Just to make viewpoints explicit I consider Maria Callas the greatest singer I have ever heard. Indeed the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and Callas are the greatest interpretative artists of any type I have ever seen - again to make issues explict the greatest non-musical interpretative artist from my viewpoint is Marlon Brando.
I do not generally listen to Joan Sutherland for reasons that will become clear. However The Gramaphone recommends as the best available performance of Puccini's Turandot the Sutherland/Pavarotti version. As it carried an excerpt on the magazine's accompanying CD I therefore happened to hear Sutherland. The problem which destroy's Sutherland as a singer is the dreadful diction which even her supporters such as Edward Greenfield acknowledge - the inability to understand the words she is singing. Janet Baker, another favourite of Greenfield and the The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, has the same feature as Southerland in a less extreme form.
This is not a small matter and is one of some philosophical importance. Because language is of quite different significance to instrumental notes or, in the visual arts, images. As Hegel noted: 'The forms of thought are... displayed and stored in human language. Into all that becomes something inward for men, an image or conception as such, launguage has penetrated, and everything that he has transformed into language and expresses in it contains a category.' (Science of Logic p31)
Language, uniquely, consists of universals. If the oboe or the violin in a piece of music does not play properly this does not affect thought, or universals. If the word's are not comprehensible this destroys thought - a unique element. It reduces the vocal line to another instrument - and that is not the function of words. These are fundamental reasons for not appreciating Sutherland and Baker's singing.
Great singers - Callas, Dieskau, Fassbender, Ludwig, Schwarzkopf to take a few - have superb diction.
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