I am still amazed by all the clips on YouTube of singers (and pretty much everything else, for that matter).  Back when I was even younger, I would go to the library, check out a stack of 10-15 LPs (usually Fischer-Dieskau/”the Dietster”, Prey, Souzay/Baldwin, or choral and opera recordings) and take those discs (not compact ones!) home with me for the big stereo.  I have memories of the Atlanta Public Library, parking in the Davison’s garage, and getting the ticket validated, etc.  By the way, I never dreamed that Dalton Baldwin would become a performing and teaching colleague of mine, when I was all grown up.  Sometimes your dreams for the future should be vague enough to allow space for later developments that you didn’t anticipate, yet you know they were in your dreams.  You just didn’t recognize them.  Anyway…

Thanks to Harold Evans for bringing this particular clip to my attention.  Even if you are not a tenor…even a soprano or mezzo…this clip gives great insight into how we must approach the upper range.  As you may have already heard from me, it’s not so much about more and more space, it has to do with shape, particularly that of “inner space.”  This is not a one-dimensional clip though, by any means; there is much to be learned about line, musicality, legato, etc.  Maestro Pavarotti is working with American tenor Tonio di Paolo in a Juilliard master class, I think in the early 1980s, not certain.  I have sung with Tonio, in Cincinnati; he’s a terrific artist, a great and down to earth colleague, and a fabulous golfer!

While you’re at YouTube, be sure to see those “How to sing Bel Canto” clips, with Bonynge, Sutherland, Horne and Pav.  I haven’t watched them all the way through yet, but I am sure I can recommend them.  Enjoy, EE