Yva Barthélémy

I am halfway through a first reading Yva Barthélémy's fascinating book La voix libérée. At the same time I am trying out some of the silent laryngeal gymnastics she advocates. Perhaps in a couple of weeks I shall be able to report on their effect.

Meanwhile, there is much else to consider in this volume. In particular, she mentions that she would never give mélodies by Fauré to a beginner to study. Fauré, she says, is redoutable! (So it's not just me then!) Although she is French, she considers French a difficult language to sing and prefers to train her students on Schubert and Wolf, and Italian arias.

On technical matters she is not afraid to buck the trend. She is opposed to the practice of high notes sung with the head tilted slightly back, a habit of many of the greatest singers and a position advocated by several respected authorities. If it worked for those singers, she says, it's because they all had a particular shape of face and neck that permitted it, but in most cases it would be detrimental to good sound production. I happen to agree with her on this.

Of special interest are her observations and insights into the individual characteristics of physique and posture that determine what type of singer we are (or have the potential to be) and what particular weaknesses or difficulties are liable to occur. Since everyone is different, voice training—or muscle building—requirements will be different for every singer.

This made me ponder about the days when composers wrote operatic arias to fit particular voices. This no longer happens, or at least not to the same extent. Now we have to make our voices fit music scores that are written in stone (out of respect for the composer), and the experience is not always a comfortable one. Just as bespoke suits and dresses made to measure look and feel so much better than ready-made clothes bought off-the-peg, so surely does bespoke music bring out the best in the individual voice for which it was written. Why do we no longer have the liberty to edit or rewrite passages to suit our own voices? Once, it was accepted practice for singers to write their own embellishments or cadenzas for bel canto operas, yet now we are expected to choose from one or two "standard" offerings that Ricordi, or whoever, have chosen to print, on the recommendation of musicologists or conductors who are not vocalists and may not know all that much about how the voice works; a one-size-fits-all approach. Singers used to collaborate with composers in putting the final touches on newly composed material. Now, however, the body of the classical repertoire is mostly just that—music from a dead body, a corpus. It is no accident that the songs in Fauré's La bonne chanson are so much less redoutable than many of his other songs: the editorial hand and final say-so of Emma Bardac — the cycle's dedicatee and the woman who actually had to sing the pieces — was clearly at work.

But going back to Yva Barthélémy, I have discovered, to my amazement, that she obtained the Grand prix du disque for the mélodies of Louis Vierne! When were these recordings made? Why does no one seem to know of their existence? My google searches on this information have reached an impasse. I shall try to find out more about this.

Equally intriguing is why this important book has never been published in English. I will gladly undertake to translate it gratis for any publisher who wants to take it on. It cannot be ignored by the English-speaking section of vocal pedagogy.

Green

This is the third piece of my trilogy of comparative studies of Debussy and Fauré's settings of Verlaine. The second is just below and the first was at the beginning of this month. In some ways the two Green settings are more straightforwardly transparent than the other two songs and perhaps therefore not as interesting. There is less of substance to explore, and I find less to say about them.

Fauré's Green, composed in 1891 a few years after Debussy's setting, is in my view not as successful as his predecessor's version. And I'm not saying that just because it is irritatingly difficult to sing. It is Fauré at his trickiest, meandering around awkward corners, delighting in wrongfooting his performers with unexpected twists and turns in and out of mini-modulations. The restless vocal line leaps about, darting up and down awkward intervals. His metronome mark (crotchet = 69) is surprisingly fast, making the tortuous vocal line even more difficult to negotiate. The breathless singer must do their best to keep up and is evidently supposed to portray someone rushing in from the cold, with beating heart and panting breath, bearing fruits, flowers, leaves and branches as an offering to the beloved. Fauré's metronome markings have often been discredited in the past, yet Fauré was known as Monsieur Métronome and, when accompanying singers, reputedly ploughed on regardless, giving them no leeway. He abhorred unnecessary sentimentality and excessive rubato. Swift tempi give his music the required deftness and delicate élégance that characterised him as a person. I, for one, find performances that respect his speed indications totally convincing.

A further difficulty is that this is something of a patter song. Every note has its own syllable, and the fast pace and almost uninterrupted vocal part allow few opportunities for rest. I only found out recently that the edition I have (for high voice, shown above) is one tone higher than original key. Perhaps that's why it feels wrong and ill-fitting. I heard a tenor perform it not so long ago, and he sang it in the original key. That suggests to me that he too found the high-voice version ungrateful. To sing it a whole tone down would make an enormous difference to ease of production of all those consonants. It would by no means sit too low in the voice, and the lowest note would be one single D flat. The high-key version might suit a young or light voice better, but I suspect that most lyric voices would prefer the original key. There are difficulties everywhere in this song, but the most awkward passage is perhaps the three-note sequence on "Puisque vous..." near the end. The G flat to C flat downward interval does not come instinctively and needs to be thoroughly worked into the voice.

Debussy's setting, by contrast, is technically easier to sing, if not to play. The pianist here has all the awkward leaps. The vocal line has a wider compass — both upward and downward — than in the Fauré, but the tessitura is less taxing overall. Incidentally, it is not a good idea to transpose Debussy. Some of his songs are high, some are low and some wide-ranging, but he chose his keys and sonorities carefully and you can't mess around with them; Pierre Bernac was adamant about that!

Unusually, Debussy's version is the more melodic and tuneful of the two. The most difficult passage to master is the phrase "de vos derniers baisers", with its diminuendo up to the G flat. Care is also needed with "Ne le déchirez pas": the distinction between the tones and semi-tones in that unintuitive scale must be clear and the tuning precise.

The tone is fairly similar in both songs — light and frothy — but Debussy's version has an added layer of sensuality. There is a seductive suppleness that is not present in the Fauré. All these facets must be captured and conveyed.

Oddly (in view of the title), I don't associate these settings with any particular colour. Perhaps that is why I chose to describe them as transparent at the beginning of this analysis. Translations and links to downloads can be found here.

Spleen

This is the second piece of my trilogy of comparative studies of Debussy and Fauré's settings of Verlaine's poetry.

The two settings of Il pleure dans mon coeur (called Spleen in Fauré's version) were composed one year apart, in 1887 and 1888. If Fauré heard Debussy's setting before writing his own, it was the one that Debussy published in 1888. He republished it in 1903 with certain modifications as one of the songs in the Ariettes oubliées cycle. Singers using the Dover scores should be aware that it is the earlier version that is reprinted there, rather than the later edition that is usually heard on recordings and in performance. The differences, mainly in the vocal line, are slight, however, and do not affect the general interpretation.

The rival versions have several features in common. Both are in 3/4 time, and both have pianistic raindrops falling throughout the song. Only Debussy allows a brief lull at "Quoi! Nulle trahison? Ce deuil est sans raison." Fauré's rain has a neat touch: its rhythmic patter is accentuated by thicker, heavier drops falling at more widely spaced intervals — perhaps dripping from overflowing gutters — in the base of the left hand. And whereas Debussy's rain pours down at a regular rate, Fauré introduces variation by alternating light rain (in semi-quaver patterns) with heavier rain (triplet motifs). Both composers set apart the word "quoi!", but Debussy does so more deliberately.

As with C'est l'extase, the emotions in the Debussy setting are more complex than in the Fauré.
Fauré sees the narrator as being in the throes of unadulterated or unmodified sadness and suffering. Debussy's narrator has more mixed and conflicting feelings: the sadness has given way to bitterness mingled with a sense of irony and mockery and an attitude of being past caring. But there is also a perverse taking delight, or wallowing, in the suffering. Where Fauré's narrator is nostalgically self-centered, and speaking subjectively to no one in particular, Debussy's is more objectively self-aware and relates the situation, almost with relish, to the world at large.

The key lies in the word doux in "O bruit doux de la pluie" (Oh, gentle sound of the rain). For Fauré, doux means soft, and the narrator seeks consolation, as one might seek solace in grief with appropriately soft, sad and restrained music. For Debussy doux means sweet, but with ironic overtones, in the sense of bittersweet. Another interesting word is écoeurer in "Il pleure sans raison dans mon coeur qui s'écoeure" (It rains for no reason in my sickened heart). The etymological meaning of écoeurer is dishearten (literally: to take out the heart), but it is usually used in the sense of disgust, in association with feelings of nausea.

So, where Debussy's general summary of the poem might go something like: "What is this languorous feeling that enters my heart? For a heart that's disgusted, oh, the sweet sound of the rain", Fauré's take on it could be more like: "What is this awful heaviness that penetrates my heart? For a heart that's being torn apart, oh the soft sound of raindrops." Debussy's narrator is staring at their predicament in the face, through and beyond the rain, and is moving on. Fauré's narrator, in a state of desolation and near-catatonia, cannot see beyond the veil of tears and rain; at this watershed moment, all hope is abandoned.

As far as interpretation goes, it's all a question of colour. For me, Debussy is turquoise in this song. The tone should be crystal clear, cool, sophisticated and somewhat detached, but laced with a touch of sarcasm, in a way that foreshadows Poulenc. There's a little remnant of sadness but also a tiny portion of humour. The many conflicting facets are tricky to bring off without sounding overly flippant. Vocally, the only technical difficulties are the leaps up to the G sharps, which must be clean and on target, and the last phrase of the song, with its long, sustained C sharp on a diminuendo, followed by a low D sharp that must be held steadily for its full written length, requiring excellent breath control. This last phrase is a good reason for not taking this song too slowly. There is a recording of it sung by Mary Garden accompanied by Debussy himself, which weighs in at 2 minutes 8 seconds.

Fauré's colours are deep velvety pink, crimson and purple, enveloping one in a warm tenderness (as only Fauré can), despite the sadness and the nostalgia. There's no humour here; only humility. Technically, the difficulty is to glide from one note to the next in a perfectly smooth, steady and supported legato. The tuning of each note must be scrupulously exact; the tessitura makes it difficult not to sing under pitch. Nothing must bump, or jar or deviate from the line. Fauré writes for voice here as though it were a violin, and the words take second place to tone and line.

Both of these settings are little masterpieces in equal measure. Translations and links to downloads can be found here.

Vocal Muscle Building

One advantage of speaking a language other than English is that a whole new literature becomes available for perusal and study. While in Paris last week I went to the capital's largest book store and checked out the section on voice. Alongside the usual classics, such as translations of Richard Miller's books, I found La voix libérée (the liberated voice) by Yva Barthélémy, which has never been published in English, though it has been translated into Italian.

In mid-career as an opera singer, Yva Barthélémy strained her voice and faced a vocal crisis. She explains in her book and on her website that in 1975

[she] had to come to terms with a sudden and inexplicable deterioration in the quality of her voice in the preceding years. This sparked an exhaustive study of the phonic system. The next step was to study anatomical-physiology which resulted in a brand-new method of muscular preparation for opera singers. She experimented with it for seven years, after which her voice improved dramatically. The school of singing was founded. [Source]

La voix libérée was published in 1984 and revised in 2003. Yva Barthélémy's website gives a brief outline of her methodology. It contains some exercises that I have not seen in other books. Those which interest me in particular are the exercises that specifically target the muscles of the larynx. So often one is made to believe that laryngeal muscles (unlike abdominal or other muscles of the respiratory support system) cannot and must not be exercised independently of phonation, and that the only way to train, condition or rehabilitate the voice box is by vocalizing with a proper technique. This lady believes that it is possible to strengthen the muscles in and around the larynx without uttering a sound. I like the idea of focusing on an activity that is dissociated from the production of sound that might otherwise distract me. A sound that I'm not happy with always entails some compensatory manoeuvre which, if incorrect, only exacerbates the problem when it becomes etched in the muscle memory. Exercising in silence eliminates such risks entirely.

Yva Barthélémy observes that slim-built people (like herself), who tend to have long, slender necks, have a predisposition to weakness in certain areas and often have less vocal stamina than those of heavier build, whose necks tend to be shorter and stockier. I'm a long-necked species, and in spite of having developed excellent breath control I have always had limited vocal stamina. I am happy therefore to put these exercises to the test.

I shall report back as soon as I have anything of interest to report, whether it be positive or negative.

Now We Are Three

Just spotted on iTunes: a new recording on the Naxos label of one of Louis Vierne's song cycles, the opus 48 Poème de l'amour. It was released on 17 November of this year (note tense and date; does time work backwards in our virtual world?). So now there are all of three of us who've put out CDs of this ill-known work. Listening to the clips on iTunes gave me a shock as of course I've never heard Vierne's mélodies sung by a man. Nor, I dare say, have many others in living memory. The piece was written for a woman to sing (Madeleine Richepin, Vierne's companion and a cousin of Jean Richepin who wrote the verses), but Michael Bundy's bass-baritone voice gives it a tenebrous tonality that suits it well (an effect that is possibly enhanced by the transposition one tone down from the written pitches).

The pianist is Jeremy Filsell, a chap I worked with many years ago when he occasionally came to play the organ at the church where I sang in West London. He's admirably suited for the task as he's just as much an organist as a pianist — and vice versa. And he knows Vierne's music inside out as he's already recorded all of the organ symphonies. So Jeremy, if you see this, may it remind you of those Sunday mornings in Kensington. And I hope you didn't have as much trouble tracking down the out-of-print score as we did! By an unfortunate misunderstanding the national library in Paris initially sent me a murky photocopy of the full handwritten score of the orchestral version, which ran to a couple of hundred pages and almost as many Euros.

The cycle was composed in 1924 and published three years later, but it was not until 1930 that it received its first performance — by Vierne and Madeleine at the Salle Érard.* Vierne orchestrated the original piano part, but his biographer Bernard Gavoty doesn't say whether the orchestral version ever got further than the handwritten page. It wouldn't have been exactly cheap to put on (4 horns, 4 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, etc.)! Here's a folio from "Les sorcières" (The Witches). Click to enlarge it.

What a lot of work for something that was so seldom, if ever, performed!

Also just out (on the Melba label) is a recording of Australian tenor Steve Davislim singing Vierne's four symphonic tone poems for voice and orchestra. These are: Psyché, op. 33; Les Djinns, op. 35; Eros, op 37; and the Ballade du désespéré, op. 61. I'm glad there are now others to help spread the word about Vierne the mélodiste.

*Update, 18 November: I understand from Michael Bundy, who has very kindly got in touch, that this scheduled première performance by Madeleine Richepin and Vierne was cancelled because Vierne was ill.

C'est L'Extase

Debussy's and Fauré's settings of C'est l'extase appeared within four years of each other, in 1887 and 1891 respectively, yet it is Debussy's that sounds the more modern of the two. Both have a triple-time pulse running through them and both make use of irregularity in a similar syncopated rhythm to signify breathlessness, excitement, the skipping of a heartbeat. In Fauré this device continues more or less throughout the whole of song. In Debussy it is more spasmodic but is particularly noticeable at "C'est tous les frissons de bois/Parmi l'étreinte des brises/C'est vers les ramures grises/le choeur des petites voix."

Fauré's setting is the more unified. He starts in a certain style, continues pretty much unvaryingly in the same vein and, after the climax at "La mienne, dis, et la tienne/Dont s'exhale l'humble antienne", winds down at "Par ce tiède soir", and comes to a gentle stop at "tout bas". The whole song is one great melodic arch underpinned by delicate piano figurations. It waxes and wanes with steady dynamics in a gentle rise and gradual fall.

Debussy's setting is more disjointed, as with so many of his songs. He operates in smaller units, in two- or three-bar chunks, which he strings together to form a whole. Whereas Fauré weaves his way around a fairly direct (if not entirely predictable) path, fitting the words to the melody almost incidentally, Debussy seems to carve a route as he goes along and to take whatever direction is dictated by the words. In Debussy's C'est l'extase the sung words take precedence and the piano part is fitted around them to some extent. In Fauré the reverse happens. Debussy builds his song to reach a climax at the same lines of text as in Fauré's version, and there is a similar winding down of the voice part, ending on a pianissimo note somewhat low down in the singer's range. The last words of the song, "tout bas", in the context of speech mean "very softly", but the literal meaning of "bas" is "low". The vocal line of both songs ends on the key-note (E in Debussy and E flat in Fauré), and the piano fades out with similar syncopated rhythms, ending on simple tonic chord.

Debussy's rendering is the more overtly sexual. Fauré's is perhaps less original and less explicit, but it is just as suggestive in its way and is beautifully crafted. It has a warmer, more romantic and tender feel to it. Debussy's is more double-edged and ambiguous. There is an air of desperation about the last verse — an anxious question mark at "n'est-ce-pas?" (is it not so?) — which is not present in Fauré's unashamedly passionate outpouring. Fauré's "is it not?" is more of a conspiratorial, almost incidental, "don't you think?" or "wouldn't you agree?" Debussy reads more into Verlaine's question: a situation that is too good to last, that may end in tears, where doubt is already beginning to form. For Debussy, "is it not?" means something more like: "It is so, is it not? Please tell me yes; that you feel as I do; that you won't abandon me", where the voice says nonne but the heart knows it's a num.* Debussy has seen the punctuation mark that ends the poem, whereas Fauré either didn't see it or chose to ignore it in favour of a happy outcome. And no wonder, since Debussy was more of a pessimist and Fauré more of an optimist.

Fauré delights in unusual note sequences and intricate patterns, Debussy's concern is with conveying mood by means of rich harmony and subtle coloration of individual words. In some respects Debussy's piece is a better reflection of Verlaine's poem, which is itself a series of seemingly random images whose connections are only discerned at the end.

From a technical point of view, everything about Debussy's writing is problematic for singers. There are awkward leaps, some wide intervals and a fairly wide compass. Clean lines, fine tuning and tight control are needed throughout. The difficulty is not to let the disjointed and sometimes angular writing cause undue tension. Controlled freedom is the paradoxical aim here. The first phrase (see image above) is a real challenge, especially for higher voices. To follow the soft and restrained piano introduction with a controlled "C'est" that is both contained and fully charged with a complex set of emotions needs all the concentration that one can muster and is truly daunting. Any tiny deviation from the pitch, any wobble on the note, will show up dreadfully here. Then, for "l'extase langoureuse", one must get the just the right amount of sultry smoothness on the descending scale (which straddles the first passaggio) without letting the whole thing sag and without exaggeration or parody. It must sound heartfelt but not mannered; one should be recounting ecstasy, not reliving it. Fauré's version is more singer-friendly in that the vocal line is altogether more abandoned and free. It is beautifully melodic and should be sung as legato and sostenuto as possible. Nevertheless, there are one or two awkward intervals and passages to negotiate in terms of pitching.

You'll find the text and my translation here, where there are also links to download the songs.

*In Latin, “nonne” is used to phrase a question when a yes answer is expected and “num” is used when a no answer is expected.

Mistaken Identity

The Barbican, one of London's principal concert halls, has (at the time of blogging) put on a page of its website an audio clip of Dawn Upshaw singing "Debussy — La Chanson d'Ève". I'm wondering how long it will take for someone to spot the error. French mélodie may be somewhat of a less than mainstream genre, especially in England, but to me, this is as glaring as seeing a reference to "Schumann's Winterreise". The clip in question (the third song of the cycle) shows Fauré in one of his most characteristic guises and could not possibly be mistaken for anything Debussy ever wrote.

It was Dawn Upshaw's disc of La Chanson d'Ève, incidentally, that inspired me to add my own interpretations of Fauré's late, negelected, song cycles to the disc of Debussy cycles that I'd already recorded. The first piece of La Chanson is the cycle's masterpiece. It depicts the first day in the creation of the world with a single-note piano introduction (see image), echoed by the voice, which gradually unfolds, by means of a bare fifth followed by simple held chords, from dawn to full-blown day. Who, other than an organist, would have thought of using the piano in this way? But the theme is in fact Mélisande's theme from Fauré's incidental music to Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande.

A Question of Dynamics

Those who run a service for musicians must keep an eye on what's happening on the online social networking scene. Accordingly, I set up a Group for DepList on Facebook quite some time ago, but although it has quite a few faces it's hardly ever used. I wonder if the same will happen with MusBook, where I have just set up a similar Group. When MusBook moved house and rebuilt itself elsewhere, many of its users stayed behind, presumably in disgruntlement after encountering the sort of problems that I documented here in June. But MusBook has worked hard on its internal workings as well as its exterior appearance and its fixtures and fittings, and it now looks a whole lot better. The number of its subscribers in the UK is still surprisingly small, but I know from DepList how long these things can take to get going.

I wish I could provide for DepList some degree of the kind of dynamic interactivity that's found on Facebook, MusBook and similar sites. I have searched high and low for an off-the-shelf solution that I could adapt and customise for DepList. As a absolute minimum requirement, my members should be able to update their profiles interactively and instantaneously, without having to send their updates to me for uploading onto the site. I'd also like user name and password creation (and reminder!) facilities for members to be done automatically. But I can find nothing that would would provide these things as a bolt-on to what I already have on the site, laid out in the format that I want. All the forum and guestbook templates, membership sites and the like that I've examined provide some of what we need, but not all of it and not in the right combination or with the right interface. Customisability only goes so far, and DepList's subtle mixture of public and private components cannot be accommodated in anything I've looked at so far. The only solution would be to create a bespoke site using the PHP scripting language, and that is technically beyond my capabilities. I'd need to take several months off to learn and do what needs learning and doing, and even then I still might not be able to make it work, because I'm me on my own and I don't have a team of backroom techies. It's one thing to create a working site; it's another to get that site working with your chosen web host provider. The upheaval of closing down one site and reopening it elsewhere, without too much downtime or disruption to one's members, is a terrifying prospect. Discussion forums can be helpful, but not if it takes half a day to formulate a query and receive a sensible reply.

Fortunately, the website part of DepList is not as important as the messaging part, which relies on e-mail and RSS feed and which works extremely well. But the time must surely soon come when the website will have to be rebuilt from the ground up, using PHP. I hope that by then there will be some user-friendly software available for people like me to design dynamic websites.

Maintaining One's Muscles

Toreadorssong makes some fascinating observations on muscle strength and stamina in singing. I have spent most of a physically demanding summer — doing house clearance, tackling big gardening projects, and moving house — thinking about strength, and realising that certain movements that I took for granted even a decade ago now feel effortful. For instance, standing up from a crouching position without placing my hands on the ground, or setting off on a bicycle when the road is on an upward slope, or getting out a car after a journey that's only moderately long are activities that I now must consciously prepare for and brace myself to perform. I am conscious of my muscles and what they are telling me. In the old days I no more thought about those movements than I would think about putting one foot in front of the other when I walk. Thank goodness I am no longer a choir member at All Saints, Margaret Street, where, once a year, we had to drop down to the ground and get up again in a double genuflection with a hymn book in one hand and a candle in the other, singing all the while. That posed no problem at the time but is now a sequence of actions that would require forethought, careful preparation, and conscious coordinated effort for it not to end in disaster. So it is with singing.

If the major muscles in my body have lost a certain amount of their strength and flexibility with time, then so have the laryngeal muscles. They are certainly much more prone to "feel the pinch" in music that hovers around and above the upper passaggio for more than a few seconds. In addition, my vocal cords have become thicker and slower to respond. Some days they feel like heavyweights and it takes more muscle to get them to work. A programme of maintenance involving strength training, vocal aerobics and stretching exercises is called for if what technique remains is not to disappear altogether. And of course, taking care to avoid overexertion (I learnt my lesson about this last year) and to allow adequate rest periods. Another blogger has much of interest to say about muscles here .

Songs of Triumphant Love

I have just finished reading Jessica Duchen's latest novel, Songs of Triumphant Love. She is one of my favourite bloggers and I found her wonderfully sympathetic biography of Gabriel Fauré invaluable when I was preparing my CD of his songs. I was curious to see how she would treat a novel about a diva.

The subject of the novel was inspired by the story of the singer Pauline Viardot — whose daughter Marianne was engaged to Fauré — and the writer Turgenev. Pauline Viardot retired from the stage at the age of 41, having lost her voice. (In passing, it's worth mentioning that Viardot was also the inspiration behind George Sand's Consuelo.)

In Songs of Triumphant Love, the twenty-first century equivalent of Viardot and Turgenev are Teresa Ivory, an operatic soprano, who has just had a vocal polyp removed, and Teo Popovic, a Bosnian writer who is her lover. Marianne and Fauré are represented by the diva's student daughter and her soldier boyfriend.

Jessica Duchen's novel takes place in London and Paris with a few scenes set in Bosnia and Afghanistan. It's a clever novel, with plenty of interweaving threads and comic elements alongside the tragic ones, and a good storyline, but I probably would have enjoyed it more if its heroine had been anything other than a classical singer. I couldn't identify with her or be carried along in her sphere in the way I was expecting and hoping to be. I just wasn't convinced by the personality of Teresa Ivory as an opera singer. But that's just me. It's a good novel, and others will enjoy it nevertheless.

Many years ago, when I was a teenager, Beverley Nichols' Evensong took me deeply inside a singer's psyche and succeeded (with uncanny accuracy, now that I'm in a position to judge) in conveying to me what it actually feels like to be a singer d'un certain âge, an age that Teresa Ivory is fast approaching. Beverley Nichols was able to let us in on a middle-aged prima diva's obsessions because he knew and worked for Nellie Melba. His heroine may have been nasty, but by god she was convincing.

In a singer, the person and the voice are intricately and inextricably linked, each one exerting control upon the other. The ability to sing professionally is a delicate balancing act, an opposition of forces, and it needs a constant programme of care and maintenance, as well as regular training sessions. A singer's voice is never out of her mind—until the day she retires. Aside from such dangers as late nights, loud parties, pollen, dust, extremes of temperature, strong alcohol and acid reflux, is the constant fear of straining the delicate muscles that work the voice and the seasonal one of catching a throat infection. A cold can put you out for a whole month. Avoidance of these daily threats to a voice's ability to function becomes second nature, but it also governs a singer's life to a degree that many would consider obsessive. It is a life of continual monitoring and anxiety, which singers try to keep hidden from the public but which manifests itself from time to time as behaviour that others might deem eccentric at best and totally neurotic at worst. I saw little of this in Terri (she's far too normal), which is what failed to convince me that she was a real singer.

I'm disappointed that Jessica Duchen didn't focus more on a singer's regimen, and what can go wrong with the voice; after all, she knows her stuff and she consulted three singers, a vocal coach and a laryngologist. I'm not suggesting that readers should be overwhelmed to the point of boredom with such minutiae, but they risk being left with the idea that singers, once trained, have to do very little to maintain their voices. We don't know what led up to Terri's polyp or how it affected her singing. And we're not told very much about how she regained her voice after the long period of recovery. It's almost as though the author didn't want to inflict that level of detail on her readers.

Next on my list of diva novels to read is Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Let's see how she fares in comparison to Nichols' nasty heroine and Duchen's nice one.