I shouldn't get involved in this.

Opera has been around for several centuries and it's still going strong. The style of singing has, of necessity, been dictated by a number of circumstances.

If you're used to singing in a coffeehouse or folk club, and over the sound of an acoustic guitar or 5-string banjo, you don't really have to put that much horsepower behind your voice to be heard. But—if you have to be heard in a large theater or concert house big enough to accommodate a couple thousand people and over what amounts to a full symphony orchestra often going full tilt, along with making sure the words you're singing are understandable, you'd better have some pretty solid breath-support, make sure you using the full resonance possibilities of you voice, and enunciate crisply and clearly.

Opera developed as an art form long before the invention of amplification. Anyone who wanted to sing opera had to have a big voice to begin with. Not everyone does. Bing Crosby, for example, was a baritone, as was Frank Sinatra and most of the crooners. But their voices were not big enough for opera. They had the benefit of coming on board as broadcasting was well under way, and spent their singing lives working with the benefit of electronic amplification. This made it possible for them to back off and "croon," and still be heard in large spaces such as in Las Vegas casinos.

With this matter of natural vocal power to deal with, believe me, opera singers—and classical singers in general—don't have the energy and concentration left over to be "pretentious." Years of training, practice, and bloody hard work goes into becoming a classical singer, and not all those who want to be have the kind of voice necessary. Matters, for example, of just sheer size of voice. Most people don't have a big enough voice. This assumption of "pretentiousness" is a projection of persons who just don't understand what the hell is going on.

And as to the kind of music one sings:   George London was a great bass-baritone, great enough so that he was the first American to be invited to sing at the Wagner festival in Beyreuth, Germany, and to sing the role of Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi opera house in Moscow. One of the great singers of all time.

But in an otherwise marvelous recital program, he included "Lord Randal." He made the mistake of giving it the "full operatic treatment." Gawdawful! The problem was that this was not his milieu, and he didn't understand that this sort of song requires an approach far different from the approach one would take to the death scene in Boris Godunov.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot: try to imaging THIS sung by, say, Bob Dylan.

Dmitri Hvorostosky is one of the finest baritones around these days.

Not all operatic tenors are rotund. Some are movie star good looking. Take a gander at Mario del Monaco as the troubadour knight (Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi). He has just learned that the evil Count di Luna has captured the gypsy woman he thinks is his mother and is going to burn her at the stake. A bit pissed about this, the troubadour knight is calling his soldiers TO ARMS, intending to ride out, rescue his mother, and tear di Luna a new one! Note also that he is singing over both an orchestra and chorus.

And if you're under the misconception that operatic sopranos are all fat and shrill, take a look and listen to THIS young lady! The poignant aria she is singing, "Song to the Moon," is from Rusalka, an opera by Antonin Dvorak, based on a Czech folk tale about a water sprite who is in love with a mortal man and yearns to become human. It's pretty sure that Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" was based on this folk tale.

A mind that is closed and full of stereotypes and knee-jerk reactions is a sad thing. It denies its possessor a great many wonderful things in life.

Don Firth

P. S. Some classical voice lessons can be of great benefit to anyone interested in singing. Learning to use good breath support and how to make the best use of your own natural resonance and sing without undue muscular tension can keep your voice healthy and enable you to sing well into old age. But it will not make you sound like an opera singer as many folkies seem to think. Believe me, there are a lot of classical voice students who wish it were that easy!