“Well, Netrebko thinks she can take on the coloratura but you simply can’t sit through it when you’ve heard Dessay in the same role…”
Or:
“And then Caballé walked out onstage in a blanket for “Casta Diva” but you know it’s impossible to disguise an elephant…”
(*Cue peals of elitist laughter.)
I actually think singers spend too much time talking about technique and repertoire. I went into music because I fell in love with the music. I wanted to probe into the minds of the great composers and find out how they wrote the things they did in the time period they wrote them in and inform my performances with that knowledge. In that way I have the interest, if not the work ethic, of a musicologist. But in my interactions with my grad school colleagues, it is often this idea of “fach” that we all found so confounding yet enchanting.
The German fach system was devised to base casting decisions on a single audition. If you could sing one aria, you could be declared a “dramatic coloratura” soprano and thereby, you could sing fourteen other similar roles. (Incidentally, dramatic coloraturas are like unicorns. I have yet to meet a true one in person, although I have met several sopranos who have purported to be). The problem is that this system implicated by the German opera houses is one of convenience and is therefore flawed. But similar to an analogy in one of those Nora Ephron movies, (is it You’ve Got Mail?), it is not unlike finding your perfect Starbucks order. When you order your tall non-fat soy mocha frappuccino, you have bought an identity. (Is that even a thing? I don’t drink coffee.) For $3.95 you have bought yourself a definition. That very specific drink defines you and so does your fach. So when I say I am a lyric soprano with coloratura extension, it is because I, or rather, my family has paid $60, 000 dollars for a piece of my vocal identity.
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