Time to tell a tenor what not to do: Don’t despise your voice. Don’t go all negative about yourself just because God gave you a vocal instrument that seems small whenever you think of Del Monico, Corelli, Bonisolli,,,,,, I could go on, but it doesn’t change a thing. There is always space in this world for singers who are effective. Big voices are really rare (that’s why they were valuable), really hard to manage (that’s why some big voice owners were considered stylistic pigs) and those big voices often get misdirected.
The biggest misdirection I can think of is down. That is, like you know, the COMMAND: DOWN. It’s a good command for a big dog with dirty feet, but a “commanding” mistake for any singer with an un-rare gift to put his or her larynx down all the time. It will have an effect, but it will almost always cost the instrument more than it can afford to pay. Most students adopting this “all the time” command never get further than completing a college career. Some manage to populate regional theatres, and represent, to some opera operatives, the hope for the future. A few rise high enough in visibility to become shooting stars in the Opera world. Very, very few become durable Stars, and most of these show us, in the twilight years of their vocal life, the symptoms that quickly overcome all those youthful voices unable to sustain the cost of the DOWN command.
Petter Reingardt’s question was:
3. I feel that my voice is quite small but high and light. I’m searching for that dark timbre you have by breathing low, relaxing jaw and throat, and keeping the larynx in a lower position. Now I wonder: have you ever felt that your voice is not big enough? If you did; how did you solve this problem?
My response to Petter:
For you to focus on laryngeal position is a misdirection of your attention. You need to concentrate on the quality of sound you are making. It is primary for all singers who want to be real artists. In your recordings available on the internet, you sing as if you do not recognize the difference between Chest Voice and Falsetto. In your “Ah! Mes amis” video, you manage to do a little Chest Voice but you insert it with no apparent artistic logic and darken enough to make the moments when you sing in Chest Voice hard to discern. Don’t think that you can use tools like “Dark Timber” to tweak your voice into sounding like mine, and please forget imagining injections of Botox to your jaw and throat.
I did a blog some time ago about Falsetto, and confusion. I suggest you consume it: Just click here. Follow the music and Luciano’s singing to get an idea of how Falsetto should be incorporated into an interpretation. There is logic to Pavarotti’s moves from one function to another. I wonder if you can hear it happening in Luciano’s voice. I can hear it happening in your Donizetti recording, but can you? In your audio recording of “Languir’ per una bella” I am hard pressed to pick out any Chest Voice singing.
Please stop telling your instrument that it is just not good enough. Sing in Chest Voice when you intend to sing mezzo forte or louder in your low register, your middle register and your high register. Chest Voice is for the louder bits and Falsetto is almost exclusively for the softer bits. High or low doesn’t matter. The big “trick” is to hide your transition from one function to the other so that the in-expert listener takes no notice of the event as you go from soft (Falsetto) to loud (Chest) to soft (Falsetto). Sadly, your singing hides Chest Voice when you find it. You need to make Chest Voice ring in the ears of your audience.
Yes, my voice is and was a “small” voice. All high voices are “smaller” than lower voices. The real measure of a voice used to be its audibility. If the audience could hear the singer, and the singer inspired the audience to applaud, then the voice of the singer was not “too small”. I didn’t have a vocal size “problem” back in the early years of my vocal life. I did learn to ignore those who criticized my voice for various qualities it had, and those who criticized me for some qualities that a few of my detractors said my voice should have had. Size was an issue that surfaced in auditions and shortly showed up in print. It took a while, but I learned that it was less about my voice than it was about my category. You are of the same category as I, and I’m sorry that you seem to have internalized the standard carping about the “size” a voice in our category normally displays. Making a voice sound bigger than it is by nature is a formula for microphone dependence, if the voice survives.
My hope for you is that you can let go of your obsession with laryngeal movement management, and change your focus to hearing continuity in the sound your instrument produces.
So, Petter, please don’t wrastle your larynx to the floor. It won’t make your voice bigger. A big voice used to be a mixed blessing, and I often went all “Why couldn’t I have a voice like that?” when I listened to Franco Corelli. I am a tenor. So I did try to make like Franco, but my instrument put me on notice: “OK! As long as you do this “Nessun dorma” and “E lucevan le stele” thing in front of that Navy Band microphone then we’re on, but if you take your mouse in elephant costume show on the Operatic Stage then I’m out-uh-here!” I’m glad, I got the message.
I will try to answer your other questions briefly.
1. Coloratura: what is the secret? How should I train this the right way? I feel like I can’t be agile and sing with full voice at the same time. So how do you do it?
The secret is in your ability or inability to make your diaphragm flutter and with your coordination. The primary physical apparatus that produces good coloratura is the diaphragm. This controller of support acts in a negative fashion. That is to say that the potential energy developed in the pressure under which your viscera are place by your abdominal muscles is blocked and controlled by the diaphragm. That pressure created by your abdominal muscles, unopposed by your diaphragm, would normally be transferred to the air in your lungs, and if you didn’t stop it by other means the air in your lungs would escape you immediately. So your diaphragm stops your tightened abdominal muscles,,, you do know,,, I forgot. You’re a tenor! The source of energy that goes through two conversions and several modifications before ultimately landing in our ears as your voice are your abdominal muscles. Anyway, your diaphragm is in charge of controlling the transfer of the pressure in your viscera to the air in your lungs which then motivates your vocal chords which provide the vibrations that the rest of your vocal instrument converts into intelligible language and hopefully satisfyingly attractive singing. If you didn’t care a whit about coloratura, that would be enough said.
But, since you ask, the diaphragm is also the main generator of the pulsations that we recognize as coloratura. It is even logical. Not all vocal things are logical, but this one is. There is no other component of your anatomy to which you can award credit. Leo Nucci once told me that he believed that the old school castrati used to do coloratura with their lips. He demonstrated his proposition on the Met stage during a “Barber of Seville” rehearsal. It was a good laugh, but I was never quite sure he meant it as a joke. The diaphragm takes care of this work. I have often offered the following advice:
Sing the violin part from the shaving scene in IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA. Start it in any
convenient key, really slow at first and singing every note without any interruption of vocal cord
activity except during inhalation. And, by the way, not forgetting my target audience, do
breathe and breathe where ever you find convenient. String players don’t have to breathe, so
composers can forgo putting in breathing points some tenors need in the melodic line. You
could say I am calling for you to sing legato. When you get to the repeated notes, just keep on
singing without interrupting your vocal chords’ intonation of the pitch.
You will find that the diaphragm is the only thing that will get the job done. If it does not do the job, then all those repeated notes that represent bow direction changes on a violin will become one long held note or you will be forced to stop your vocal chords from vibrating between each note…. Oh!!! I forgot. Leo Nucci’s method does sort of get the job done, but it would inspire most people to laugh, so I don’t recommend it.
2. Low notes: I find it hard to be heard in the lower register (below g3 down to a2). It feels either breathy or very tight. I’ve been singing “vado incontro…” from Mitridate, re di Ponto, and it’s extremely hard to keep access to those two octaves.
When you have a good idea what Chest Voice is, then you can address this problem. You must use Chest Voice in the Chest Register if you ever hope to have those notes heard while an orchestra is backing you up. The way you sing now leaves the orchestra little choice. It’s going to cover you up, if it is composed of more than a dozen or so instruments.
When you can sing in the middle register of your voice with Chest Voice, then you can experiment with descending by 5ths into your Chest Register keeping Chest Voice function active. When you find yourself singing in Chest Voice in your middle register, you will likely also find your pharynx to be less dilated and your larynx at a higher position than you seem accustomed to maintain.
Don’t forget to use the “Glottal Attack” of Garcia. Tight is not right. You will need to allow for more space into which your vocal cords can comfortably phonate those low tones in Chest Voice. Just be aware that the lowest notes require the least tension on the vocal cords, but they are going to be asked to flap large slow vibrations. They require the chamber above them to accommodate the larger wave forms of the low notes as compared to the 5th above.
“Mitridate” was designed for an expert. If you master that Opera, you will have solved the low note problem. Oh! By the way, you will have solved almost all the rest of your vocal problems as well….. ooops! The coloratura thing might still be unresolved.