I have had these two videos saved for many years, and I revisit them every so often.
1. Kaufmann
The first features tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conductor Anthony Pappano. Kaufmann is arguably the premier operatic tenor in the world today. In this excerpt, Pappano covers what the mixed voice is, and how one has to move across bridges/passagi in order to traverse the male tenor voice from low to high.
What I want to draw attention to is how incredible Kaufmann’s vocal control is. He can rise and fall on almost any note, low or high, and make it enormously dramatic or whisper quiet… even moving from one to another on the same note. It really is stupendous, as you’ll hear.
Moreover, I want you to notice just how complex this transition is, and how most of the singers’ orientation towards what they are doing is internal and experiential. There’s no frets to watch, piano keys to press, etc, you’ve got to play this instrument of the voice entirely by feel and by ear. This is what makes it so challenging to sing well, and to sing well means to make it sounds like it’s no challenge at all – one hell of an illusion!
2. Pavarotti
Speaking of taking a lifetime to master, this second clip features the wonderful Luciano Pavarotti.
In this very short clip, Pavarotti very succinctly describes and demonstrates the difference between merely hitting a high note, and sculpting it into something truly magnificent. This also represents a key difference between not just levels of singers, but the aesthetic requirement that opera places on singers.
Do you note his parting comment? That such a simple sound, that he makes sound so effortless, took him 20+ years to master. Even at the shorter end of the timescale, he said “it may take you 10 years to make a sound like that”.
People vastly underestimate just how skilled top-flight singers are, and what it takes to craft a beautiful and lasting vocal sound. I hope these two clips with such giants (at least in the classical realm) gives you some idea of the work great singers undertake and what they aspire to create.
If this is something you’d like to start to discover for yourself, I’d love to work with you. You can book yourself in via my booking form right here.