Do Operatic vocal coach’s have a place in the modern world?

I’ve often thought about this question, particularly as a vocal coach that has trained in many different singing styles. As a vocalist trying to find my place in the SA music industry, I started by performing in various groups, choirs & cover bands covering songs from genre’s spanning several centuries. 

No doubt the majority of wanna-be singers who have come to me for training over the years have wanted to sing songs that are current. With Michael Buble reigniting the Swing tunes from the century before & some of the great timeless musicals of the 1900’s, I would add that to the list of demands of students. Very few students ever ask for operatic training. It seems logical. It is not the music of our era & that is not to take away from it as there are certainly reasons to preserve it but my concern is with teachers out there who have trained operatically trying to justify why a contemporary student should train with them.

Yes, certainly the basis of this technique is what I would teach anyone wanting to sing but there many aspects that just do not apply to modern singing. A few hundred years ago, there were no microphones & therefore vocalists had to create a technique that would “self-amplify”. Technology has certainly changed that, meaning singers do not have to create a “false” sound to project over the instrumentation but rather a natural sound that simply is amplified by the system being used. Naturally this started happening. The jazz singers of the last century prove this & thus a new era of singing began. Often not the safest but it certainly did offer a way of expression to singers singing behind multiple musicians. 

Another difference has been the vowels we use. Music, whether we like or not has been severely influenced in the modern world by the dominance of America & so the way we sing words has changed. As apposed to the “rounder” sounds, people started using vowels like “ee”, “A” as in “hat”, “uh” as in “luck” etc. We cannot runaway from this but you have to ask yourself, why are operatic trainers still forcing students who are trying to sing in a contemporary fashion to use vowels & place these sounds in a way that simply does not fit in our world?

The human race has evolved, things change, technology changes the world. Do we just stubbornly sit on a high horse & not accept that? Is it a fear that like some languages, a historical musical art form will die & in order to preserve it we must preach that it is the only method in which to sing? Personally, I think that’s just ignorant…what do you think?