It would be good to hear from some other woman singers. We tend to use our voices differently. Some of us are quieter and have to work harder to be heard over a chatty audience. Breath control is terrifically important. I've been singing all my life but from my early 20s to mid-fifties mostly round the house or to small children (I did have a busy day job too, but it did not give me much opportunity to sing.) In my late fifties I had a set of ten singing lessons from the late great Niall Timmins that transformed my singing. Lots of good tips but it was the daily breathing exercises that really made the difference. That and discovering a whole octave below the mezzo-soprano voice they told me I had at school. For me the words have always been the thing, I think I was doing OK on those even before the lessons. I'd have taken more but Niall fell ill and died that summer. Like others on this thread, I certainly notice when singers with lovely voices sing mellifluous vowels but lose the meaning because the consonants are not clear. Some of them are classically trained too.