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Yes, I’m an Opera Singer. No, Not Like Charlotte Church…
A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of something I dealt with frequently in my singer days. For years, after someone found out I was a classical singer, they would say excitedly, “Oh! You sing like Charlotte Church?! She has the voice of an angel.” At this point in the conversation I had three options: 1) Tackle them to the ground and slap them silly, 2) Explain in depth why Charlotte Church and Jackie Evancho are the products of amazing PR, but have been paraded and pushed beyond their vocal limits, ruining their voices in the process, or, 3) Smile and say, “Well, not really…”
I usually opted for number 3, unless I felt the person had the interest and ability to understand my exegesis on the horrors of tween “opera singers.” For the longest time, my mother would always say, “You’re just jealous that she’s so successful.” Of course, every singer wants to be successful, but not like that. So I would like to shed some light on the education and development of young singers in hopes that y’all will never buy a Charlotte Church or Jackie Evancho album every again.
I once heard a violinist say, “Similar to the dolphin, who is not a part of the family of fish, the singer is not a part of the family of musicians.” While it was meant to be a jab at singers, there is some truth to it. Singers are unique among musicians. We don’t start training rigorously at age five the way instrumentalists do. Here’s how the timeline for a singer’s career should look, though some things will vary depending on the voice type:
16 years old: Well after puberty, start taking lessons. This point in a singer’s development is crucial. This is the age when the voice is limber and pliable, best for learning the building blocks of technique. It’s also the age when young singers start listening to greats of the opera world, and start begging their teachers to let them sing things like Puccini, Verdi, and heavy Mozart. What young soprano doesn’t want to sing the “Queen of the Night” or “Madama Butterfly”? Don’t do it!
A good teacher will put the kibosh on that, and if the teacher doesn’t, you probably need a new teacher. Allowing singers at this stage in their development to sing large, beefy repertoire is like allowing a scrawny teenager to try to bench press the same weight as someone that competes in the Crossfit Games.
The voice is a muscle, and needs frequent, healthy conditioning. If that singer starts singing heavy rep, it will literally ruin his or her voice within a few years. Why do you think that Charlotte Church stopped recording after age 17 or 18? Because she got a wobble in her voice you could drive a Mack truck through, and her career as a classical singer was over. Young singers at this age should be singing art song, light Mozart, Handel, and Monteverdi.
18 years old: Get a bachelor’s of music in vocal performance. Finding a good teacher is imperative, so it’s definitely worth the time and expense to visit different schools and take lessons with prospective teachers. Often times, teachers will offer a free 30-minute lesson for potential undergrad students.
Also, don’t let their resume fool you. Often times, the singers with the most performances under their belts are the least well equipped to teach. A lot of these singers are natural-born opera superstars. They can’t explain how they do what they do, and they sure as heck can’t teach it to a young singer.
Most singers are not born with an innately perfect technique. Most of us have to spend hours and hours in the studio and the practice room learning how to breathe, support, and project the sound in a healthy way that will last us throughout our hopefully long careers.
Singers are athletes, training their muscles to produce amazing sounds. Young singers at this point (with the exception of the coloratura soprano) should still be singing light, easy repertoire. Coloraturas are a little different — our voice type is high and agile, and blooms earlier than any other Fach. Because of this early bloom, if a coloratura hasn’t established her career by the time she’s 27, it’s not going to happen. This being said, an 18-year-old coloratura still shouldn’t be singing “Lucia di Lammermoor” or “Queen of the Night”.
22–23 years old: Decide whether to stay in academia or move to New York to try a performance career. Either way, finding a good teacher is of the utmost importance. At this age, singers might start expanding into some weightier rep, but should do so very cautiously.
28–30 years old: At this stage, the muscles of the vocal cords are stronger and less susceptible to being damaged. A solid technique should already be established by this time. As the voice ages, different colors will start to emerge. A soprano that was once a light lyric might find that her voice is now too warm and large for that rep, and she will start exploring some light Puccini and Verdi, as well as Gounod and heavier Mozart.
30s–40s: This is when the voice is in its peak. While singers still have to be protective of their instrument and not push, they can sing bigger, richer repertoire. If a career hasn’t been established by this point, it will never happen. The one caveat to that is the Heldentenor and the dramatic soprano- these are the voices that sing Wagner and Strauss.
50s–60s: Retire and teach.
So the next time you’re tempted to pick up that Jackie Evancho CD, instead might I suggest the selections below.
What a 16-year-old should be singing:
What the college-age performer should be singing:
What I was singing in my mid-late 20s:
For the coloratura in her 30s:
For the lyric soprano in her 30s:
What a dramatic soprano in her mid-late 30s sings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ4sAJi4304
Published in General
Very interesting. Thanks.
Of course, this mainly regards operatic singing. The differences between voices and styles involves much, much more than range, sustainability, and inflection.
Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Durante had chipped, raspy voices that would fail utterly by operatic standards. But their voices fit their styles, and many love listening. Sometimes, Grandpa sings it best.
I’m not a relativist by any definition. But I do love variety: Vicryl Contessa (yes, I’ve heard her sing), Norah Jones, Chris Cornell, Frank Sinatra, James Hetfield, Phillip Anselmo, Reba McEntire, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, etc, etc.
On a related note, I sometimes wish instrumental musicians experimented more with technique. Check out this Andy McKee song:
Ha–this is true. Sops tend to be very proud of their high notes and resist being “downgraded”. Altos, on the other hand, are happy to sing tenor.
You neglect to mention that for an alto, being able to sing tenor is what counts as bragging ;-)
Jackie Evancho really was amazing on America’s Got Talent, an outlier compared to other singers on there. My dad, who listens to a lot of classical music, kept saying she is going to damage her voice. I don’t know enough to say if she has yet.
I can’t imagine anyone who loves singing enough to become a professional waiting until their late teens to start. You’re really just referring to limits, right? Don’t try to stretch your range or to maximize your volume? What are the most basic rules of technique to teach children? For example, pianists teach children to keep their wrists up while playing. Guitarists teach children how to hold a pick.
I hate singing for performance, but gradually picked up some limited ability in order to compose songs. The main thing I’ve learned just from experience is that I have to enunciate more when singing. It’s hard enough to weed through a Southern drawl without having to listen past competing instruments. On the other hand, perfect enunciation sounds just as unnatural in a song.
It’s normal for higher notes to require greater volume (air flow, if not resonance), right? My range is very small unless I get loud. I’m amazed by singers like Mariah Carey who can sing softly throughout a wide range. Am I missing something?
Ha again! But really, I think we are just more comfortable with lower notes and like the challenge of reading the tenor line. Generally altos know we aren’t the prima donas, and are comfortable with that. Now true contraltos, they do have bragging rights!
Aaron: that was great. I wanted to say “it’s not a drum, son, it’s a guitar” but his melody kicked in beautifully.
It’s normal for higher notes to require greater volume (air flow, if not resonance), right? My range is very small unless I get loud. I’m amazed by singers like Mariah Carey who can sing softly throughout a wide range. Am I missing something?
I think VC just collapsed in despair at your mention of Mariah Carey.
If I ever get back into recording, I have half a mind to skip the drum sequencing (synthesizer) and instead employ finger tapping for the percussion. Bongo rock, anyone?
I think she collapsed in despair the moment I joined the conversation.
You immediately made me think of this, from The Rocker (not a good quality clip):
VC would know better than I, but for young singers, good training seems to be more about damage control (not entrenching bad habits) than anything else. Though it’s never too early to learn good musicianship (ear training, music reading, phrasing music musically, etc).
No, good dynamic contrast throughout the whole range is amazing. (Carey also uses her whistle register, which is by nature softer.) Volume control on very high or low notes does tend to be more difficult – especially volume control that actually sounds good. There are about a gazillion and a half ways to sing softer badly – singing softer well generally tends to be much harder.
A-aron- for most people waiting until late teens to take lessons is better. For those of us that are precocious and developing bad habits, it’s best to nip it in the bud and start studying early.
Awesome.
I only sing once a year at yearly Messiah sing-a-long and when people hear me they think I can sing, though I’ve had no training except playing other instruments (and singing with the radio on a road trip when I’m by myself, I’m much too loud to have someone else with me). That might count as distracting, but in a different way. Then once in a while some chick will come up to me as try to recruit me for some oddball chorus project, like she thinks I can sing, and I also wonder if she’s hitting on me (my wife meanwhile plays with the orchestra). And I say to myself, ‘I don’t have the time to join your ___ choir’ but sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t try to find a group to sing with.
There are a couple of Complete Idiots series on singing, one starter, one for developing technique. Singing is awesome. There’s nothing like it. I regret I passed up an opportunity to join my church’s choir when I was young. My life could have been a lot different.
Bach was particularly demanding of singers and instrumentalists. He wanted singers to be able to sing more like instrumentalists and instrumentalists play more like singers.
I actually think Operaman is hilarious.
I heard KP singing on Ricochet. Nothing will help. dt
And classic. Actually, it should have read A-a-ron.
You can still join…
What about the old choir schools which trained boys in primarily liturgical music?
This makes me very happy. What rep does the teacher have in mind?
What about them?
Which composers you think of as vocally demanding also depends on the kind of voice you have. Bach doesn’t tire me nearly as quick as the guys who write more static, stentorian vocal lines, but I know several singers who feel just the opposite. Fortunately, in a large-enough choir, nobody’s gonna really notice if I skip the held notes while somebody else skips the melismas.
Somehow, VC, you manage to make that sound saucy.
I’m pretty good at saucy, as you well know.
But seriously, some of those schools still exist, and they seem to be pretty great at teaching early musicianship. Boys who attend those schools can later go on to become professional singers, or composers, or lots of things.
All-male choral groups like the King’s Singers attract a fair number of ex-boy-choristers. At least one man who joined that group started as a countertenor then later became a baritone in his mid-thirties.
I think being trained in liturgical music from an early age is pretty awesome. That doesn’t mean it’s quite the same as being trained to use a mature, post-pubescent voice. Same musician, two different beasts.
the “choir schools” did not make it with the Quote function.
My impression of choir schools was that young boys had their voices trained for liturgical music. I was under the impression that these boys trained for hours a day. I don’t know about the ranges of music demanded of them, but having heard some of them sing in choir, their music was quite beautiful.
It is very pretty. It’s a somewhat uniquely English thing nowadays. That school of training goes for the ethereal straight tone sound that is unique to prepubescent voices. The boys typically do train very diligently in order to sing some difficult repertoire. Once puberty hits, they have to stop singing, but some of them make the transition to professional adult singers.
Because of the British love of straight tone (no vibrato in the voice) and dark vowels, singers trained in England in general are kind of crap, because that boy choir sound is so pervasive in the culture, it seeps into opera as well. The Brits love their bad “opera” singers- Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, Russell Watson, Celtic Women. They all have a lot of choir boy influence in their sound.
I lurv me a good countertenor!
Interesting post, VC.
Even though I would rate my baritone as only a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1-10, I can definitely sing better now (53) than I could when I was young (20s). Is this normal?