David Pountney, opera director:
"A beautiful voice is absolutely not enough – it may even get in the way! Just as important are musicality, phrasing, diction, understanding, energy, intensity, charisma and character. "Understanding" relates to emotional truthfulness, life experience and above all imagination. "Character" is the quality that makes a performance individual – this may even include moments of deliberate ugliness. Singers frequently sacrifice diction for what they imagine is "beauty", but intensity of diction is precisely what punctuates and provides a counterpoint to beauty, bringing intensity and meaning into play. Relentless, unmodulated beauty is bland and frequently self-indulgent. Truth is greater than beauty in a singer, as in life."
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