45 (Furtwängler)

and 56 (Solti)—and retired the role at the age of 64.

Our study of

historical singers uncovered no evidence that attempting such roles

young shortens one’s career.

Third, the singers who are overparted today are not

disproportionately young. Most are older singers who move in mid-

career beyond what most listeners would once have considered roles

appropriate to their vocal type (Fach).

They do so, so they testify,

because of the intrinsic musical interest of late 19

century repertoire;

probably higher salaries and greater prestige play a role as well.

So why do we hear so many overparted voices attempting Wagner

and Verdi today? If any causal relationship at all exists between

overparting and the number of dramatic voices, it is most likely the

reverse of what most commentators presume. Overparting is not

causing the shortage of spinto and dramatic voices. Instead, a shortage

of such voices causes overparting. In an era of scarcity, agents and opera

houses cast singers who can manage roles, even if their voices lack the

traditional weight and color.

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V. Do Higher Pitch, Bigger Houses and Louder Orchestras Place

Singers under Greater Acoustical Stress?

A ﬁnal set of explanations is acoustic. In this view, we perceive a decline

in Wagner singing because in recent decades, new acoustical trends—

higher orchestral pitch, larger opera houses, and louder orchestras—are

burying or stressing singers. We “hear” less powerful and resonant

voices, and, because singers are constantly straining to overcome

these disadvantages, they cannot execute their roles with the requisite

technical competence and interpretive ﬂexibility. At ﬁrst glance this

seems plausible. Yet only one of these three factors actually exists, and

it does not offer a plausible account of the recent decline in spinto and

dramatic singing.

Pitch: Some blame higher pitch—speciﬁcally, a rise in concert pitch from

A=440 to A=448 and perhaps beyond, for undermining great spinto and

dramatic singing. Champions of this explanation include the legendary

soprano Renata Tebaldi and the American right-wing activist Lyndon

LaRouche. Yet its basic premise is factually incorrect. Verdi himself,

who campaigned to lower pitch, may have had a point in his day. Yet over

the past half century, concert pitch has unambiguously dropped. The

“Golden Age” stars we revere sang under far more pitch-induced acoustic

stress than singers do today.

In the 1950s and 1960s it was reportedly

A=448 or higher in some places, such as the Wiener Staatsoper under

Herbert von Karajan.

Now it is between A=440 and A=444 everywhere,

with Vienna ﬁrmly at A=443.

House Size: Others accuse newer and bigger opera houses of suppressing

big-voiced singers. Yet, as with pitch, the factual premise is simply false.

Most of the leading venues in which top singers perform today are the

same as those in which their counterparts performed 50 or 100 years

ago. These include venerable theatres in London, Milan, Vienna, Munich,

Berlin (Staatsoper), Bayreuth, Paris (Garnier), Barcelona, Zurich, Buenos

Aires, San Francisco, Moscow, Rome, St. Petersburg (Marinskii 1),

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Chicago, and Dresden.

Relatively few new theatres were built in the

1950s and 1960s, when the decline in Wagner vocalism ﬁrst became

audible: Berlin (Deutsche Oper), Frankfurt, Hamburg, Los Angeles, New

York (New Metropolitan), Salzburg (Großes Festspielhaus), Seattle and

the reconstructed Teatro Communale in Firenze.

While newer houses

may be acoustically more challenging, a handful of houses cannot drive

the global practice or perception of singing.

The “large houses” explanation also generates other inconsistencies.

Our interview subjects do not report that singers sound historically

great in some places but not others, but rather that the decline in

spinto and dramatic singing is audible in all but the smallest houses—

and even on recordings. Nor is it clear why large auditoriums have had

a disastrous impact on Wagner or Verdi singers, but (apparently) the

reverse effect on Baroque, Mozart or bel canto singers, for whom large

modern auditoriums seem even less appropriate.

Loud Orchestras: A ﬁnal acoustical change charged with overwhelming

dramatic Wagner singers is an increase in the physical sound of the

orchestra.

Some ascribe this to technical improvements in the sound of

instruments. Others ascribe primary responsibility to contemporary star

conductors, who fail to restrain orchestras as they may have decades ago.

Perhaps, some speculate, fewer young conductors today take the early

career path (traditional before the late 20

century) of serving as an operatic

répétiteur and conductor—and thus are less sensitive to vocal demands.

Yet this acoustical account similarly lacks convincing empirical

support. First, most technical changes in instrument construction

predate the period of observed decline. Almost all of the transition

toward modern orchestral instruments took place in the century between

1850 and 1945, during which metal strings replaced with gut, and a

redesign of wind instruments doubled or quadrupled their sound. The

only exception is the very deep brass—tubas and especially trombones.

Yet if blaring brass were the cause of vocal decline, we should not see

a deeper decline in performing Verdi than Wagner, with its far heavier

deep brass accompaniment.

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As for conductors, no evidence exists that contemporary encourage

orchestras to play louder than, say, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Eric Leinsdorf,

Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm or Georg Solti—to name just ﬁve

outstanding golden-age Wagner conductors known for encouraging

orchestral robustness. Any claim they do raises more questions than

it answers. Why is the decline evident on recordings as well as in the

theater?

Why does it seem evident whether conductors are opera or

concert specialists? Why is it apparent only with regard to spinto and

dramatic opera—and more pronounced in the Italian than the German

repertoire, though the orchestra is more prominent in the latter?

Ironically, rather than offering a plausible explanation for the recent

decline in spinto and dramatic singing, acoustic factors like higher

pitch, bigger houses and louder orchestras may help explain the rise of

such singers in previous eras. A successful co-evolution of technology

and vocal style may have engendered the fondly remembered “Golden

Age” of large dramatic voices in the mid-20

century: larger spaces and

louder playing encouraged the emergence of bigger voices, and bigger

voices permitted larger spaces and louder playing. Yet today, the houses

and orchestras remain, but the voices are disappearing.

This is what

remains to be explained.

“It Takes a Village”: A Tripartite Life-cycle Theory

The factors evaluated in the preceding section—declining pay and

prestige, changing operatic aesthetics, inexperienced teachers, pushy

managers or unfavorable acoustics—do not explain the recent decline in

spinto and dramatic singing.

We need a different type of explanation.

Here we propose the “life cycle” theory: a tripartite explanation that

examines factors that affect the choices of individual singers at different

points in their careers. In this view, society as a whole produces

spinto and dramatic singers—like other artists, athletes or, indeed, any

specialized professional. Any singer necessarily passes through three

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necessary stages of socialization to artistic excellence: they must begin

to sing, they must train themselves for a long period, and, ﬁnally, they

must be selected to sing at the highest levels.

Each of these three steps is a social process, and recent changes

in how they function depress the number of singers who ﬁnally emerge.

Fewer young people today start on the path to becoming Wagner singers,

fewer of those who do remain on the path to maturity, and, of those,

fewer are cast and recognized by opera houses. Each of these three

changes is rooted in a basic economic, cultural or institutional trend in

modern society that disproportionately degrades spinto and dramatic

singing, as compared to other performing arts or physical activities.

In this section, we consider these three social trends with a negative

impact on the best spinto and dramatic singing. First is a secular decline

in the number of young people who ever sing without a microphone.

Second is the increasing cost of the abnormally long time to mature that

spinto and dramatic singers require. Third is the increasing emphasis

of opera houses (and music schools) on appearance and acting, rather

than vocal talent. Each contributes to the number of great spinto and

dramatic singers that emerge and, at the end of the process, we observe

an overall decline.

Stage One:

Microphones and Pop Culture as Obstacles to Identifying Young Talent

The process of cultivating great spinto or dramatic singers begins

by identifying individuals with the one-in-a-million physiological

aptitude for this particular form of musical greatness. Their number

has always been few, yet amidst an unprecedentedly healthy, long-lived

and physically robust global population of seven billion, more potential

Flagstads, Ludwigs, Melchiors and Hotters than ever surely exist.

The problem is to identify them. A useful parallel is the search

for those with the potential to become successful professional athletes

or Olympic medalists. Today we have optimized societies to identify

potential young soccer or basketball stars almost anywhere in the world.

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But we are losing the capacity to identify individuals with the exceptional

talent at projecting the unampliﬁed human voice. Only one way to do

this exists: a large proportion of the population must be trained to sing

in public without ampliﬁcation long enough for experts to assess their

voices. In past generations, this occurred naturally. Singing was a near

universal social activity in Western homes, churches, schools, clubs,

towns, and cities. Indeed, singing opera crowned a pyramid of vocal

activities—popular, semi-classical and classical—all performed without

a microphone. Whether from church services, schools, or occasional

performances, everyone in a community knew who could sing sweetly,

accurately and, above all, loudly—for, absent ampliﬁcation, being heard

was a precondition for all else. For centuries, perhaps millennia, this is

how it was in almost every Western society.

In the mid-20

century, this suddenly changed. Deep technological

and sociological transformations, such as the invention of the

microphone, declining religiosity (and changing religious practices),

shifting educational priorities, evolving popular music preferences, and

the atrophy of live music-making in the face of high-quality recorded

sound, mean that a far smaller percentage of the population ever

sings publicly—and even fewer do so “legitimately,” that is, without

ampliﬁcation. In nearly every society on earth, microphones are now

ubiquitous in youth and school choruses, a cappella groups, musical

theater, church and gospel choirs, popular music concerts, musicals,

and folk music (not to mention school oratory, lectures, spoken theater

performances, political speeches, sermons and speeches at private

gatherings). The microphone has pushed unampliﬁed public vocalism

to the obscure margins of society, with classical singing now almost

unique as a non-ampliﬁed vocal activity. Stylistic changes mirror

technological ones. Whereas a hundred years ago, performers with the

same skill set could excel at popular and classical music, this is far less

often the case today.

In late 20

and early 21

century microphonic culture, most

people who possess the physiological talent to excel at classical singing

now never have a chance to reveal it to others—or, indeed, often even to

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themselves.

Our collective inability to identify those with vocal talent

threatens all types of opera singers, but it has a particularly devastating

effect on the supply of spinto and dramatic singers. Experts agree that

such voices have always been far rarer in the general population than

lyric sopranos, mezzos and light baritones suitable for Baroque, classic

and bel canto repertoire.

Even in the best of times, society identiﬁed

only a handful of historically important singers in any given spinto or

dramatic Fach. A signiﬁcant reduction in the initial pool could likely

reduce the number of historically world-class singers within each

category close to zero.

Moreover, in ampliﬁed or recorded performance,

large voices are not only valued less but often disadvantaged, because

they are discouraged from singing out as soloists and choristers, or in

studio recordings.

If the shortage of raw vocal talent constrains the supply of spinto

and dramatic singers, we should also expect to observe the largest

declines in those countries where the broad religious, educational and

cultural supports for non-ampliﬁed vocal art have atrophied the most.

Organized Christianity has declined almost everywhere, but the most

striking declines have been in Catholic countries of Europe, where the

post-Vatican church has lost most of its adherents—and, at the same time,

moved away from the everyday performances of sophisticated classical

vocal music. Italy, for example, was once the most important producer

of opera singers, but is no more—an example to which I shall return.

Conversely, countries where robust institutional support for non-

ampliﬁed singing persists should ﬁnd themselves able, at least partially,

to offset these general trends—and thereby to remain opera-singer-

exporting countries. Cases of relative success include the United States,

with its relatively robust church, university and musical theater cultures.

Other examples are the Nordic countries, with universal musical

education; Eastern Europe and Russia, with relatively stable educational

and conservatory systems; South Korea, with its powerful, largely

Methodist, infrastructure of Christian worship; as well as, to a lesser

extent, Britain, Australia, Canada and Germany, with some continuity

(at least until recently) in church and school musical pedagogy.

Still,

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overall the number of young people in the Western world who ever sing

without a microphone has declined since the 1930s.

Stage 2:

Late Maturity as an Obstacle to Retaining Singers in the Profession

Identifying a pool of talented candidates is only the ﬁrst stage in producing

great singers. The second is to keep them committed to singing classically

until they mature, whereupon it becomes evident who has the talent, skill

and perseverance to become a great singer. Here spinto or dramatic opera

singers face a barrier nearly unique among musicians, athletes or anyone

else who seeks to make a living by developing a physical talent: they

mature extremely late, often in their mid-30s.

The prodigious talent of instrumentalists is nearly always evident

by the early teen years, and they often reach maturity, at least technically,

in their late teens or early twenties. The same is true for most athletes,

ballet dancers, actors and popular musicians. By contrast, singers must

essentially start over when their voice matures in their mid-to late

teens, and they reach full maturity much later. Yet even among singers,

important differences exist. Lighter-voiced opera singers generally

reach vocal maturity sometime in their 20s. By contrast, most spinto

and dramatic singers do not mature fully until the age of 30, 35 or, in

exceptional cases, 40 or more.

(See Table 2.)

Table 2: Operatic Voice Types and Typical Age of Vocal Maturity

Typical

Minimum

Age of

Maturity

Male Voice Types Female Voice Types

≈ 25 years Light or lyric tenor, countertenor Lyric soprano, soubrette, lyric

coloratura soprano

≈ 30 years Lirico spinto tenor, lyric baritone Lirico spinto soprano, jugendli-

cher dramatischer Sopran, lyric

mezzo

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≈ 35 years Bass-baritone, basso cantante,

Italian/Verdi baritone, Helden-

Bariton, tenore robusto (or tenore

di forza)

Dramatischer Sopran, Italian dra-

matic soprano, Verdi and Wagner

dramatic mezzos

≈ 40 years Heavy (‚schwerer‘, ‚tiefer‘ or

‚schwarzer‘) Bass, basso profondo

Contralto

Molding a spinto or dramatic voice into a smooth and elegant operatic

instrument tends to be a decades-long process that is not only quite

costly, but often frustrating as well. During the ﬁrst two decades of

their careers, potentially great spinto and dramatic singers often sound

ordinary—or worse, large, throaty and unwieldy—only to emerge later,

sometimes suddenly, as Wagnerian superstars. Being an “ugly duckling”

in one’s early career hinders a younger singer from having successful

professional outings commensurate with their ultimate potential.

Others sound promising when young, but derail. Operatic singing

competitions are no way out, since almost all ban contestants over 30

years old (and often also those with extensive professional experience),

which makes participation (let alone success) by spinto and dramatic

singers relatively rare.

Even the most successful Wagnerian singers struggle with this

hiatus.

Consider Kirsten Flagstad, widely considered the greatest

Wagnerian dramatic soprano in recorded history. From a family of

Norwegian professional musicians, her career began auspiciously:

she started singing early and debuted on the stage of Oslo’s National

Theater at the age of 18. Yet she spent the next two decades as a singer

of non-Wagnerian roles in the Scandinavian provinces. Her recorded

legacy before the age of 40 comprises a few dozen Norwegian songs.

At one point she seriously considered retirement. Though she had

already learned the entire part by heart when she was just ten years

old, Flagstad only ﬁrst ventured to sing Wagner in her mid-30s. She

ventured Elsa (Lohengrin) at age 34, followed by Isolde (Tristan) at age 37,

Sieglinde (Die Walküre) at age 38, and Brünnhilde (Ring des Nibelungen)

at age 40.

Paul Jackson describes the unexpected sensation of her Met

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debut in 1935, originally just a two-month engagement for an unknown

singer: “The Flagstad voice we know today was not fully developed until

the period shortly before her debut; the impact could not have been

anticipated.”

Flagstad appeared thereafter in staged Wagner operas at

the highest levels until the age of 57, and in concerts and recordings

well into her 60s. Based on this experience, she concluded: “My ﬁrst

piece of advice to young and immature singers can be put into three

words: Leave Wagner alone! He calls for powers which can only develop

after many years of singing.”

Today the struggle to emerge as a mature Wagnerian singer

is even more costly and risky today than it was for Flagstad. Other

types of opera singing have become more specialized, while musical

“cross-over” genres have atrophied. Unless one is lucky enough to be a

splendid Baroque, Mozart or bel canto stylist early on, something spinto

or dramatic singers rarely are, or to be one of the very few, such as

Hans Hotter and Frida Leider, who are dramatic singers from the start,

this delayed maturity can create a 10-25 year career hiatus that many

do not survive.

Fifty years ago a “reserve army” of vocalists existed

among those involved in vocal activities such as professional choral

work, church and synagogue singing, operetta, Broadway shows, radio

performances, nightclub “crooning,” as well as performing Irish, Jewish,

black and other ethnic music. Opera houses would eventually discover

and retrain the best among them.

For example, an entire generation of

great Jewish-American singers in the mid-20

century kept themselves

in the business this way.

Today, the spread of rock, rap and other

microphone-aided singing styles less stylistically compatible with opera

singing, has made it much harder to remain active this way.

The career trajectories of leading contemporary Wagner singers

clearly reveal the difﬁculty of creatively managing these intervening

decades to maturity.

Few are as fortunate as Nina Stemme, who won

major competitions and built a global career singing lighter soprano and

mezzo roles, then around age 40 smoothly transitioned into genuine

dramatic Wagnerian parts, starting with smaller theaters. Or even

Christine Goerke, who pursued a successful career singing Mozart,

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Handel and Gluck, until suddenly, in her early 30s, she found herself in

vocal crisis. She considered quitting, but instead withdrew from opera

to retrain her voice—and to marry and start a family. The hiatus, which

lasted a decade and reduced her to living on credit card debt, ended in

2013 with her “breakthrough” performance as a dramatic soprano at

the MET, at nearly 45 years of age. Now she is ﬁnally taking on the big

dramatic Wagner roles: the Met has booked her to sing Brünnhilde in

2018-19.

Though the rise of Ben Heppner, the most widely celebrated

Wagnerian tenor of the 1990s and early 2000s, was relatively smooth

and quick—perhaps because he possessed a “young” (“jugendliche”)

dramatic voice suitable to lighter Wagnerian parts—it still required

decades. Born a farmer’s son in the remote Yukon Territory of Canada,

Heppner studied to be a music teacher at the University of British

Columbia, only to be discovered by his professors. After college, he sang

lighter roles in the Canadian Opera studio program and performed with

Toronto-area Baroque groups, with little distinction except a radio talent

prize. By Heppner’s own account, had he not been a country boy “who

didn’t know any better,” he would not have stuck with it. Suddenly one

summer, nearly a decade into his career, he found a new teacher and

discovered that his voice could now manage Wagner. At the age of 32,

he won the 1988 MET National Auditions singing the Prize Song from

Die Meistersinger, which launched an international career that turned

him into the world’s most sought-after light Wagnerian tenor. Even so, it

was only a decade later in Seattle—although he still considered himself a

“lyric” tenor, not a Heldentenor—that he debuted as Tristan, and a decade

after that that he debuted as Siegfried.

Nearly every leading dramatic Wagnerian tenor in the world

has faced a similar challenge. Jay Hunter Morris, born in rural Texas,

worked his way up slowly on the opera circuit, often unemployed, until

he got his ﬁrst opportunities to sing Siegfried in San Francisco and New

York at the age of 48. In his words: “I don’t have one of those voices …

where I can just open up and be glorious, but I am stubborn and

persistent.”

Stephen Gould sang bel canto opera early in his career, but

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then decamped for eight years to musical theater, singing in a touring

production of Phantom of the Opera, before returning to Wagnerian

“Helden” roles at the age of 44. Tenor Daniel Brenna studied musicology

at Boston University, left the profession for Wall Street, and returned at

just over 40 as a Wagnerian. Christian Voigt did not sing his ﬁrst big-

house Siegfried until age 42.

Stefan Vinke ﬁrst sang Heldentenor roles

in small theaters at the age of 32, one opera at a time, but only dared

attempt a complete Ring cycle a decade later.

These singers were fortunate. Faced with similar decades of

uncertainty, many of their colleagues (even those with reasonable career

prospects) leave the profession early, never to return: they sing on Broadway,

teach music, become arts administrators, pursue another profession

entirely, or raise a family. This is a greater problem today than 50 or 75

years ago, and generally in wealthier societies, because non-musical career

opportunities are far more plentiful. The opportunity cost of spending

decades waiting for uncertain success are higher than in generations past.

Trends in pedagogy exacerbate these difﬁculties. Although they

may not achieve greatness on major stages until much later, it is a

mistake to tell younger singers not to study and sing Wagner in smaller

spaces or with piano accompaniment. Yet conservatories and young

singers’ (studio) programs connected with opera houses limit student

performances almost exclusively to Baroque, classic and bel canto

repertoire, and treat any effort to sing Wagner or heavy Verdi before age

30 as professional malpractice. Training institutions also use singers

for smaller roles in larger operas, for which they favor the ﬂexibility,

smooth sound and youthful appearance of non-Wagnerian singers. The

spread of a lighter, highly specialized performance-practice approach

to Baroque and classic repertoire, for which singers require specialized

training, further inhibits the ability of future spinto and dramatic

singers to work their way up by singing non-Wagnerian operas.

One ﬁnal implication is that we should expect the relative scarcity

of different types of vocal types (Fächer) to be proportional to the age

at which those singers typically reach maturity. This is exactly what

we observe. Most threatened are the lowest voices, which often do

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not mature until a singer is around 40: genuine great “black basses”

(“schwarze Bässe”)—the deepest male voices appropriate to Wagnerian

roles such as Hagen, Hunding, Heinrich, Fafner and perhaps König

Marke and Gurnemanz—are close to extinction.

In recent generations,

the voices cast in bass-baritone (“höhe Bässe”) roles—appropriate to

Wotan, the Dutchman, Hans Sachs, and Amfortas—have grown lighter,

increasingly baritonal, and less grand. Similarly, opera houses now

routinely cast mezzo-sopranos in lieu of genuine dusky-voiced contraltos

in Wagnerian roles such as Mary in Der ﬂiegende Holländer and Erda,

the First Norn, and Schwertleite in the Ring.

While sopranos and tenors remain further from extinction than

lower voice types, the quality of singing is changing: “lighter” voices

are replacing heavier ones. Where traditionally listeners expected a

truly baritonal “Heldentenor” voice to sing Siegfried, Siegmund, Tristan,

Tannhäuser or Parsifal, today houses cast lighter, more lyric tenors

with voices traditionally thought of as more appropriate to Lohengrin,

Walther von Stolzing or Erik, if even those roles. Whereas it used to

be that many Heldentenors—from Melchior to Domingo—began their

careers as baritones and learned to extend the voice upwards, today that

path is less common. Most today mature into Heldentenors not by raising

baritonal voices, but lowering and strengthening tenor ones. Similarly,

more and more sopranos who would once have been categorized as

jugendlich dramatisch—a voice appropriate for Elsa, Elisabeth, Sieglinde

and Senta—are now cast as Isolde, Brünnhilde and Kundry.

Stage 3:

Theatrical Sensibility as an Obstacle to Wagnerian Vocal Greatness

After the ﬁrst and second stages—identifying a pool of talented singers

and keeping them singing until some emerge as great dramatic voices—

great singers must pass through a third stage: opera houses must

select the best among them to perform in major venues under favorable

circumstances. This seems simple. Surely, one might think, great houses

cast great singers. Yet this is no longer necessarily so.

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Visual appearance, rather than voice, increasingly drives the selection

and casting of opera singers. In many countries, perhaps most in German-

speaking ones, top opera administrators and critics (though less so

audiences), increasingly identify the most important element in opera

as theatrical concept rather than musical expression. The literary and

philosophical message underlying a production—and with it, the acting,

directions, stage sets, lighting, costumes, the visual appropriateness

of singers as characters, and other elements contributing to theatrical

impact—have emerged as the primary focus of journalistic reviews,

external publicity, and internal discussions about opera house

priorities.

Some believe this shift is natural consequence of television,

cinema, the internet and other elements of a more visually-oriented mass

modern culture. Others point to post-modern elite cultural discourse in

the painting, architecture, theater, philosophy, literature and criticism,

which privileges pluralist intellectual “concepts” or “perspectives” over

the internal or formal imperatives of genres themselves. Still others

lay the blame on the increase in audio-visual rather than purely audio

recordings, most of which are now recorded live, not in the studio—a

trend to which we return below.

Perhaps also fewer and fewer listeners

have personal experience as singers.

Whatever the ultimate cause, the result is that stage directors,

along with set designers and dramaturgs, play an ever more inﬂuential

role in opera performances—at the expense of conductors, music

directors and singers.

Increasingly, stage directors from the theater or

cinema, rather than those who have made a life in the opera or focus

on the music, are now often named to head opera houses—something

exceptional in past generations. In German-speaking countries, which

are responsible for around 40% of the demand for opera singers in the

world today, so-called Regietheater (“Director’s Theater”) is particularly

entrenched.

Greater emphasis on theatricality has had at least two negative

consequences for the quality of dramatic singing. First, directors

increasingly place singers in environments designed to optimize

visual and dramatic impact at the expense of musical resonance.

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Consider stage design. Opera sets have traditionally been “closed,”

that is, constructed from ﬂat panels of painted wood, canvas or plaster,

often with ceilings. This creates a relatively small room of resonant

material to capture and reﬂect vocal sound toward the audience. By

contrast, modern sets are now customarily “open”: they employ a

wider and deeper space on stage, with the sides and top uncovered

and backgrounds comprised of semi-solid curtains and scrims (to

facilitate the use of projections and other lighting effects), or elements

of glass, metal, cloth, gauze and other non-acoustic materials.

Such

sets are visually attractive, but they overlook the multi-media role of

traditional operatic stage technology. Whereas closed sets can serve

as a form of ampliﬁcation, studies show that open sets signiﬁcantly

reduce the amount of vocal sound that reaches the audience, dampen

the resonance and color of what remains, and shift the balance between

voice and orchestra against singers—thus giving the impression of

less powerful, resonant and colorful voices. One might argue that this

change assumes particular importance in performances of late 19

and

early 20

century repertoire, where singers must make themselves

heard over a large orchestra—exacerbating what might otherwise be

relatively minor increases in house size and orchestral volume.

Greater focus on the drama and its concept has a second

implication: houses cast singers on looks rather than voice. One of the

most frequent complaints of vocal coaches and singers we interviewed,

not to mention the opera press, is that, at least on the margin, the opera

industry is increasingly casting performers who are better-looking and

slimmer at the expense of those who are vocally accomplished. Today

stage directors, not conductors or music directors, often dominate

casting decisions.

Some top houses in Germany are reputed to have

made good looks all but a necessary condition for employment, and

houses elsewhere in Continental Europe, and even in America, are said

to be following suit.

Moreover, knowing they may be ﬁlmed at any time,

young artists report that they must now aim to become “HD ready.”

With broadcasts into movie theaters, even the MET—traditionally a

bastion of big voices in big bodies—has moved in this direction.

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Heavy-weight singers are increasingly at professional risk. Young

singers today seek to avoid the fate of the soprano Deborah Voigt.

London’s Royal Opera House ﬁred Voigt, one of the world’s great

dramatic sopranos at the time, from the title role in a 2004 production

of Ariadne auf Naxos when the stage director complained that she

could not ﬁt her ﬁgure into the “little black dress” he imagined her

character wearing.

The alternative to temporary unemployment can

be worse: Voigt responded by having surgery to lose weight, which,

some observers feel, permanently shrank and damaged her voice.

The

evidence is compelling, if not conclusive, that Maria Callas degraded

her voice in the same way.

Heated controversy over “fat-shaming”

singers arose around a 2014 performance of Der Rosenkavalier at

Glyndebourne in which mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught sang Octavian.

Andrew Clark of the Financial Times called her “a chubby bundle of

puppy fat,” Michael Church in the Independent as a “dumpy girl,”

Andrew Clements in the Guardian as “stocky,” and Richard Morrison

in the Times as “unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing.” The internet

erupted, with female singers claiming gender discrimination and some

male singers claiming that fat-shaming happens to them as well. No one

contested that this marked a fundamental shift in standards.

Casting on appearance, often with broadcasts in mind, is likely to

degrade the supply of spinto and dramatic singers more other types of

singers, because there are fewer of them and perhaps also because they

are more likely to have heftier physiques. Harold Schonberg observed: “It

is a truism of the opera house that a big voice is to be found in a big body,

and the bigger the voice the bigger the body.”

Broadcast technology

exacerbates the bias by easily rendering all singers similar in volume,

thereby neutralizing the greatest traditional advantages of those with big

voices. (In general, many believe that big voices record less well.) Some

broadcast directors forego casting true spinto or dramatic singers who can

be heard well in the house entirely in order to achieve the right look on

video. Overall, the extreme scarcity of great spinto and dramatic singers,

where in the best of times only a handful of preeminent singers exist,

means that casting on appearance may audibly diminish singing more

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severely than in other types of opera. There is good reason to suspect that

this may be depleting the ranks of Wagnerian stars.

Yet the effects of Regietheater and digital opera are subtle

and complex, and while discrimination on the basis of appearance

sometimes undermines efforts to cast the best spinto and dramatic

singers, we should not exaggerate its importance.

Systematic study

suggests that while lower and larger-voiced singers tend to be taller, the

evidence is less clear that they are or must be heavier.

Moreover, spinto

and dramatic singers are so scarce that those who lack a handsome

face or slim waist still work in nearly all top houses. Finally, we easily

forget that in the mid-20

century “Golden Age,” critics and opera

houses judged singers on their appearance and weight—perhaps even

more harshly and openly than today. When Flagstad was engaged by

the Met at age 39, she was told “Come to New York as soon as you know

these roles. And above all, do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful

ﬁgure is not the least reason you were preferred.” Her experience was

commonplace.

If “fat-shaming” poses a serious threat to the production of spinto

and dramatic singers, the effect may mostly be at lower levels, where

casting on appearance is probably even now pervasive. Culling the

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heavy and homely can begin early. It inﬂuences which students ever

receive advanced vocal training. Some top conservatories, our interviews

reveal, have begun admitting 18-year-old singers not simply on vocal

ability but also on “charisma”—a politically correct code word not just

for stage presence in general but also for looks and weight. One long-

time admissions ofﬁcer at a top institution—after sharing memories of

great singers on the world’s stages over the past 50 years—dismissed

my questions about his institution’s growing focus on charisma with

a shrug: “My primary responsibility to make sure that our graduates

work.”

Former judges at top vocal competitions report consistent splits

between those who favor singers with the best voices and those who favor

singers with an attractive overall “package”—with the latter prevailing

more and more.

Young singers’ studio programs also favor participants

who add visual panache in comprimario roles. In past decades big

houses used to cast small parts in Wagner operas—the Valkyries and

Rhine-maidens, for example—with aspiring Isoldes and Brünnhildes.

Today such roles are often taken by those more likely to end up singing

Britten, Mozart or Rossini—but who can readily impersonate mermaids.

In smaller houses, B-casts and other situations where no proven star is

at hand, appearance is often more important.

Why Is the Decline of Wagner Voices Earlier and Less Severe

than that of Verdi Voices?

In many respects, the decline of Wagner singing tracks the roughly

contemporaneous decline of Verdi signing. Yet differences exist. As we

have seen, the decline in Wagnerian singing start several decades before

the decline in Verdi singing. And it has been shallower: whereas many

perceive Verdi performance quality as being in free fall, with Wagner the

severe has been less severe. These differences contradict many of the

common theories about the decline of dramatic voices. Wagner operas are

less popular, less often performed and less “culturally accessible” than

Verdi operas, which may dissuade singers to specialize in them. They have

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louder and more prominent orchestral parts, which could tempt conductors

to seek to make an “impression” by revving up the orchestra at the expense

of singers. The time to full maturity for Wagnerian singers is also as long,

if not longer, than for Verdi spinto or dramatic singers. Wagner librettos

attracted Regietheater directors earlier and in greater numbers than Verdi.

Yet the “life cycle” theory offers a plausible explanation.

100

Opera

singers tend to perform in national operatic traditions in their native (or

a related) language. A disproportionate number of singers of Verdi and

bel canto opera come from Latin countries, whereas a disproportionate

number of Wagnerian singers have come from Germanic, English

or Nordic countries.

101

Out of our sample of nearly 100 outstanding

Wagnerian singers at the MET over the past century (see Figure 1

above), all are native to a country where German, English, or a Nordic

language is spoken. None is Italian.

102

This is signiﬁcant because Italy (and Spain) have recently all

but disappeared as exporters of singers, whereas developed Northern

European and North American countries (as well as Eastern Europe,

Russia and Korea) continue to produce a disproportionate number of

Wagnerian singers.

103

Italian singers emerged historically from a dense

network of schools, churches, local music associations, and provincial

opera houses—and over the past half-century, these critical institutional

supports have collapsed. Ampliﬁed popular music has displaced non-

ampliﬁed vocal traditions. Religiosity has declined everywhere, so the

church now trains relatively few young people in classical singing: only

17% of young Italians attend mass regularly and many live in remote

rural areas from which few opera singers emerge.

104

While similar trends are common to almost all Western societies,

two speciﬁc aspects have hit Italy (and Spain) with particular severity.

First, the Vatican II reforms of the mid-1960s replaced the special role of

specially trained choirs and soloists in Catholic services with simpliﬁed

congregational hymns and indigenous and popular music appropriate

for less-trained (or entirely untrained) voices.

105

Those making music

in the church receive less and less musical instruction—far from the

extraordinarily high level of professional training that many male singers

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in past generations enjoyed. Outside of Italy, many Protestant churches—

particularly the Anglican, Methodist and Lutheran denominations—have

retained rigorous traditions of choral performance.

106

A second and even more important trend that has diminished

Italy’s role in the opera world involves secular education. Whereas

Protestant countries (as well as Catholic Eastern Europe, Orthodox

Russia, signiﬁcantly Protestant Korea, and China) have offset the decline

of religious music with more intensive vocal training in secular schools,

conservatories, universities and opera house studio programs, Italy has

gone in the opposite direction. Everyday training in Italian primary and

secondary schools is disappearing and, as Figure 3 shows, the country

now hosts considerably less than its proportional share of top musical

conservatories and universities.

Fig. 3 Percentage of Top 100 Global Performing Arts Training Institutions (com-

pared to share of total population in these countries)

107

In sum, if potential successors to Caruso or Pavarotti had been born in

Italy (or Spain) during the last half century—and it is likely that some

were—they would have had little opportunity or motivation to discover

and develop their talent, whereas their counterparts born or trained in

German-speaking countries today have better prospects.

108

Andrew Moravcsik

Conclusion:

The Difﬁculty of Making a Career as a Wagner Singer

Continuing to produce great spinto and dramatic singers is critical

to the future of opera. About 40 per cent of opera performances

worldwide are of late 19

and early 20

century works that call for

such voices, including such staples as Aida, Il trovatore, Die Walküre,

Tristan und Isolde, Tosca and Turandot.

109

Such operas capture the

popular imagination as few others do. They sell the most tickets, cross-

subsidizing more adventurous programming. They dominate media

representations of the opera. They make new lifetime converts to the

art form. No matter how great such operas are on paper, if the ability

to sing them creatively atrophies, performances will be reduced to a

mélange of supporting symphonic, theatrical and vocal elements that

are realized more fully in other art forms—a shadow of opera’s once

grand tradition.

Yet if the operas of Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, and other

composers of their era, are to stay relevant and meaningful in the

century, great spinto and dramatic voices with the proper power,

resonance and range to sing their works justice must be found. Opera

is an extemporaneous art form. For all its multi-media trappings, it

touches us most deeply when great artists sing it. Such singers have

traditionally driven audiences to frenzies of wild enthusiasm lasting far

into the night, creating transcendent moments by which opera lovers

have traditionally marked lifetimes of listening and connoisseurship.

110

And it is the uniquely memorable interpretations of particular roles

by speciﬁc artists—some still remember Kirsten Flagstad and Birgit

Nilsson, Christa Ludwig and Karin Branzell, Lauritz Melchior and Jon

Vickers, Friedrich Schorr and Thomas Stewart—that deﬁne the creative

frontiers of what opera can express.

It is clear from the analysis above a decline in singing in spinto and

dramatic operas is underway. Much evidence supports the three-stage

“life style” explanation for this decline. Today fewer young people ever

have a chance to discover whether that they are vocally gifted, fewer

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are willing and able to wait out the decades to maturity, and fewer are

suitable to be cast in modern visibly- and theatrically-driven opera.

Each of these mechanisms has grown more pronounced over the past

two generations, and each discriminates against spinto and dramatic

singers. Together these three factors may well have shrunk the pool of

great singers, not least in Wagnerian opera, until hardly any remain.

Fig. 4

Yet just knowing what causes the decline in spinto and dramatic voices

does not necessarily suggest a viable solution. Most of these causes in

the life-cycle theory are embedded deeply in broader social, economic

and cultural institutions resistant to change. It would be quixotic to

advocate returning to a world in which potential Wagnerians sing without

microphones in schools, churches and choirs; are offered decades of

meaningful musical employment as they mature; and are hired by opera

impresarios for whom signing trumps charisma. The latter goal may

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appear the most feasible, yet anyone who has witnessed the disdain that

many opera administrators, critics and scholars express today toward

those who defend traditional vocal virtues may well suspect that the

operatic establishment will prove even more resistant to reform than

schools, churches or governments.

If we want to avoid the disappearance of great spinto and dramatic

singing, therefore, the best course may well be to take smaller steps that

address the symptoms of decline rather than its root causes. One such

step might be greater openness toward singers in their 20s studying

and, under appropriate circumstances, studying and even performing

Wagner and Verdi, as they did until a generation ago. Celebrated mezzo

Dolora Zajick seeks to institutionalize such opportunities.

111

Another

is to offer generous fellowship support to help promising spinto and

dramatic singers through the gap decades—just as we now support

many other endangered cultural practices. Yet another would be for

more universities and young singers programs to follow the examples

of the Met’s Lindemann and San Francisco’s Merola young artists

programs in creating “afﬁrmative action” program for young spinto and

dramatic singers. Smaller opera houses could present performances of

heavy repertoire with limitations in orchestral size. Larger houses could

insist on more acoustically resonant sets. Europe and North American

funders could make a greater effort to recruit singers from poorer non-

European countries where Western opera is relatively new: the wealth

of operatic talent to emerge from Asia and Africa in the last generation

demonstrates the potential. More discussion in the opera world, led by

umbrella organizations like Opera America and Opera Europa, could

surely extend this list. One thing seems certain: if spinto and dramatic

singing is not reimagined and reorganized, the core of operatic tradition

we have known for so long—not least the operas of Richard Wagner—may

not survive the 21

century.

Andrew Moravcsik

Endnotes

For a parallel discussion of the even more problematic state of contemporary Ver-

di spinto and dramatic singing, see Andrew Moravcsik, “Where Have the Great

Big Verdi Voices Gone?”, in: Isolde Schmid-Reiter (ed.), “Poetischer Ausdruck der

Seele“. Die Kunst, Verdi zu singen, Regensburg: ConBrio 2016 (Schriften der Eu-

ropäischen Musiktheater-Akademie, Bd. 10). Also “Twilight of the Gods: Where

have the Big Voices Gone?”, in: Opera (November 2013). I am particularly indeb-

ted to Prof. John Deathridge for encouraging this research for some years; to Prof.

Isolde Schmidt-Reiter for taking a chance on someone from a faraway academic

discipline by inviting me to deliver this paper at the Wiener Staatsoper; and

to Dominique Meyer and other participants in the Europäische Musiktheater-

Akademie conference for their comments. Thanks also to the Princeton Center

for Arts and Cultural Policy for ﬁnancial support; to Hanwei Kantzer, Sarah A.

Paden, Jackie Levine for research assistance; and to Carolyn Abbate, John Alli-

son, Cori Ellison, Stanley Katz, Robert Keohane, Paul DiMaggio, Luca Zan and

participants at the seminars at Princeton University, University of Bologna, New

York University, and the international conference on Verdi’s Third Century Con-

ference for comments.

Anne Midgette, “The End of the Great, Big American Voice”, in: The New York

Times (13 November 2005). Available at www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/arts/mu-

sic/the-end-of-the-great-big-american-voice.html.

“Leider muss man feststellen, dass sie [Flagstad] und Lauritz Melchior uns nach-

geborenen Wagnersängern eigentlich alles ‘kaputtgemacht’ haben. Da kommt

keiner heran …” – Stephan Mauß, “Nina Stemme: Eine unendliche Endstation”,

in: Das Opernglas (7-8/2005), available at archiv.opernglas.de/archiv/jahr-

gang-2005/ausgabe-07-08-2005/nina-stemme-1.html.

Paul Jackson, Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met. The Metropolitan Opera Broad-

casts, 1931-1950, Portland, OR: Amadeus Press 1992, p. 145. Jackson’s massive

three-volume study reviews over 50 years of Met broadcasts. On the Met’s ability

in the 1930s to attract “a profusion of majestic voices and varied interpretations

of the Wagnerian heroines” (p. 34). Writing in 1979, the British critic Alan Blyth

lists Frida Leider, Max Lorenz, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Martti Tal-

vela and Kerstin Thorborg among his all-time ideal Ring cast (Alan Blyth, “Der

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Ring des Nibelungen”, in: Id. (ed.), Opera on Record, London: Hutchinson 1979,

p. 436). Marjorie Lawrence, who arrived in 1935, remarked: “Melchior, Rethberg,

Flagstad, Schorr, Hoffman, Kipnis, Thorborg, Maison, Pinza. Nowhere in the

world could you ﬁnd such a star-studded assemblage” (Marjorie Lawrence, Inter-

rupted Melody. The Story of My Life, New York: Appleton-Century-Croft 1949, p.

129). Of Frida Leider, Stephan Mösch writes: „Die Berlinerin Frida Leider, Jahr-

gang 1888, deren Karriere vor 100 Jahren begann, gilt bis heute als bedeutendste

dramatische Sopranistin ihrer Zeit, und da ihre Zeit weithin als bedeutendste des

Wagner-Gesanges angesehen wird, also wichtigste überhaupt. Zumindest aus

Deutschland. Darauf könnte man sich vermutlich sogar mit Verkehren von Helen

Traubel oder Kirsten Flagstad einigen. Die Bedeutung von Frida Leider war so

groß, dass Walter Legge – einer der wichtigsten und künstlerisch skrupulöses-

ten Schallplattenproduzenten des Jahrhunderts – nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

keinen Ring des Nibelungen aufnehmen wollte: Gemessen an dem was Frida

Leider, Alexander Kipnis, Friedrich Schorr, Franz Völker und andere in Wag-

ners Partien geleistet hätten, mache eine solche Aufnahme keinen Sinn (mehr)“

(Stephan Mösch, „Vorwort“, in: Eva Rieger, Frida Leider. Sängerin im Zwiespalt

ihrer Zeit, Hildesheim: Olms 2016, p. 10). Most experts agree that only a handful

of singers in the most recent category—Jonas Kaufmann, René Pape and Bryn

Terfel perhaps—can withstand serious comparison with their predecessors. For

Jackson’s parallel conclusion about the relative quality of Verdi singing several

decades later, see Paul Jackson, Start-Up at the New Met. The Metropolitan Opera

Broadcasts, 1966-1976, Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press 2006, p. 131.

We culled these names from archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/frame.htm.

These are the “ﬁrst-cast” singers appearing in Wagner operas during each three-

year period. The periods were chosen to highlight moments when the Met was pre-

senting operas from the Ring and appeared to be relatively successful in securing

top voices. The period 1967-69 was also a brief high point of Wagner performance

at the Met in the second half of the 20

century, in part due to the involvement

of Herbert von Karajan, who could generally book what singers he sought. Where

it is not clear whether singers were ﬁrst- or second-cast singers, as occurred with

tenors in the most recent period, all were included. Thus a few notable singers,

including Ezio Pinza and others, are not listed, though they sang major Wagner

roles a few times in second casts. The list does not include lyric baritones (e.g. in

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the role of Walther in Tannhäuser) or character roles, which are less clearly spinto

or dramatic—although some notable singers, such as Laurence Tibbett, did sing

Wagner. Overall, this comparison probably underestimates the strength of Wagner

singing in the 1930s relative to other periods, because singers traveled less in

those days than in our own. This means Met audiences of this era did not hear a

number of all-time great Wagner voices who were in their prime. Among indis-

putably great Wagnerian singers of that period, sopranos Germaine Lubin, Tiana

Lemnitz and (prominent but under-recorded) Marta Fuchs; mezzo/contralto Mar-

garete Klose, tenor Franz Völker, and bass-baritone Rudolf Bockelmann never ap-

peared at the Met. Bass Michael Bohlen sang there for a decade, but had departed

the previous season. Bass Alexander Kipnis, bass-baritone Hans Hermann Nissen,

baritone Herbert Janssen, and sopranos Helen Traubel and Astrid Varnay would

reach the Met just a few years later, followed by bass-baritones Paul Schöfﬂer and

Hans Hotter after the war. All except Varnay—and, in a certain sense, Traubel—were

mature singers who arrived at the Met in mid-career. For a comparison with what

was available in Europe at the time, see Edward Downes, “Opera Pilgrimage”, in:

Opera News 3/1 (November 1938) at www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazi-

ne/2016/Opera_Pilgrimage.html; and for a discerning list and assessment of the

best interwar Wagnerians, see Jürgen Kesting, Die großen Sänger, Vol. 2, Hamburg:

Hoffmann und Kampe 2008, Chapters 14 and 18. In the more recent periods, it

is harder to think of many major singers of historical importance not cast by the

Met. Otherwise, Jackson calls Birgit Nilsson “a beacon shining into what was, at

that time, a Wagnerian wasteland” (Jackson, Start-up at the New Met, pp. 240, also

188-200, 237-240, 347). The three seasons 2011-13 cover the introduction of a new

Ring cycle at the Met.

A third question, namely what to do about the decline, is part of the research

project as well.

These interviews are taped, transcribed and citable, but remain anonymous for

15 years, after which subjects have agreed that they are to be deposited in an

open scholarly archive. The interviews are mostly open-ended, but all subjects

answer at least a few standardized, identically-worded questions.

This question is posed verbatim this way (or in translation) to all interview subjects.

A 95% response in favor of one option is extraordinary in this case, because the

question is designed carefully to avoid “prompting” respondents to respond in

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a way biased toward a perception of decline. It makes no mention of “decline”

(or even different overall quality), and it is an entirely open-ended (not multiple

choice) question that does not restrict the responses in any way. Respondents

could mention any change in any direction along any dimension they please. Yet

even the residual 5% who do not initially perceive a decline may simply not have

understood the question or thought it through. To investigate this, we followed

up by asking respondents to name and compare ideal casts now and several ge-

nerations ago. Most of those who initially claim no decline exists admitted they

were unable to name a top cast of Die Walküre or Tristan und Isolde today equal

or superior to top casts in the 1960s or the 1930s.

The fact that our respondents generally agree on these ﬁner details, not just with

regard to Wagner but also Verdi, should increase our conﬁdence that the decline is

not spurious but real. In addition to the four points above, respondents tend not to

perceive the decline as resulting simply from more houses chasing fewer singers

and being forced to cast further in advance—though of course that situation does

pose logistical problems for casting personnel in individual houses. The overall

quality of the very best singers has declined worldwide, as we ﬁnd when we ask

them about assembling “ideal” casts and whom they could hire if they faced no

constraints. See also the footnoted discussion related to the Met comparison.

Interview evidence.

Many interview subjects also mention that modern singers lack distinctive and

diverse interpretive insights, as compared to their predecessors. Whereas both

vocal talent and technique, on the one hand, and interpretive diversity, on the

other, seem in short supply, the former problem is more fundamental, because

communicating deep interpretive insights requires that opera singers possess

outstanding talent and technique with regard to dynamics, color and phrasing.

While some observers also perceive contemporary spinto and dramatic singers

as less interesting than in years past, they do not reject the notion of a decline in

underlying technical competence.

We compiled the dataset from reviews published in Gramophone magazine, assu-

ming that this source would focus on a selection of the best recordings available

anywhere. We began with recordings made in 1927, at the dawn of electrical

recording. To avoid having the results inﬂuenced by non-vocal concerns, we bro-

ke each review up into segments focusing on the performance of a speciﬁc role,

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without any mention of conducting, recording quality, ensemble, and visual as-

pects. We asked multiple individuals to assess how positive critics were in each

case about the quality of the singing. We took account changes in the recording

industry, making no differentiation between live and studio recordings. We also

noted (and removed) singers who sang repertoire on CD that they would not and/

or could not duplicate in an opera house and, if possible, we checked live “boot-

leg” recordings to make sure singers could replicate their roles adequately.

As with interpretation of interview evidence, we proceeded carefully to measure

change in perceived quality cautiously, controlling for obvious biases. We examined

works from ﬁve composers (Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Wagner) to control

for nostalgia bias (see text). We employed reviews of the CD re-releases of recor-

dings that appeared between 1983 and 2009, not the original reviews at the time

of recording, thereby seeking to reduce any change in standards of the aesthetic

appreciation of singing. Other obvious biases in this mode of measurement run

against any ﬁnding that vocal standards have declined. For example, despite wi-

despread belief to the contrary, the number of recordings of operas and fragments

issued annually has increased. Today, most take the form of DVDs, video broadcasts,

and other digital visual media, often live, not audio-only recordings. Also, sound

quality and editing technology have greatly improved over the last 50 years.

For a brilliant treatment of this syndrome among modern opera lovers in Argen-

tina, see Claudio E. Benzecry, The Opera Fanatic. Ethnography of an Obsession,

Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2011. In 1950, at the age of almost 95, having

heard generations of singers, George Bernard Shaw, observes: “Every musical peri-

od suffers from the illusion that it has lost the art of singing, and looks back to an

imaginary golden age in which all singers had the secret …” (George Bernard Shaw,

How to Become a Music Critic, London: Rupert Hart-Davis 1960, p. 329).

Any control we employ to check for “nostalgia bias” also controls for any other

type of generic bias (i.e. a bias not speciﬁc to spinto and dramatic singing) on the

part of reviewers against newer recordings.

One example of an extraordinarily positive evaluation the Gramophone review of

arias from Handel “opera seria” sung by Sandrine Piau, which our coders awarded

a higher score than any other recording of music from Giulio Cesare. David Vickers

wrote: “Editor’s Choice: There can be no doubt that we are living through a Golden

Age for […] Handel singing. [Piau’s] facility and spirit are breathtaking […]. A ma-

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gniﬁcent achievement […] [s]tylish and perceptive […] musical ﬂair and dramatic

intelligence is marvelously captured here […]. Each is a ﬁrst-class gem […]. Piau

and Rousset hit the bullseye every time, bringing out Cleopatra’s despair […].This

is without doubt the ﬁnest recital of Handel arias I have ever heard” (Gramophone,

January 2005, p. 96). One simply does not encounter reviews of this kind about

contemporary recordings or performances of heavy Verdi or Wagner operas.

Interview Material. Conductor, music historian and university administrator

Leon Botstein writes: “The level of technical proﬁciency audible among young

performers is astounding. There is no need to wax nostalgic about the past. Just

as in tennis or golf, the minimum standard of professionalism among violinists,

cellists, and pianists is higher than it has ever been. In Carl Flesch’s class of

violinists in the late 1920s and early 1930s, few if any of his best pupils could

play all of the Paganini “Caprices” in public as part of their repertory. It may be

reasonable to claim that there is no one around today to take the place of Heifetz

or Milstein, but there are many more violinists on a level of proﬁciency of an

extraordinarily high standard than ever before” (Leon Botstein, “Notes from the

Editor. The Training of Musicians”, in: Musical Quarterly 84 (3/2000), p. 329).

Soloists, chamber music groups and orchestras may play for smaller and older

audiences, and may be going bankrupt as a result, but they play wonderfully. The

sidewalks of New York and London are crowded with prize-winning young con-

cert pianists. Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim expresses an uncontroversial view

when she observes: “Is ours the new golden age of string quartets? It certainly

feels that way…” (“Rising Quartets, Hip and Passionate”, in: The New York Times,

8 November 2014). Some do protest that classical music performance has become

interpretively more homogeneous, though it is unclear this is so. In any case, this

is not the primary criticism of current spinto and dramatic singing.

Interview Materials. The explanation lacks any plausible scientiﬁc or evidentiary

basis and cannot not explain why spinto and dramatic singing has been singled

out.

It is of course insufﬁcient simply to posit a coherent theory along with reasona-

ble anecdotal evidence. The standard is too low, because that is what placed a

cause in the category of “plausible” explanations in the ﬁrst place. Nor would it

be acceptable simply to poll opera professionals about the cause, since they are

not in a position to analyze systematically the deep causes of a phenomenon like

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long-term decline in singing. Those who work in opera, like any professional

group, hold many sociological and historical views that are vague, inconsistent

or just incorrect.

This is in keeping with general principles of qualitative, historical and ethnogra-

phic analysis in the social sciences. On the general method of qualitative cau-

sal analysis via “process tracing,” see Alexander George and Andrew Bennett,

Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press 2005. In the larger study, we use other types of evidence, including histo-

rical description and the geographical distribution of young singers.

For purposes of brevity, I skip over additional explanations. Aside from the con-

jecture that hormones in water and food are destroying voices, noted above, some

argue that singers travel too much, sing more often, don’t work as hard as they

used to, have less access to regular lessons, lack intimate training from experi-

enced conductors, and much more.

As reported by Norman Lebrecht in his column in Slipped Disc, November 2015; www.

slippedisc.com/2015/11/adeles-album-sold-3-4m-last-week-the-classical-1-sold-493/.

For a nuanced discussion, see Pierre-Michel Menger, “Artistic Labor Markets and

Careers”, in: Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999), pp. 541-574.

Jackson, Sign-off for the Old Met, p. 178. Rupert Christiansen, “How much do

opera singers earn? Since state subsidy to classical music has been slashed, the

whole sector has declined”, in: The Daily Telegraph (24 July 2009). These estima-

tes were conﬁrmed by interviews with top agents in the US and Europe.

In 1956 the fee ($1000) for a top singer was 28% of the annual US median indi-

vidual income, whereas the today that fee ($17,000) is 63% of the 2012 annual

US median individual income. On median income in 1956, see “Income of Men

at All-Time High in 1956”, in: Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, Wa-

shington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Series P.-60 (No. 25, July 1957), p.

1. On median income in 2012, see Russell Sage Foundation, “Chartbook of Social

Inequality”, derived from US Census Data. See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-

sonal_income_in_the_United_States, p. 1. On inﬂation, see data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/

cpicalc.pl?cost1=1%2C000.00&year1=1956&year2=2015.

Christiansen, “How Much Do Opera Singers Earn?”.

www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/singers/andrea-bocelli-net-

worth/

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On the long-term decline, see Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos. A Social

History, New York: Dover 1954, Section Seven.

More literary-minded participants at academic seminars and conferences (but

almost no one in the opera industry) have suggested that the themes and plots

of Verdi and other 19

century and early 20

century operas are too musty to

attract modern young people (including singers and teachers) to his operas. This

is implausible for three reasons. First, the shortage of singers varies by role,

not by opera or composer. Lighter roles in certain Wagner operas—for example,

Elisabeth and Wolfram in Tannhäuser, Elsa in Lohengrin, Eva and Walther von

Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg—are easier to cast because they do

not require full spinto or dramatic voices. The same is true for lighter Verdi ope-

ras like La traviata. Yet the many remaining roles in these operas, and in other

operas, remain almost impossible to cast, because they do require such voices.

This implies that the problem is neither plot nor period, but intrinsic nature of

the vocal writing. Second, we learned from our interviews and audience data

that Verdi and Wagner operas (particularly the mustiest among them, such as Il

trovatore, Rigoletto, Lohengrin and the Ring) remain extremely popular both with

audiences and young singers, as described in the text. Third, it is unclear what

exactly is musty about the plots of late 19

century composers like Wagner. Usu-

ally one answers that they do not treat women or minority groups in a politically

correct manner. Yet if this were so, why should we see continued or enhanced

performance standards in opera by Handel, Mozart and Rossini?

This remains true even though opera remains a ﬁnancial challenge to perform

and despite a generally aging and declining base of core subscribers.

In the 2015-16 season, 13 complete cycles of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy were pre-

sented worldwide (Bayreuth, Staatsoper Berlin, Budapest, Frankfurt, Halle, Ope-

ra North in Leeds, Leipzig, South Bank Centre in London, Mannheim, Soﬁa, Ma-

riinskii Theater St. Petersburg, Washington DC, and Wiener Staatsoper). In total,

including performances of individual operas, 55 performances of 20 productions

of Das Rheingold, 51 performances of 20 productions of Die Walküre, 43 perfor-

mances of 18 productions of Siegfried, and 50 performances of 19 productions

of Götterdämmerung took place. (Data from www.operabase.com, searched from

1 September 2015 to 1 September 2016, compiled 5 May 2017.)

Interview Materials.

Andrew Moravcsik

Others view teachers as conveyers of technical information but individual talent

as primary: that is, talented and committed students make the teacher, not the

reverse. E.g. “Giulietta Simionato”, in: Jürgen Bartels et al. (eds.), Die Interviews.

Einblicke der großen Stars in die Welt der Oper. Highlights aus 20 Jahren “Das

Opernglas”, 1980-2000, Hamburg: Opernglas 2000, p. 306.

Lawrence, Interrupted Melody, p. 40.

Vocal pedagogy lacks a single orthodox method, let alone a scientiﬁcally groun-

ded one. Teachers and singers disagree amongst themselves about what works

best. How to teach opera singing has always been even more controversial than

how to teach instrumental performance, and much pedagogy has always been

suspect. Birgit Nilsson recalls almost entirely negative inﬂuences from her vo-

cal teachers, particularly those who were the most famous (Birgit Nilsson: La

Nilsson. My Life in Opera, Boston: Northeastern University Press 2007, pp. 31-33,

39-43). Franco Corelli believed his conservatory teacher destroyed his upper re-

gister, and subsequently decided to become his own teacher. He referred to voice

teachers as “dangerous people” and a “plague to singers” (Anthony Tommasi-

ni, “Franco Corelli, Italian Tenor of Power and Charisma, and Pillar of the Met,

Dies at 82”, in: The New York Times, October 30, 2003). Lotte Lehmann received

highly uneven teaching: some improved her voice and some worsened it. In one

case she was given the following celebrated admonition: “none of my pupils has

ever been such a disappointment as you […]. If you want to and have to achieve

something in the future, you should take up a practical career” (Lotte Lehmann,

Wings of Song. An Autobiography, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.

1938, p. 68, also 65-70, and cf. 76-79).

We are still collecting data on this issue. Though some great former singers make

great teachers, most do not. Some of the greatest teachers had unimpressive care-

ers or none at all. It is not even clear if the percentage of teachers who are former

singers has declined, though we are still researching this question.

For a journalistic summary of the conventional wisdom, see Prospero (Pseudo-

nym), “Young opera singers: Who will sing Aida? Young singers are ruining their

voices by getting big roles too soon”, in: The Economist (14 October 2013), www.

economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/10/young-opera-singers

Dominique Meyer states: “Oft sagt man, Sänger singen spezielle Rollen zu früh

und machen sich damit kaputt. Das ist leider wahr und ist auch keine Neuig-

Andrew Moravcsik

keit. Ich bin sicher, dass sie das alle schon erlebt haben, und wir könnten jetzt

den ganzen Tag damit verbringen, Beispiele aufzuzählen. Martha Mödl zum

Beispiel.”, in: Dominique Meyer, “Verdi besetzen”, in “Poetischer Ausdruck der

Seele”, p. 9.

When we ask interviewees why they believe that young singers should not be-

gin studying spinto and dramatic roles until an advanced age, most treat it as

an eternal verity too obvious to require detailed defense. Pressed for examples

(other than Maria Callas), a few cite the generation of surprisingly short-careered

(mostly American) spinto sopranos who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s—

among them, Susan Dunn, Alessandra Marc, Aprile Millo, Katia Ricciarelli, Che-

ryl Studer and Sharon Sweet—who are widely believed to have destroyed their

voices by singing spinto and dramatic roles prematurely.

Nor is there any evidence that teaching singers such roles at a young age is

vocally risky. It is, of course, true that spinto and dramatic voices reach full ma-

turity later than other types, and that young singers only rarely can consistently

sing major Wagnerian roles in the biggest houses. Yet our analysis of historical

singers uncovered no correlation between learning (or even attempting) spinto

and dramatic roles at a young age and a shorter career. Indeed, there is reason to

believe that the real danger today may well be the opposite: singers with spinto

and dramatic potential are learning and attempting such roles not too early but

too late to train and shape their voices properly, as they once did. For anecdo-

tal examples, see the reminiscence in “Kurt Moll”, in: Bartels et al. (eds.), Die

Interviews, p. 225, or Marjorie Lawrence’s memory of studying “O Don Fatale”

at 20, in Lawrence, Interrupted Melody, pp. 37, 48. Lawrence made her operatic

debut at age 25 as a Wagnerian heroine and sang Brünnhilde at the Met at 29.

Other examples of singing German dramatic roles early from the mid-20

centu-

ry Golden Age with positive outcomes include Astrid Varnay, Regina Resnik, and

Montserrat Caballé.

See Hans Hotter, “Der Mai war mir gewogen…“. Erinnerungen, München: Kindler

1996 for a full description. By 25, Hotter was singing leading roles in Hamburg, a

top opera house, and receiving recognition as a future star (see Penelope Turing,

Hans Hotter. Man and Artist, London: John Calder 1983, p. 79). To be sure, some

criticize Hotter’s last studio recording as displaying some vocal decline, but others

defend it as providing unique interpretive insights—and he was at that time past

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50. Even if we were to date his great performances from 1935 to 1961, it would still

be a 26-year career. As late as 1965, when he appeared as Wotan at Covent Garden,

Andrew Porter described his performance as “the greatest, most moving Wotan of

our day,” and Alan Blyth as “the greatest actor-singer of his generation” (Turing,

Hans Hotter, p. 147). He would sing staged opera for 4-5 more years and perform

Lieder in concert into his 70s (Turing, Hans Hotter, pp. 170-171, 201-203).

Among Wagnerian singers with smaller voices active today, Klaus Florian Vogt

did not sing Parsifal until he was in his late 30s and Siegmund until he was in his

mid-40s. Neither Thomas Hampson nor Angela Denoke did so until they were in

their 40s. Evelyn Herlitzius began with lighter Wagner parts in small houses but

did not sing major roles in major houses until well into her 30s. Anne Evans did

likewise. Hildegard Behrens did not sing Brünnhilde until she was in her 40s.

For Verdi examples, see Moravcsik, “Where Have the Great Big Verdi Voices

Gone?”.

Interview Material.

In any case, this account offers no explanation why Mozart, bel canto and Ba-

roque singers seem unaffected, even though their music originally was perfor-

med at a signiﬁcantly lower pitch than Wagner or Verdi scores.

Carlamaria Casanova, Renata Tebaldi. La voce d’angelo, Parma: Azzali 1987,

p. 154; “Renata Tebaldi”, in Bartels et al. (eds.), Die Interviews, pp. 348-9. On

LaRouche’s Schiller Institute, see www.schillerinstitute.org/music/revolution.

html. The pitch can rise further, close to A=460, by the end of the performance,

as instruments warm up. Also Interview Materials.

Interview Materials. In most places pitch has, of course, risen since Mozart’s day

and fallen since Verdi’s day, but the trend across this longer time period is not

relevant for assessing the decline in singing since the mid-20

century. Until

that time, and into the Golden Age of the mid-20

century, singers appear to have

coped adequately with a slightly rising pitch.

For a dissenting view on the renovation of Dresden’s Semperoper in the 1980s,

David Griesinger, “Phase Coherence as a Measure of Acoustic Quality, part two:

Perceiving Engagement”, in: Proceedings of 20

International Congress on Acou-

stics, ICA 2010, 23-27 August 2010, Sydney, Australia.

Other large houses opened too late to explain the decline: Paris’s Opéra Bastille

(1989), St. Petersburg’s Marinskii II (2013), Tokyo’s New National Theater (1997),

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Festspielhaus Baden-Baden (1998), Dallas’s Winspear Opera House (2009),

Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Soﬁa (2005), Beijing’s National Centre for the

Performing Arts (2007), and new houses in Houston (1987), Firenze (2011/2014),

Copenhagen (2005), Oslo (2008) and other cities.

For at least three centuries, critics have been attributing a decline in singing to

louder accompaniment and the attendant strain on singers. See John Stark, Bel

Canto. A History of Vocal Pedagogy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999,

Chapter 7.

Two qualiﬁcations. First, the problem cannot simply be that opera conductors are

also currently active as orchestral concert conductors, because this was always

true. Second, not all old-school conductors with early training as a répétiteur

were necessarily respectful of singers.

Interview Material. Isaac Stern, The Evolution of the Symphony Orchestra. History,

Problems and Agenda, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1990, p. 10; Anne Mi-

schakoff Heiles, America’s Concertmasters, Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park

Press 2007, pp. 26, 60, 145; D. R. Reimer, Violin Performance Training at Collegi-

ate Schools of Music and its Relevance to the Performance Professions. A Critique

and Recommendation, PhD diss., Ohio State University 2003. Recent studies of

the volume of historical vs. modern instruments tend to compare 18

century

and late 20

century instruments, not shorter-term changes. Nonetheless, they

place a plausible upper limit on the possible effect of changes in the past 50 ye-

ars. Recent research suggests that modern string instruments with metal strings

and different bows are not signiﬁcantly louder than historical ones. See Johannes

Krämer, “Sound Power of Modern and Historical Orchestral Instruments, Part

I: String Instruments”, Magisterarbeit, Institut für Sprache und Kommunikati-

on, Musikwissenschaft, Technische Universität Berlin 2011, p. 20. The situati-

on with regard to wind instruments is more complex. Early and modern oboes,

bassoons and horns have almost identical volumes. Modern ﬂutes only play 1

dB louder than older ones at forte, though the latter can play softer. Modern

clarinets, trumpets and trombones can play both louder and softer than early

ones: the difference at forte is around 1-2 dB and at fortissimo 2-4 dB, except in

the case of a modern tenor trombone, which is 6.7 dB louder. Erik Detzer, Frank

Schultz, Martin Pollow and Stefan Weinzierl, Zur Schallleistung von modernen

und historischen Orchesterinstrumenten II: Holz und Blechblasinstrumente, Berlin:

Andrew Moravcsik

DAGA 2010, p. 892; all available at: www2.ak.tu-berlin.de/~akgroup/ak_pub. So,

changes in the trombone are a good standard and research suggests that “[t]

rombone makers have continued to reﬁne the design of the trombone throughout

the 20th century, [but] none of their changes have been as radical as those of the

19th century” (David M. Guion, “Performing on the Trombone: A Chronological

Survey”, in: Performance Practice Review 9 (2/1996), p. 191; available at: schol-

arship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol9/iss2/6. There is some evidence that after 1950,

American-type wider bore orchestral trombones displaced traditional small-bore

instruments in most countries, and that parallel developments took place in Ger-

many.

This is striking, despite the general perception that large voices record less well—

a point to which I return below.

I am indebted to Carolyn Abbate for suggesting this formulation.

Yet they play an important role in our interviews. Perhaps this is because these

impediments all inﬂuence the supply of singers once they have committed to

serious training and are thus visible to prominent opera professionals every day.

Also, there is no ﬁrst-cut that plays an analogical role to selecting tall people for

basketball or fast ones for soccer.

Meyer, “Verdi besetzen”, p. 12.

While quite a number of singers in any given era can sing lighter roles at a high

level, great spinto or dramatic singers have always been extraordinarily scarce,

with only a handful of historically great exemplars of each vocal type per genera-

tion, who clearly stand above the others.

Another skill far more widespread than the ability to sing dramatic roles is the

ability to play instruments well.

Interview data.

One more general result is that a surprising number of opera singers today are

found by chance at around age 20 in an academic setting. They have sung in

musical theater, church, choral or popular music, or are instrumentalists with

modest choral background, who never gave any thought to classical singing. Vo-

cal teachers overhear them coincidentally in college or conservatory.

Nicholas Harkness, The Voices of Seoul. Sound, Body and Christianity in South

Korea, PhD Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago 2010.

It is unclear to what extent the delay is due to the need to aging itself and to what

Andrew Moravcsik

extent to the need to train and develop sounder technique and greater muscle

strength over many years.

Pedagogue James Deere observes: “Maturation is a very individual matter, but

lighter voices generally mature earlier. Soubrettes and coloratura sopranos can

be ready for professional work as early as twenty years of age—if they have a

solid grounding in vocal technique, foreign language and vocal literature. Ro-

berta Peters made her debut at the Metropolitan at not quite twenty, and Patrice

Munsel was only eighteen! Lyric sopranos are almost as quick to mature and are

usually ready by age twenty-ﬁve. Lirico spinto sopranos, tenors and baritones

should be ready by age thirty. Dramatic sopranos, Mezzo-sopranos and bass-

baritones (bassi cantanti) are often ready at thirty-ﬁve, and true contraltos and

Schwarzebassen may require almost to age forty [sic] for complete maturation,

although some may be ready earlier. Singers need to focus on technique, litera-

ture, musicianship and language early, so these elements can be ready by the

time the voice is ready. Part of building vocal technique requires time for under-

standing and accomplishment, so one should begin as early as practicable. Girls

may study voice at ﬁfteen or sixteen if physically mature, and the boys at sixteen

or seventeen. Piano or violin study is recommended for younger singers, and

may begin at eight or nine …” (James Deere, Singing in the Twentieth Century. A

Recollection of Performance and Pedagogy, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse 2005,

pp. 86-87, also 36). Distinctions among Fächer are not iron-clad. For the German

system, see Rudolf Kloiber, Handbuch der Oper, 14

ed., Stuttgart: Metzler 2016.

A few contests self-consciously cut against the grain, such as Seattle Opera’s

International Wagner Competition.

Giulietta Simionato, one of the great Verdi mezzos of the 20

century, once said

that if she had it to do over again, she would not become a singer, because “I

suffered too much […] [waiting] 14 whole years for my debut in a leading role

[…] they destroyed me, stripped me of all my self-conﬁdence […]. I was broken

inside” (“Giulietta Simionato”, in: Bartels et al. (eds.), Die Interviews, p. 308).

Flagstad never even attended a performance of Tristan until she was 34, which

she slept through, still assuming at that point that she could never sing Isolde.

Sometime around that age, she also sang the more lyric role of Eva in Meister-

singer for the ﬁrst time. See Edwin McArthur, Flagstad. A Personal Memoir, New

York: Knopf 1965, p. 5.

Andrew Moravcsik

Jackson continues: “Just short of her fortieth birthday, Flagstad was the some-

what wary veteran of a twenty-year career in Scandinavian provincial opera hou-

ses where she had sung everything from Micaela to Minnie, Agathe to Aida.

Only recently had she ventured onto the Wagnerian terrain in her native Oslo.

Far from being an international star, her only major appearances had been at

Bayreuth in 1933 as Ortlinde (Walküre) and the Third Norn, these small parts

earning her advancement to Sieglinde and Gutrune in the 1934 festival” (Jack-

son, Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met, pp. 84 f.).

Flagstad wrote: “As if it were possible to start one’s career with Wagnerian roles,

instead of ending with them … My ﬁrst piece of advice to young and immature

singers can be put into three words: Leave Wagner alone! Because he calls for

powers which can only develop after many years of singing. I was already 34

years old and had been singing regularly for about 15 years before I attempted

my ﬁrst Wagnerian role, Elsa in Lohengrin. That is one of Wagner’s lighter roles,

but even so it calls for great vocal experience. For the real heavy parts, like Isolde

and Brünnhilde, you need even more: a perfectly placed voice, absolute control

of the breath, and immense staying power. Many a promising beginner has come

to grief for lack of these qualities […]. [In my case,] I never had any real singing

difﬁculties; I never had to unlearn anything. My voice simply grew. And it is this

word grow which is most important of all. For a singer who wants to sing Wagner

must be something like a weight-lifter, building his muscles by slow degrees,

adding to the weights he lifts, until he is able to attempt the very heaviest. Isolde

and Brünnhilde are the heaviest roles a singer can ever be called upon to sing.

And if you ever wish to sing them, you must be prepared for many years of stea-

dy growing before you make the attempt […]. I sang Nedda, Mimi, Tosca, Aïda,

Desdemona, Michäela, Marguerite and many other roles—all before I ever sang a

note of Wagner. I also sang in many operettas…” (Kirsten Flagstad, “How (not) to

sing Wagner – advice for young singers”, audio tape, recorded 1950, available at

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Stoi8DAqU.

On Hans Hotter, see above. Frida Leider debuted as Venus and never looked back,

later observing “I was a dramatic soprano right from the beginning” (James H.

Sutcliffe, “Lady of Berlin”, in: Opera News (28 January 1967), p. 29).

On the Marxist concept of a “industrial reserve army”, more closely connected to

capital accumulation than perhaps appropriate here, see Karl Marx, Das Kapital.

Andrew Moravcsik

Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, Vol. 1, Hamburg: Meissner 1872, Chapter 23,

Section 3, “Progressive Produktion einer relativen Überbevölkerung oder indus-

triellen Reservearmee”, pp. 653-666.

Jan Peerce sang and played jazz, Richard Tucker performed as a cantor, and Leonard

Warren performed at Radio City Music Hall, as did Robert Merrill, who also did gigs

at bar mitzvahs and on the Borsch Belt. Beverley Sills sang variety shows, radio

broadcasts, and Gilbert and Sullivan troupes. George London toured with Mario

Lanza. Risë Stevens excelled at cross-over singing. Roberta Peters, Regina Resnik

and Evelyn Lear went straight into opera, never showing interest in popular singing.

For this purpose, I analyze every tenor performing Tristan in a major venue in

2016 and 2017.

On Goerke’s career generally and her second breakthrough, see Anthony Tom-

masini, “In a Shadow, a Well of Human Pain and Joy: ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’

Returns to the Met”, in: The New York Times (8 November 2013).

Sarah Bryan Miller, “Lyric Tenor Ben Heppner Handles Romantic German Reper-

toire Well”, in: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Everyday Magazine Section, St. Louis, 1

January 1999); interview material.

www.jayhuntermorris.com/Intro.html

Exceptionally, Christian Franz sang a major house Siegfried at age 32, though he

did not repeat the role often and is now 49.

Contraltos have always been scarce, but “in recent few true contraltos have been

identiﬁed” (Deere, Singing, p. 24).

Interview Material.

It is tempting to attribute this to the fact that ever fewer members of the audience

have themselves ever sung in a classical or ecclesiastical style—a result of the

same social evolution that has depleted the pool of potential singers.

Before the current era, even composers who placed a strong emphasis on visual

and theatrical effects, such as Richard Wagner, ultimately privileged the ability

to sing roles. His grandson Wieland Wagner, who was a stage director, still had

extensive musical knowledge and made singing a priority.

See above. Some argue that singers are required to do things—move continuous-

ly, contort their bodies, concentrate on facial expression, and, more importantly,

act in ways quite at odds with the score in the interest of a Brechtian interpretati-

on of the libretto against its apparent meaning, etc.—that are difﬁcult to combine

Andrew Moravcsik

with optimal vocal production. This may be true, though it does not particularly

explain why spinto and dramatic singing should uniquely be in decline.

Late 19

century operas also require more demanding and spacious theatrical

effects.

Interviews. For one of many examples, see Marilyn Horne and Jane Scovell, Ma-

rilyn Horne. The Song Continues, Baskerville: Ft. Worth 2004, pp. 227 ff.

Interview Material. The Knoxville (Tennessee) Opera recently advertised au-

ditions restricted as follows: “Knoxville Opera will cast age appropriate, at-

tractive artists in these roles.” In the ﬁrestorm of debate that followed, de-

fenders argued that critics unfairly singled out Knoxville Opera for making

explicit something all opera companies now do. To be fair, the ad was for an

educational, not main stage, performances; www.knoxnews.com/entertain-

ment/music/knoxville-opera-notice-spurs-national-online-debate-over-casting-

ep-1399489562-361264371.html.

Interview Material.

Deborah Voigt observes: “There is no way the Metropolitan Opera would have

made me Brünnhilde as they did years later had I still been obese—it just wouldn’t

have happened” (Deborah Voigt: Call Me Debbie. True Confessions of a Down-to-

Earth Diva, New York: Harper 2015, p. 197).

For her side of the story, which primarily blames herself, see Voigt, Call Me Deb-

bie, Chapter 14.

Even Voigt admits this was true for a period of time. Voigt, Call Me Debbie, pp.

192-195.

For a subtly persuasive case for the role of Callas’s weight, see Michael Scott,

Maria Meneghini Callas, Boston: Northeastern University Press 1992.

For an overview of the controversy, with relevant links, see Norman Lebrecht,

“Singers in Uproar over Critical Body Insults at Glyndebourne”, Slipped Disc

(19 May 2014), available at slippedisc.com/2014/05/singers-in-uproar-at-critical-

body-insults-at-glyndebourne/. For photos, see bachtrack.com/review-proms-

rosenkavalier-glyndebourne-july-2014.

Also, Harold Schonberg, “Of Wagnerian Sopranos”, in: Id., Facing the Music, New

York: Summit Books 1981, p. 276, and, more generally, pp. 276-283. Marilyn Hor-

ne recalls an inadvertent experiment she once conducted. She lost 30 pounds at

one point to sing a more visually appropriate Carmen and felt she had reduced

Andrew Moravcsik

the size of her voice by 50%. She gained the weight back and her customary voice

returned. As she puts it: “Big voices come out of big bodies.”

Decisions to favor appearance over voice, particularly in the early years, can

derail a singer’s career. When this occurs, we may never hear the singers again,

so the extent of the overall impact remains uncertain.

Indeed, some of the causality may run in the opposite direction: the absence of

great voices has led the opera world to place more emphasis on appearance.

Add Citation.

Howard Vogt, Flagstad. Singer of the Century, London: Specker and Warburg 1987,

p. 101. Zinka Milanov’s ﬁrst Met contract speciﬁed that she lose 10 kilos. Beniami-

no Gigli felt similar pressure from critics when he arrived there several decades

earlier. Marjorie Lawrence, who was proud of her relatively athletic and youthful

appearance—a critic at her debut called her “young, skim and personable”—reports

that Lauritz Melchior was reportedly so bulky that he could not use his bathtub

and so used a hotel pool instead (Lawrence, Interrupted Melody, pp. 131-135).

Interview Material.

Interview Material. A few competitions have been created speciﬁcally for spinto

and dramatic repertoire, notably Seattle’s International Wagner Competition.

100

Other conjectures require more research. George Bernard Shaw, a great and vo-

luminous music critic in his youth, maintained that it is intrinsically easier to

sing Wagner than Verdi. He pointed to the sustained higher tessitura of Verdi,

particularly for baritones. One might also mention the demand for greater agility.

Shaw also believed that the Wagnerian orchestra was more transparent, but it

seems more plausible to reverse the argument: Verdi’s orchestral sound is gene-

rally more transparent, giving singers nowhere to hide. – George Bernard Shaw,

Shaw’s Music. The Complete Music Criticism of George Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2, ed. by

Dan H. Laurence, 2

revised ed., London: The Bodley Head 1981, p. 852, writing

in 1893: “Verdi’s worst sins as a composer have been sins against the human

voice. His habit of taking the upper ﬁfth of the compass of an exceptionally high

voice, and treating that ﬁfth as the normal range, has a great deal to do with the

fact that the Italian singer is now the worst singer in the world, just as Wagner’s

return to Handel’s way of using the voice all over its compass and obtaining

physical relief for the singer and artistic relief for the audience by the contrast of

the upper and lower registers has made the Wagner singer now the best singer

Andrew Moravcsik

in the world.” On the causes, see ibid., The Perfect Wagnerite, Vol. III, pp. 539-41,

and more generally, see also Vol. I, pp. 329, 451-2; Vol. II, pp. 850-6; Vol. III, pp.

222-3, 643-644, 694, 768-9. Faced with the implicit question “You’ve said you’re

not a Verdi singer though I’m sure you have all the notes”, Bryn Terfel responded:

“First of all I’ve got to correct you. I could not sing them. If I was asked to sing

Trovatore or Traviata, no! It’s a very distinct, deﬁnite vocal category. If I had the

choice of doing Sweeny Todd or Di Luna, Di Luna wouldn’t even enter my mind.

It would be a complete red light. Verdi’s a composer—particularly if it’s a real

baritone role—that stays in the passaggio, and you need to be able to sustain that.

I couldn’t do that. I think I can do other things better than I would do the big

Verdi roles. Why should I sing Iago when you’ve got that wonderful chorus scene

where everyone expects you to sing that glorious top A, “Beva, Beva”! There are

certain places, “Cortigiani”, for instance, in Rigoletto, that have been the death of

many a bass-baritone. Why enter that graveyard when you know there are other

people who can do it? I’m doing my Flying Dutchman now at Covent Garden;

Dmitri Hvorostovsky is doing his Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera” (Bryn

Terfel, “The Performing Voice – Bryn Terfel: Interview with Mark Glanville”, in:

Opera Now (May/June 2009), p. 37.

101

This appears to have been true, if perhaps less so, during the ﬁrst half of the 20

century, when most operas were performed in the local language rather than the

language of the libretto (except in Anglophone countries). Still, there was a Verdi

Renaissance in German-speaking countries, and singers from English-speaking

and Russian-speaking countries also sang both German and Italian opera.

102

By this I mean almost all are from Germany, Austria, the US, UK, Australia, Scan-

dinavia, Finland or the Baltic states. The seven exceptions are Francisco Araiza

(México), Régine Crespin (France), Plácido Domingo (México/Spain), Ludmila

Dvoˇráková (Czechoslovakia), Sándor Kónya (Hungary). René Maison (Belgium),

and Eva-Maria Westbroek (Netherlands). Note that all except the two Spaniards

come from countries that geographically border a German-speaking country.

103

For more detail on the decline in Italy, see Moravcsik, “Where Have All the Big Verdi

Voices Gone?”, pp. 110-112. Spain, especially Catalonia, produced a remarkable ge-

neration of great Verdi spinto singers between the 1950s and 1960s, including Plá-

cido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé, José Carreras, Giacomo Aragall, Pilar Lorengar,

and, in other styles, Alfredo Kraus, Teresa Berganza, and Victoria de los Angeles.

Andrew Moravcsik

104

On religious trends, using multiple sources and modern methods, see Cristi-

ano Vezzoni and Ferruccio Biolcati-Rinaldi, “Church Attendance and Religious

Change in Italy, 1968-2010: A Multilevel Analysis of Pooled Datasets”, in: Journal

for the Scientiﬁc Study of Religion 54 (1/2015), pp. 100–118, especially on youth,

pp. 114-115.

105

Among the strongest opponents to reform the Catholic liturgy were musicians,

who had criticized reform proposals for over a half century. See Edward Schaefer,

Catholic Music Through the Ages. Balancing the Needs of a Worshipping Church,

Chicago: Hillenbrand Books 2008, Chapters 8-9 and Anthony Ruff, Sacred Mu-

sic and Liturgical Reform. Treasures and Transformations, Chicago: Hillenbrand

Books 2007, Chapter 12. These reforms stemmed from a recognition that “the

Church has to adapt its methods of presenting its message not only to those who

are not visible members of its society but also and primarily to its children.”

Accordingly, this required the elimination (as “anachronistic” and “inherently

unsuitable”) of much traditional polyphonic music dating back a millennium. An

example is the tradition of melismatic Proper Chants, in which ornate melodies

ranging from 6 to over 60 notes had traditionally been sung on sustained vowels,

as in the Alleluia liturgical music. The church has largely replaced them with

vernacular hymns appropriate for a congregational or untrained choir, or po-

pular and indigenous music. In sum, “a great deal of new music will be needed

[that will] necessarily be simple; the choir, especially the polyphonic choir, will

not have nearly so large a part to play when full participation is restored to the

congregation” (Anthony Milner, “Music in a Vernacular Catholic Liturgy”, in: Pro-

ceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 91

Sess. (1964-1965), pp. 30-31. On the

chain of causality, see also Lucy A. Carroll, “Vatican II did not Abolish Choirs, So

Who Did?”, in: Adoremus Bulletin 9 (2/2003), www.adoremus.org/0403Choirs.

html. The critical doctrines are not just the Vatican II report (www.vatican.va/

archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_instr_19670305_

musicam-sacram_en.html), but also Musicam Sacram (1967). See D. C. Leege

and J. Gremillion, The US Parish Twenty Years after Vatican II. An Introduction to

the Study, unpublished report, South Bend: University of Notre Dame 1984.

106

During the ﬁrst half of the 20

century, Germany, for example, experienced a

revival of Lutheran church music and the German government cooperated by

setting state standards for church musicians (Ruff, Sacred Music, Chapter 8).

Andrew Moravcsik

107

Author’s calculations using data on top performing arts institutions at www.

topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2017/per-

forming-arts.

108

This is true of opera performance as well. Today 40% of all opera performances

(9552 of 23841 in the calendar year 2016) take place in German-speaking coun-

tries, whereas only 7% (1577) take place in Italy, less than in the US or Russia.

Performances calculated from www.operabase.com.

109

This percentage is calculated from www.operabase.com, which tracks live opera

performances worldwide.

110

For this view on opera from an expert, see John Steane, The Grand Tradition. Seven-

ty Years of Singing on Record, 1900-1970, Portland, OR: Amadeus Press 1974. Steane

remained quite optimistic about Verdi singing in 1971: “the line in the progress-

chart still moves upwards” (p. 559); see also pp. 537-545, 557-559, 568-571.

111

An organization co-founded by mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, the Institute for

Young Dramatic Voices, seeks to provide younger singers with training and perfor-

mance opportunities in heavier roles; www.instituteforyoungdramaticvoices.org.