Kate Hopkins, Much More than Volume: Richard Wagner and the Voice

November 2024, Volume 18, Number 3, 4–25.

One of the words that comes up most frequently in discussions of Wagnerian singing is ‘big’. Type ‘Richard Wagner big voices’ into Google and you will receive pages of results, from sources including opera blogs, academic articles, performance reviews and websites for singers, singing teachers and training institutions. The website for the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices, for example, states that many of the great Verdi and Wagner roles require ‘a voice with the largest volume when compared with other voices, able to sing over the heaviest orchestration’.