Do You Hear the People Sing?

And now a guest post written by my sister, "Pnutdolly." Who has her Masters in music/vocal performance. Thanks, "Pnutty!"

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Since we all know by now that Boon’s favorite musical is Les Mis, how about another Les Mis post?  I’m writing this not as a music theorist, or a musicologist, but as a vocal performer. Let’s take a look at the vocal performances in Les Misérables (2012), shall we? We shall!

I just have to say how refreshing it was that they didn’t perform this musical the exact same way we’ve all been hearing it performed for years. Is Fantine emotionally strong enough to sing her “aria” in full voice? No. Bravo! (I’d use the correct brava in this case but don’t want to sound too pretentious.) Nobody cares that parts traditionally sung are spoken or even sprechstimme. Nobody cares that Hathaway isn’t singing fortissimo at measure 52 of I Dreamed a Dream, as written. The marking that really matters is appassionato “with passion”. Even in the glorious, exalted world of opera performance you can occasionally hear technique sacrificed for passion. If you’re so angry you want to kill that guy for arresting your husband, you go right ahead and yell that note instead of sing it. Singing is communication. Without the emotion, drama and story it’s just another boring performance, of strong singers, singing it like the last performance we saw, and the almost 200,000 ways you can watch it sung on Youtube.

Now, I had no problem whatsoever with the singers. Even Amanda Seyfried (who should have been replaced) didn’t bug me that much. However, here are a couple things they could improve on. When Hugh Jackman is singing, especially at the top of his range, he needs to drop his tongue. He has it raised up against his hard palate. This restricted his resonance and air flow when he needed it most. Next, Russell Crowe. He could have used more resonance. He needed to bring his voice out from the back of his throat and to the front, top of his forehead. This is hard to describe without gestures. And now, Amanda Seyfried. It sounded more like a warble than a clear vibrato. The difference being control. She sounded unsure and nervous. If you can convince me her character was unsure and nervous then we have no problem. OK I could see that. But, when making acting/singing decisions, you need to make a strong decision, not a weak one.

I’d like to close by saying that to assume actors that are not singers should have been able to pick up correct vocal technique, in a year or less, is ridiculous and a bit insulting. Let’s cut them some slack and enjoy the movie!

http://pnutdolly.blogspot.com/

Bravo-good masc.

Brava-good fem.

Sprechstimme-singing voice

Fortissimo-very strong

hard palate 

vibrato- a slightly tremulous effect imparted to vocal tone for added warmth and expressiveness by slight and rapid variations in pitch.