One of my pet hates... (2)

Well, the last blog was so long I've had to split it up. So on with the topic:

Trying to sing pop with an operatic setup is like trying to fit a quart into a pint pot - the operatic vocal setup is designed to portray big emotions unamplified over an orchestra. The pop/CCM voice is designed to sing into a microphone 3 inches away - the emotions can be just as big but are expressed in a different way. Of course it works the other way around too. I suppose I should mention Michael Bolton singing Puccini (I quite liked it but I know a huge number of opera singers who were offended).

Occasionally you get a classical singer who goes a long way towards making it work: Renee Fleming singing Janice Joplin is almost unrecognisable (and in this case that's a good thing). She grew up with the music, and sang in a band in (I think) her late teens, so she has a muscle and musical memory of that style.

There are others who make crossover work - Bryn Terfel singing almost anything because he has the ear and the heart. Dawn Upshaw makes the Musical Theatre repertoire work for much the same reasons as Renee Fleming - she grew up with it and so has a muscle and musical memory of performing it. Barbara Cook created the role of Cunegonde in Bernstein's Candide without much formal training (for those of you who don't know it, it's a wickedly difficult "operatic" role full of technical challenges). She then had a very long career singing contemporary ballads and swing numbers.

Still, each to their own, I suppose. It's like the new version of the University Challenge theme tune on television - the producers felt they needed a change from the original (a classic), and so rescored it for string quartet. Some people think it's funky, and reflects the programme's intellectual bias. For me, it's a little different.

Oh dear, is that my Dad dancing in a disco again?

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