From God's Mouth
Did Nicola Porpora sing?
I believe so. Tradition has it that old school voice teachers sang.
Oh, I know what you are going to say. Francesco Lamperti didn’t sing. That’s what most people think, right? He was first and foremost a pianist. But guess what? I have found in my research that he did in fact sing. Lamperti’s thing? He was a scaredy-cat and never appeared onstage. We’re talking stage-fight. (He was also a hypochondriac, but that’s another matter!) But he could demonstrate.
All the great teachers sang at one time or another: which is why Manuel García maintained that the voice teacher had to be able to sing—and sing perfectly at that.
It’s an auditory art, this thing called singing, and a language unto itself. That’s how I see it. You have to get it from someone; meaning, you have to hear it. Hearing leads to doing, with doing leading back to demonstration and description of the doing—which is called teaching.
The collaborative pianist or conductor who yaks about singing, but can’t actually demonstrate doesn’t cut it. The voice teacher who has gotten a degree rather than a technique and knows all about voice science doesn’t cut it either. We’re talking about an applied art here, not book learning, which has implications for all vocal art.
When Pauline Viardot-García was asked about the future of vocal composition? Her response was: “Learn to sing! Learn to sing! Learn to sing!”
From god’s mouth to your ears.
That’s how it works.
Portrait of Nicola Porpora
