Talk:Gundula Janowitz

German or Austrian?
Each of the 6 language editions of Wikipedia in which Gundula Janowitz has an entry identify her as an Austrian opera singer. She trained in Graz, and has certainly spent much of her professional career on the Austrian opera scene either as a performer or administrator. Nonetheless, she was born in Berlin, which to my knowledge is and always has been in Germany. Other areas of Wikipedia, including the "Janowitz" disambiguation page, identify her as a German singer. Does anyone know if her family is Austrian? Was she raised as a child in Austria? If the answers are "no" and "no" respectively, isn't it more accurate to characterize her as a German opera singer instead? 68.72.96.159 16:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * She is Austrian. Same case as Michael Gielen. RCS 09:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * She is of Austrian descent and, I believe, identifies herself as Austrian. Moreover, if you want to be technical, German nationality law does not confer, and never has conferred, citizenship on the basis of birth in Germany alone. Therefore, I think it is right to describe her as Austrian (though born in Berlin). 12 May 2008

Timbre
Her timbre was not "similar" to that of Elizabeth Grummer. Grummer tended to sound shrill on her high notes; Janowitz' high notes are invariably crystal-clear. Goblinshark17 (talk) 05:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

fast vibrato?
If I were asked to characterize her voice I would have said that her vibrato is definitely below average in frequency. Reference 10 gives an opinion based on a single recording sample of mrs Janowitz. I think it must have been unrepresentative. The German version has "Gundula Janowitz' Stimme zeichnete sich durch einen sehr hellen, reinen, tremolofreien Ton mit geringem Vibrato und gleichmäßiger Atemtechnik aus" (an extremely clear, pure, tremolo-free sound with little vibrato and very even breathing)  which to me is far more descriptive of her voice. How do others feel about this? Bart (talk) 15:17, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I never thought she had any vibrato. That's a technique of singing - I know a tenor who had the same type of voice. Chandler75 (talk) 17:35, 9 May 2018 (UTC)


 * "References rule" – Please change it if you find a more authoritative source. The German article doesn't cite a source for their description of her voice; in fact, the whole article doesn't a single source. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:27, 1 June 2017 (UTC)