The opera world is teeming with singers at the highest levels of the profession whose voices are in various stages of decline (usually congruent with age). I have seen this tendency for big voices to always sing in a “beefy” way rather than just letting the size of the voice be present through a flexible range of dynamics, color, and expression. I keep coming back to Birgit Nilsson, but she really had this figured out. Recordings and video clips show that she was singing at “full throttle” at no higher percentage of the time than her light colleagues such as Roberta Peters and Bidu Sayao. Big and flexible will assert its true identity easily enough and thrill as much as anything. Big and pushed makes the Muses weep with sadness and anxiety.