Mimi Ezust wrote on a topic dear to our hearts:

>Some female singers who use vibrato well: Bubbles in her prime.  Flemming,
>fer sure!  Elly Ameling.  Arlene Auger.  Ella Fitzgerald!

And I would add Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, whose calculated control of vibrato
has always impressed me.  On the other hand, I have frissons of horror if
I hear British soprano Amanda Roocroft, whose voice flaps like a washing
line's damp bloomers in a gale.

This thread reminds me how much I am enjoying Donald Clarke's life of Frank
Sinatra, "All or Nothing at All" - one passage is apposite:

   "Listening to a lot of different kinds of music, the question arises:
   why haven't legit singers ever been able to learn from pop singers, and
   vice versa? Some opera singers act:  Norman Welsby, playing the King in
   Henze's "The Bassarids" at the English National Opera in 1974, was
   electrifying; but good singing actors in opera are the exception rather
   than the rule:  they often seem locked into convention to the extent of
   counting the number of oscillations in each vibrato, as they they are
   afraid to act."

James Kearney
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