OPERATIC SOPRANOS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 11

OPERATIC SOPRANOS

Sir-yYour correspondent "Pill Box," commenting on various sopranos of today, makes a grave mistake in comparing Mado Robin, a true leggiero soprano, with Maria Callas, a dramatic-coloratura, and Renata Tebaldi, a dramatic-lyric soprano. Anyone who has made even the merest study of opera will realise that comparing a dramatic soprano with a leggiero is almost as pointless as comparing a tenor with a bass. Your correspondent also throws in a reference to Sylvia Fisher, and prefers Robin to her without apparently ever having heard her! There is some slight comparison between Callas and Robin in that these two have sung the same coloratura arias-for example the "Bell Song" from Lakmé, but even here it is unsafe, as Callas ranges from such ultra-light roles as Lakmé and Elvira to the very heaviest of Italian dramatic roles: Turandot and Aida. In other words Callas is basically a dramatic soprano, or a lyric soprano with exceptional gifts who can lighten her tone and extend her range above top C. In fact, Callas’s versatility is that of a vocal phenomenon, which neither Robin nor Tebaldi is. To alter the argument a little, I find it hard to see how anyone could greatly admire Robin in any case. Her most objectionable faults, in my opinion, are her wide, fluttering tremolo, indistinguishable from a trill (a fault which many contemporary leggieros suffer from), which reminds one of Bernard Shaw’s soprano: "When she sang a shake, she shook because she wanted to, and when she sang a held note, she shook because she couldn’t help it!’’; and her inability to recreate a dramatic situation in terms of voice alone. Her technique is just adequate, though it would not have got by in the days of Tetrazzini, and her lower register is weak and thin. Admittedly she can sing a few semitones higher than any other soprano practising today, but is this any real virtue? I desire to make no comparative claims for either Tebaldi or Callas, considering their relative abilities. In other words, Callas’s wider range and greater variety permit one to overlook, to a certain extent, such technical faults as her wide, slow vibrato and uneven scale, more quickly condemned in a less versatile singer. This letter was written to object to ignorant comparison between utterly different types of soprano to none of whom can any such comparison do

justice.

A. D.

HAMMOND

(Auckland).