Hello lovely readers! This is the second part to my recent post “What the Fach is a Fach?!” If you have not read it or you do not know what a “fach” is, please go back and review that to fully understand this post. Or, you know, Wikipedia it, whatever floats your boat.
So now onto part two of my examination of fachs. Here I will discuss the pros and cons of the system. “Why does that matter?”, you may ask. “If it’s an established system that lots of people use, why question it?” First of all, shame on you, because you should always question everything so you can learn, grow, and discover how and why things work. Secondly, it is a German system created not even a century ago, so to me, this is reason enough to question the validity of this system in modern America (where I am currently writing from).
Let’s look at the pros first. Here is my list of reasons why the fach system is great and should be used here in America.
- Helps singers easily find new repertoire to sing.
- Helps auditioners quickly identify what a singer could sing well.
- Helps a teacher identify what a singer naturally does well and what will need to work harder to correct.
So the gist of this list is, the fach system helps quickly identify and classify singers to better identify their strengths and weaknesses. Sounds great! What’s the problem, then? Well, here are the cons as I see them.
- The system can pigeonhole singers, not allowing them opportunities to sing roles or arias that they can do, but maybe isn’t within their “expected” skill set.
- If a singer is identified incorrectly, it can create vocal stress and have a negative impact on a singer’s image and repertoire choice which will take time to correct.
- The fach system was created for German houses, and therefore primarily German singers, so the technical aspects of each fach may not line up with American vocal technique.
- *One of my fine readers, Rachel Tedder, brought up another excellent point against using the fach system specifically in America. As she astutely points out, German houses are repertory houses, meaning that they hire singers by the year rather than by the show. As a result, singers in Germany are contractually obligated to perform the roles that are within their fach for the productions their company may be putting on that year. For American singers, however, the fach system is more of just a guideline. While it can be a decent guideline, I decided to place this point under the cons list because it provides an excellent example for how the fach system is taken a bit too far out of place to truly work in America.
In other words, the fach system is a double-edged sword. It can help classify, but it can trap singers as well into a boxed image.
It should be noted that most opera companies do not expect singers to list their specific fach on their materials. It’s rare that you’ll see “coloratura soprano” or “lyric baritone” written on a resume (although this does happen). Usually it’s just “soprano” or “baritone”, and then audiences and auditioners infer the fach from their listed repertoire. That doesn’t mean that this couldn’t become a standard though. But before it does, these pros and cons should be carefully examined. Are the benefits of quick and easy classification worth the risks of pigeonholing? Does the fach system create cookie-cutter singers, leaving no room for uniqueness?
What do you think the pros and cons of the fach system are? Do you think the fach system is useful or is it too rigid? Please share your experience! I will be sure to share my experience in a future post discussing my own issues with voice classification.