So I’m back with advice for a young man from “Twilight Zone”. You may remember that I created this fantasy place in my last blog….. I’m sorry. I have to admit to stealing that label from an old television show. In that blog I also named the young man I met in that pleasant region “Ottaviohopful”. We had only a short time to work together, but I still remember his voice, and the vocal difficulties he faced at that time. Measures ten and eleven of “Dalla sua pace” are probably offering him a challenge common to most tenors just starting out, and sometimes observable with singers of long experience.
Just to be sure you and I are on the same page, I will insert “Ottaviohopeful”’s note as a reminder here:
Dear Maestro Blake,
I’m the younger tenor of “Twilight Zone”. I write to you in order to inform you about my situation and conditions. With my teacher I’m studying Dalla sua pace and I confess I have some problems. At first the teacher told me that I must study the aria “with ‘voce piena’ because today even lyric tenors not only leggero tenors sing Don Ottavio”. So I sing with “voce piena”, but, altough I succeed in singing the first two G, when I’m singing “quel che le incre-E-SCE”, when I should sing F, I find this passage very difficult. The throat closes by itself. I don’t know what I should do. I remember your advices in “TwiliteZone”, I remember you spoke about falsetto and I read on your site that you say about falsetto in relation to Una furtive lagrima. Falsetto is very very important, so I don’t understand why my teacher forbids me to use it. He says “With falsetto singing, orchestra covers you”. I cannot believe it and all people who would like to teach me to sing tell me the same thing. So, according to them, is better that I sing like a slaughtered capon; and according to them, I cannot lower the tone because “in theater never could you make this [singing in falsetto] because the conductor wants the right tone”. I’m desperate. I run away from this people and still do not have a teacher. I would like to come in “MasterClassVille”, but it’s impossible to me. I hope to find a real teacher as soon as possible. According to you, what should I do?
Thanks!
“Ottaviohopeful”
Given the vocal advice “Ottaviohopeful” mentions in his note, I expect he faces the most common vocal ordeal a tenor had to undergo and resolve in previous centuries. There are lots of examples today that testify against this once inevitable hurdle being a barrier one had to surpass on his assent to
“the rank of distinguished artist“.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One by Manuel Garcia II page 1
Luciano Pavarotti gives us a really good example of how “Ottaviohopeful” could please his teacher. The full Monty you can review here:
Now the part we are interested in are these measures:
Luciano sings these notes in Chest Voice and shows us how he could choose to sing in Clear Timbre or Dark Timbre on an F natural. The evidence that proves he could do this is sitting on You Tube where he sings the first F natural in measure 11 in Clear Timbre and the second F natural in Dark Timbre. In the century that has past into so like yesterday status one could have heard this binary way to do these two notes described this way:
Luciano sings open until the second F natural which he sings closed or covered.
Or:
Luciano sings normally until the second F natural when he goes into passaggio.
Or:
Luciano canta normalmente fino la seconda fa naturale dove si gira la voce.
My French, Spanish and German are just not good enough to go on.
Anyway, Luciano was a great technician, and did his thing with wonderful consistency, but was no automaton. Luciano gives us a lesson on his freedom of Dark Timber use when he returns to this phrase in measures 45 and 46.
Now we have Luciano singing the E natural and both F naturals in Dark Timbre, or “closed/covered”, “in passaggio” or “girato”. This variation on his first foray through this phrase shows how a tenor can change Dark Timbre use or in standard singer talk “move his passaggio” around. When he arrives at measures 57 and 58, he does exactly the same “passaggio” thing as in 45 and 46 with a little more support for added volume:
It’s possible that even Luciano could have been complicit in influencing my young correspondent. Luciano made a statement that is just so tenor I can’t help but smile. He speaks about being “a real tenor”, and demonstrates what he is talking about. He then falls into his own trap to demonstrate that he himself can deviate from being the “real tenor” he considers himself to be. He sings the F at the top of his E flat major scale “open”, just like he did with his first F natural in measure 11 of Dalla sua pace. I have to say that all the sounds produced by Luciano’s voice were wonderful. He was a real tenor, not withstanding his own standards. (Click the above blue text links to see and hear what I’m talking about.)
I have an idea that “Ottaviohopeful” was trying to do what Luciano did with this phrase, and it probably felt like he was trying to push a bolder up a steep hill using his larynx to push it. If you listen to some of the other tenors, who’s YouTube examples I include in my previous blog, you may be surprised to hear big differences in the ways that these other tenors sang the same notes that Luciano sang. They are all real tenors,,, even I make the grade, but Luciano as well as the teacher mentioned by “Ottaviohopeful” may think that we are redefining the word “real”.
I’ll be back again with my thoughts on the relevant things I hear in the singing of those other “real” tenors.