Previous Message

I began listening to live opera in the 70s and am in no doubt that I had access to far more great voices of a volume and beauty exceeding most of those today. Most of these I heard in London and New York (where I lived for four years) but I have lived elsewhere and travelled a fair bit, so have heard others elsewhere, too. My selection is inevitably random and subjective, but I especially recall Dame Janet Baker, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Montserrat Caballé, Mirella Freni, Valerie Masterson, Carol Neblett, José Carreras, Yuri Masurok, Fiorenza Cossotto, Tatiana Troyanos, Plácido Domingo - but in his prime! - Jessye Norman, Jon Frederic West et al; I also heard Boris Christoff in Oxford and Teresa Żylis-Gara in Orange both in concert, Piero Cappuccilli in Pretoria, South Africa and José van Dam in Liège. There are many more but I can categorically assert that they had greater vocal presence than most more recent singers. That is not to say that I have not heard some superb voices in more recent years but there have also been some - whom I shall not name - who should never have been allowed to undertake their roles owing to their inadequate training and development. To generalise, singers from Russia and Eastern Europe now seem to be much better trained and able to fill a hall of several thousand people with the requisite sound. However, I have been impressed by live performances by recently retired singers such as Renée Fleming, Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner, and by some currently active - Sondra Radvanovsky, Gerald Finley, Lise Davidsen - but they are far fewer in number and I have missed out many great singers I heard in my hastily assembled lists above. Furthermore, I fear that I have been greatly disappointed by the disparity between what is heard on recordings and the singer in the flesh; a particular example would be Jonas Kaufmann, whose voice is comparatively small and husky live on stage.