the beast below

Cocteau's Belle et la Bete was on Turner Classic Movies recently.  I hadn't seen it in well over ten years, so I watched it again.  So amazing, for its time and now.  I also noticed how similar it is to the Disney version--set and costumes, character designs, even lighting.  Some shots were lifted verbatim from Cocteau.  Because if you're Disney, you use the best there is; you get Jerry Orbach and Angela Lansbury and you copy Cocteau.

After watching it and thinking these things, I then had to watch the Disney version.  Yes, I own it.  My husband's kids used to be small, so we own many, many Disney cartoons on DVD.  Fewer musicals than you would think, though.

Here's a thing I noticed: in the Disney version, the transformation of the Beast into the Prince has gold light shooting out from his hands, then feet, then face as he looks up in to the camera.  This is also how the regeneration of the Doctor has been depicted in Doctor Who the past two times.  And there's an episode of Doctor Who this season called "The Beast Below."  That title, which made me think of beasts and baritones, and thence to Gaston's juicy voice and wondering why he was the bad guy...

So here's what this post is about: Why is Gaston, the bad guy, the only legit singer in the whole movie?  The divide is so clear: there's the classical style of Gaston, the old school Broadway singers like Jerry Orbach (yum! that man could S. I. N. G.  Day-yum.), and the newer Broadway style of Belle herself as well as the Beast, whose suddenly tinny tenor I always found jarring and unlikely. I won't even go into the ensemble singing.  So.  Why is classical singing villified?  It reminds me of Moulin Rouge, where the only real singer is the master of ceremonies guy.

Is it because they think operatic tone sounds pompous?  Mouthy, bright resonance sounds friendly?  Chest voice--singing more like a man--makes a woman sound... what?  Stronger?

When I was in high school--when Beauty and the Beast came out; and, yes, I saw it in the theater--I didn't like women's choirs, but I loved men's choirs.  I didn't even really like Belle's voice.  I associated the male voice with warmth and richness and I couldn't hear that in a woman's voice.  If a woman's voice was rich in overtones, all I heard was the woof and I couldn't hear the ease and the core.  Of course, now my ear has developed and I love women's choirs and the sound of trained women's voices.  In the fifteen-plus years since I was a high school student, my taste as skewed towards the classical while the rest of the world has gone even further in the direction of Belle and the Beast/Prince.  Broadway singing is no longer closely related to classical singing.  Bleagh.

It's not that it's bad singing, objectively speaking.  Disney movie Belle's voice is nice.  Often balanced between head and chest, carefully blended, it's nice.  She's very good at that style and that style isn't awful.  I just don't prefer it.

I suppose I'm just complaining, because I have no insight into why this has happened, why Americans have developed a taste for this style.  There is so much beauty in a more complex sound, and so much versatility.

And I like my singers to have complexity and versatility.  It takes training, but it's totally worth it.