Ruben Dominguez

[JOE]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXSdP01mr-8&feature=related

 

Since there has been quite a lot of discussion on other tenors, maybe Armando, Derek and others could tell me why the above tenor did not reach loftier reception or sucess. To my untrained ear he sounds great, but I am probably missing something?! Well, at any rate, I really love his voice.

 

Joe

[Savage]

Wow! He has power, dramatic impact, and great career potential. Sometimes it takes a long time for the opera world to recognize talent properly. Has he performed all over the world? In any event he will not remain a relative unknown for long.

David

[Savage]

Well, I misread that. Thought he was an up an coming singer and I just read he was born in 1940. In any case, he should have been more widely recognized.

David

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Joe: I listened to the clip you linked to above, plus a couple more on YouTube. My impression of Dominguez? A good strong true spinto tenor. His timbre, while not unattractive, isn't what I'd call distinctive, though, and he probably suffered (in terms of recognition) by being around at the same time as Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras -- all of whom had more beautiful (and instantly recognizable) voices. We could do with this guy today, though!!

Cheers
Derek

[Andrew Bain]

Hi, I liked his voice too. His top register is thrilling in the Tosca. I was looking at some other clips, in his Nessun Dorma, although great again at the top, the middle of his voice sounds, to my ear, a little rough. I think that the difference between an excellent, successful, "jobbing" singer in the international arena and a "great" is very small. Just like the very best tennis players, there is very little between the top 20 in terms of talent but I think that what makes a great is that extra magic, and the ability to turn in on when it really matters.

It does seem that there are less 'great' operatic voices now. I wonder whether it's perhaps the plethora of genres in today's music world. In the early 20th Century a good young singer would usually be coached to sing in essentially the same, classical way. Nowadays because of the explosion of jazz,rock,soul,hip hop, music theatre etc etc young singers can be pushed in all sorts of vocal directions. It must, therefore, be true that some potentially great operatic voices go down a completely different path. 

I imagine I will get a lot of flack for posting this clip, but, like her as a performer/voice, or loath her, she does have an extraordinary sound and capacity. How loud she is without the mic, who knows? And what damage her technique does in the long run, who knows? This clip get ridiculous towards the end and you'll probably hate it, but is very interesting in my opinion. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUUE4ePt8Xc&feature=related

--
Andrew Bain
www.andrew-bain.com

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Andrew: So Mariah Carey finally makes her debut on this forum!

I genuinely like her voice, especially when she doesn't overdo the embellishments and sings relatively "straight", as on her early hit "Hero". But I'm afraid that high note collection did nothing for me :) I think her trump card really is her middle register.

Actually, since we're discussing pop singers, here's a contemporary one that I love (and who is also famous for "love 'em or hate 'em" high notes): Adam Lambert. Like Mariah Carey, he could have taken a more classical route had he wished, but it's nice to know that a male pop singer with an actual voice (and an unworldly and beautiful sound at that) can still be popular in today's market:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/V7SRI31X/04_-_Soaked_Live_at_Glam_Natio.html

(Apologies to Ruben Dominguez for straying so far from him)

Cheers
Derek

[Derek McGovern]

P.S. Applause interrupts Lambert's singing at the 2:42 mark on the above link, but he does come back to finish the song (and very nicely too).

[Michael McAdam]

Well, Derek: YouTube informed that "Hero" was not available in my country. Maybe that's a good thing!

When Mariah hits those high notes during her 'concerts' they say there are no stray dogs to be found anywhere in the vicinity (not to mention the necessity of sticking her finger in her lug! :-)

Shirley B. Where are ya when we need ya, gal??

 

[Andrew Bain]

Haha fair comment Mike, I never said I thought those Mariah Carey high notes were nice, just 'interesting'. Mentioning Shirley is fascinating because I think her voice is a great voice, and one does wonder what she would sound like if operatically trained. I recently sang with the fabulous mezzo, Sarah Connolly, and she talks about singing non-operatic repertoire in an interesting way. She has sung jazz at the last night of the proms and is a huge lover of lighter music. Surely Shirley (excuse the corny assonance) would give Christa Ludwig a run for her money!?

Derek, Adam Lambert's voice is lovely! He really is a great proponent of 'mixing'. I would love to hear him sing 'Gethsemene'. I am trying to sing this song myself at the moment. It is, in my opinion, Lloyd Webber's best song and, by far, his best musical. I try to sing it classically but not too classically, trying in vain to sound a bit like Mario would have sung it!

I would like to link to a more musical version of Mariah Carey singing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxIN79n4jVo

This song is a guilty pleasure of mine. Opera singers ornament their bel canto singing and I guess these singers are just continuing the tradition, but it doesn't do much to me either, Derek. They sound so much better when they just let it go. Maria and Whitney do remind me of Mario; the fabulous abandon and sheer emotion is there. I can't help feeling that this style of singing owes so much to Lanza. The peak of his career was in a strange hinterland in popular music (just pre-elvis/beatles etc) and it would be so interesting to see in what way his career would have gone if he had lived a full life. If he had taken the operatic route surely the 3 tenors would have had a different personnel. If Lanza and Wunderlich had full careers, I think they would have cleaned up! If he had taken the film/musical route, it is hard to see what he would have done. Frank Sinatra re-modelled himself constantly, who knows what Mario would have done with his immense versatility.

--
Andrew Bain
www.andrew-bain.com

[leeann]

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for this post. There's an awful lot of "ifs" in it, and they can be specious, but you give them a realistic foundation.  Perhaps my favorite is the reference to Sinatra's continual re-modelling, and it is that re-modelling I think, combined with the gift of longevity, that make scholars, musicians, and historians analyze Sinatra's work as an example of change over time, of adaptation, as the representation of a culture (Italian-American) and of diverse eras, and ultimately perhaps, of a chance we don't get with Lanza (and Wunderlich)--that is to look at a body of work over a long lifetime and how it evolves. It tells us a lot about what strikes our hearts at a particular time. And, it's an important perspective today, I think, because we are less prone to defined limits, less constricted by categories and structure than culture and society were when Mario Lanza lived. In fact in many places, there's a concentrated effort to abolish  those perceived hierarchies and resulting limitations.

Adam Lambert is one I hope to see over the long timeline, and I think he has the intelligence and (I hope) sense of his own abilities to continually explore his potential, perhaps fearlessly.  Mariah Carey, I would wish so, but I'm not so sure.

Lanza, to me, remains tragically constricted by the time and place in which he lived--a time and place which were so limited for so many. I think the miracle is that his voice and his legacy have so tremendously overcome those limitations and yes, the brief time he had with us. Fifty plus years have passed, and those of you who are today's voices still evoke his legacy in your work. Fifty years plus have passed and people across the globe who were not even born then, settle in for a home movie night with "The Great Caruso." Fifty years plus have passed, and people still turn to "Guardian Angels," "Ave Maria," and the "Lord's Prayer" in times of need. Fifty years plus and Che Gelida Manina and "Nessun Dorma" inspire talented artists. Fifty years plus and Lanza still, as  Lawrence Tibbett stated and Armando Cesari more completely quotes in Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy, brings "great music to the kids, the farms, the ghettoes  and the palaces."

Three tenors, indeed. Rather than bursting on the scene as a new phenomenon, they may well have been redundant had Lanza and Wunderlich been with us longer.

The Lanza legacy is pretty phenomenal, all things considered.  Best, Lee Ann

[Michael McAdam]

Lee Ann: you make some well-elucidated points in support of some of Andrew's statements. I am amazed (now that I surf YouTube regularly with my new 'bandwidth') to find so many comments accompanying musical selections on that site that mention Lanza as someone for this one and that one to aspire to in the particular piece on display. Per e.g: more often than not a comment will say "all well and good but this tenor should perhaps sit down, shut up and listen to Caruso, Björling and the mature Lanza (just before he died) sing this. Let this tenor sit back, listen and learn" (sic) Something to that effect.

 

And, these comments are numerous. Lanza's versions, when mentioned, are always something to aspire to. I can't ever recall a single YouTube comment denigrating Lanza. In other words, if the people who regularly surf YouTube are today's rank and file music afficionados, Lanza's recorded legacy seems to have become a benchmark along with that of Caruso, Bjoerling and a handful of other immortals. That's what I see as I peruse these classical music videos. Check it out and see if you agree.

Mike

[Derek McGovern]

Andrew wrote:

Derek, Adam Lambert's voice is lovely! He really is a great proponent of 'mixing'. I would love to hear him sing 'Gethsemene'. I am trying to sing this song myself at the moment. It is, in my opinion, Lloyd Webber's best song and, by far, his best musical. I try to sing it classically but not too classically, trying in vain to sound a bit like Mario would have sung it!

Hi Andrew: Adam Lambert, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't sung Gethsemane, but he did perform something in that vein from the otherwise schlocky Ten Commandments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvwcJUhIa0U Is Anybody Listening?

He's singing live here, and he's quite impressive (especially on the ending).

And for sheer variety, here are two more live performances that truly showcase his versatility: Come to Me, Bend to Me from Brigadoon (mentioned here once before) and an extraordinarily brave Feeling Good. (This guy has as many faces and voices as Lanza!)

Speaking of Gethsemane, I quite like this version by Jerry Hadley. He's a bit mannered in places, and not completely comfortable in the idiom, but he still has his moments (especially from about the four-minute mark through to the end):

http://www.4shared.com/audio/56SbOivc/11_-_Gethsemane__I_Only_Want_t.html

And, just for the heck of it, here's Hadley in his element singing Bernstein's beautiful Lonely Town -- a song that I wish Lanza had recorded:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/COgh9IMN/07_-_Lonely_Town__From_On_the_.html

By the way, I tried to watch the watch the Mariah Carey clip in your post, but got the "not available in this country" message :(

Cheers
Derek