Leontyne Price's Aida.(Letter to the Editor)

I was puzzled, confused and then slightly angered at some of the assertions made by Leighton Kerner about Leontyne Price's two recordings of Aida ["Twice-Told Tale," Jan.]. If Mr. Kerner is a voice teacher, he missed out on some obvious things. If he is not a voice teacher, he should not attempt to analyze Price's vocal technique or make questionable statements regarding technical matters.

He errs when he says "... her voice--a generous lyric soprano, but not a spinto ... (she never really pushed it)." She was considered by most a true spinto soprano-that is, one able to sing lyrically and dramatically, who can sing piano especially in the upper register, but can "easily soar over a Verdian ensemble." The term spinto is not to be taken literally as an indication of a pushed or forced sound.

Rather than being cutesy and insulting ("Our Lady of the Fog"), Kerner should have focused on the real reasons for the differences in the quality of her sound from 1961 to 1970. As the voice gets older, technical accommodations must be made to maintain the overall "integrity" of the voice. Although I might agree that Price's lower-middle register was not the best part of her voice, whatever problems she had in the post-1970s were not a question of "breath support." They were conscious technical choices Price made to accommodate a changing voice, and perhaps even a changing view of the character.

As one who has studied and taught voice, I would strongly disagree with his characterizing her voice as "throaty." Husky, perhaps, but throaty? Never.

One of Jon Vickers's complaints about the 1961 Aida recording is that Maestro Solti rehearsed the singers so much that when it came time for the recording sessions, they were all exhausted. If it is true, this could account for some of the problematic vocalism in that recording that Mr. Kerner refers to.

Mr. Kerner misses one important point: in the theater, many things that come from the stage are lost or filtered out once they mix with the orchestral sound and pass into the acoustic of the theater. On a recording, the microphone is "in the singer's mouth" and picks up practically every sound, good or bad.

It seems to be the general consensus that Price's sound, for the most part, was well-captured on disc. One doesn't always get the "magic" ...