Wagner versus Wagnerian Sopranos

Submitted by Sat, 2009/08/22 - 09:50

An interesting study of the how and why of those thrilling Wagnerian high notes!

SEEDMAGAZINE.COM August 22, 2009
The Wagnerian Method
What We Know by Joe Kloc / August 20, 2009

When physicist John Smith spent the night in his garden with the score
to /Götterdämmerung/, the final opera in Richard Wagner’s four-part,
15-hour epic, /Der Ring des Nibelungen/, he wasn’t interested in its
account of the apocalyptic struggle of Norse gods for control of the
world. Smith was concerned with a struggle of a different sort—one
between the opera’s words and music that might elucidate the
controversial German composer’s peculiar vision for the future of art.

On Smith’s mind was an age-old difficulty all soprano singers face: They
mispronounce lyrics when singing powerfully in the top half of their
range. This “soprano problem” was formally recognized at least as far
back as 1843, when French composer Hector Berlioz wrote in his /Treatise
on Instrumentation/ that “[sopranos] should not be required to sing many
words on high phrases, since this makes the pronunciation of syllables
very difficult if not impossible.” It does not appear, however, that
Berlioz—or anyone else—ever understood why this problem occurred

The full article: http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_wagnerian_method

All the best,
Flosshilde