General Director Kasper Holten’s statement that the new sound system at the Royal Opera Covent Garden will never be used to amplify singers could not be more welcome. A great sound system in an opera house asks for trouble. Considering what I think are fine acoustics in the Royal Opera, the whole idea seemed hard to believe. Though not a problem now in London, the possibility of amplification needs discussion.

The New York City Opera famously installed amplification because of the bad acoustics of the New York State Theater. At the time several artists, including Beverly Sills and Joyce Castle, commented that they had had no trouble being heard. Whether the sound enhancement helped or not is a question.

The acoustic nature of opera should never be compromised. We should hear clearly the difference between the size voice of a full dramatic soprano and a light lyric. For all the power of directors and the talk of the importance of challenging productions, people come to opera expecting to hear the honest sound of well-produced voices not “enhanced” by anything but their own technique.

Certain classic problems immediately come to mind. Puccini often doubled voices with instrumental sound, a factor that demanded the kind of spinto singer that defined the age of verismo. His orchestra for La fanciulla del West, for instance, can very easily overbalance singers. With discreet amplification it would be easier to hear the singers over the orchestra, making it far more comfortable for both the singers and the conductor. The only problem is flat-out dishonesty at the very heart of what makes opera different. As for the operas of Richard Wagner or Richard Strauss, the possibilities for sound corruption are endless. Salome might really look like an older teenager with the electronic voice of Isolde.

Additionally it could easily mean the end for big voices. The best recordings of Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Lauritz Melchior, and Jon Vickers never really captured what we heard in the opera houses in which they sang. True, sound is better than it once was, much better, but from all the evidence available the excitement of a great voice will be sadly, irretrievably diminished if miking is instituted. And make no mistake: if miking occurs without protest, opera companies all over the world will do it. Large-scale present-day voices such as Stephanie Blythe’s, Nina Stemme’s, Christine Goeke’s, Stefan Vinke’s, and Greer Grimsley’s are rare; operas they sing could be sung adequately by smaller voices amplified, but they will sound like smaller voices enhanced. More important, the honesty of opera will disappear.

I remember when, I believe, amplification first came to the New York theater with The Boy Friend in 1954 and then more noticeably two years later for My Fair Lady, the latter to help Rex Harrison, who was not a singer. Within a very few years every musical on Broadway was amplified, and then all the plays as well. At the present time in America, amplification has become painful to one’s ears. In Europe I have found that although in musical theater they too use amplification, it is less prominent; here it is ghastly.

Singers study for years to learn how to project properly, and a variety of sound from opera singers has been true since Monteverdi’s time. Even if voices in opera are even slightly enhanced, this takes away the one thing that makes opera different from every other entertainment in the modern world: the honesty of sound.