A short while back I watched Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado and was surprised to find that NankiPoo, the male romantic lead, sings a song I'd always associated, and not in a flattering way, with the audition scene from Mel Brook's 1968 movie, The Producers. Practically all of that scene is a takedown of the cliches of the male operatic tenor, which by 1968 was definitely out of fashion.
You can't blame the hippies for this either. By 1968, the adults of the World War 2 generation had grown accustomed to earthier, streetwise singers like Frank Sinatra or Della Reese and considered the classic male tenor's deliver too pompous and overdone. And their children were listening to Mick Jagger who learned from Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters that women liked it better if you growled and slurred., and Bob Dylan, a nice boy from Minnesota who refined his vocal style until it sounded like the product of seven generations of Ozark holler inbreeding.
Of course, it hadn't always been that way. Less than 20 years before, in 1949, Mario Lanza had scored a number one hit with "Be My Love." Whatever other problem Mario Lanza might have had (alcoholism first on the list ), nobody ever said that his operatic tenor lacked sex appeal. Two odd New Zealand girls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, were smitten enough to add him to their personal roster of "saints," who for reasons still obscure, inspired them to murder Pauline's mother.
Despite the success of Placido Domingo and Pavorotti, the classical tenor vocals never went mainstream in the same way again.
