It's Time We Stop Emphasizing "Fach," Especially for Young Singers

Assigning young singers a "Fach," or specialized voice type, can actually do more harm than good. It's time we de-emphasize opera in conservatories and let singers explore a wider range of sounds.

In one of my recent articles, I talked about living in the Land of What IS, and stressed the importance of being able to make distinctions between our feelings about something and the objective merits of the thing itself. I contrasted the difference between two very divergent pedagogical models I see in today’s voice teaching industry (the so-called “ou…