For a good part of the past year
we’ve been discussing the vital importance of women singers to
opera, at least the opera with which we’re most familiar. To know
how the opera, especially of the 19th century, has been shaped by
its focus on the leading female roles is to approach a basic
understanding of the art. But a true lover of opera cannot ignore
the glorious contribution by the great male singers of the time,
whose roles evolved from mere stock characters left over from the
classical and baroque periods to complex and often dominant figures.
Indeed, tenors, baritones and basses have regularly been given the
most memorable and stirring music in many operas. The recent
remarkable success of the “Three Tenors” and their many imitators is
suggestive that contemporary audiences may even value men’s voices
over women’s.
For a while, the novelty of women performing was such a powerful
phenomenon that the men’s parts were almost an afterthought. But the
spectators’ appetite for an increasingly more natural style of drama
in opera led to more vivid depictions of male characters, along with
more important music. This was a process that took some time and it
wasn’t only because of audience preoccupation with women performers.
When the castrati dominated opera they sang the female roles
that were forbidden to women but they also sang heroic roles like
Hercules and Julio Cesare. So most of the vocal scoring was in the
upper register. This is logical because melody is heard most
precisely when sounded by higher voices, while there is a tendency
for the listener to perceive the pitches of lower voices running
together. This is true of instruments as well as voices. Thus an
orchestra typically carries twice as many first and second violins
as violas, cellos or basses. With the style of improvised
coloratura favored by the castrati, the high voices were
perfect.
When women replaced the castrati, there was still a very
strong tradition in composition to score the most important melodic
parts for high voices. Like other aspects of opera, it is difficult
for us now to comprehend that solos for tenor, baritone and bass
voices were quite rare in the early 19th century. There were, to be
sure, tenors and basses who sang regularly in the early years of
opera, but there were no Manricos or Cavaradossis or Boris Goudonovs
or Mefistofeles. Even the concept of baritone as we know it today
was nonexistent then – there were just high basses and low basses.
The modern male voice types developed with the abilities and
achievements of certain singers. Composers then used the newly
revealed sounds in their scores with the goal of making opera more
dramatic. Let’s consider some of those male artists that led the
way.
Francesco Benucci (1745-1824)
When Mozart was moments away from death, he raved deliriously,
“Bravo, Benucci!” The Benucci to whom he was referring was the
creator of Mozart’s Figaro and Guglielmo and the first Viennese
Leporello. This Italian basso was considered the world’s best and he
sang all over Europe, besides being the number one bass in the court
of Vienna. Benucci was the latest in a long line of basso
buffos, which were quite common in the comic operas of the
baroque and classical periods, but he must have been very good
indeed to sing Figaro and Leporello and to have impressed Mozart the
way he did.
Manuel Garcia (1775-1832)
Garcia was a lyric or “Bel-Canto” or “Mozart” tenor. Even today,
especially in oratorio performances, we are likely to hear a tenor
of this kind, one who relies heavily on falsetto with a delicate
vocal quality. This kind of tenor, however, is becoming increasingly
rare in opera, even in the Mozart and Rossini works. Garcia was
famous for a number of reasons – he was an outstanding singer and
actor, he was a virtuoso guitarist, he was an impresario (he led the
first opera company to the United States), he was a famed voice
teacher and he sired a family of singers that were very influential
throughout the 19th century.
He achieved the peak of his fame at the same time as Rossini,
creating the role of Almaviva and considered the best Otello of his
time. He must have been a very fine teacher because one of his
students, his daughter Maria Malibran, came to be recognized the
greatest living soprano. Another daughter, Pauline Viardot, was a
celebrated mezzo and she too was a renowned voice teacher. Another
child who was considered one of the best teachers of the century was
the tenor’s son, also named Manuel. It’s tricky keeping the two
Manuels separate because the father is often called the “Elder” and
the son, the “Younger,” even though the son lived to be 101 years
old!
Luigi Zamboni (1767-1837)
Also in the premiere of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia was
the singer who created Figaro, Luigi Zamboni. The man was strictly
considered a basso buffo but he apparently could handle the
high tessitura required by the Barber's score. For over a
century, the role of Figaro has been the exclusive province of
modern baritones. Thus we can see that, even at a fairly early date
(1812), some basses were comfortable in their upper registers and
composers jumped at the chance to feature them.
Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854)
Rubini was actually the first wildly acclaimed tenor. Of course he
had Bellini and Donizetti writing music for him but it was his
unusual style of singing that made him famous. One of the main
reasons why the castrati were so celebrated was because of
the vocal power they possessed. As they matured, they could sing
with increasingly strong physical force, using their whole bodies if
necessary. Men who sang with the falsetto or “head” voice could sing
high notes, but they could not project their sound all that far.
Rubini found a way of disguising, yet projecting, his falsetto so
that he could extend his upper range at least as far as a high F.
Neither then nor later did anyone else know how he did it. Both
Bellini and Donizetti took full advantage of this tenor’s expanded
range and power. Succeeding tenors could never achieve Rubini’s
range but they increasingly used the “chest” voice to enhance their
support and carrying power.
Antonio Tamburini (1800-1876)
When Bellini’s I Puritani was premiered in 1835, the group of
four principals – Giulia Grisi, Giovanni Rubini, Antonio Tamburini
and Luigi Lablache – were so outstanding in their roles that they
became known as the “Puritani Quartet,” under which name they
regularly gave concerts throughout Europe. Tamburini was the
baritone of the group and he established this voice type as a
standard. He also was first considered a basso buffo, but he
used his strong falsetto so effectively that his sound was a clear
contrast to the more traditional basses of his time. Londoners of
the 1840s were so taken by him that they turned out in force to
protest his dismissal one season. The so-called “Tamburini Riots”
resulted in the baritone being rehired with a hefty raise in salary.
Luigi Lablache (1794-1858)
Perhaps the greatest bass who ever lived was Luigi Lablache. The son
of a Frenchman and an Irishwoman, he had the good fortune to be born
and raised in Naples, where he studied voice. He debuted at the San
Carlo at the age of eighteen and went on to have an absolutely
brilliant career with a huge repertoire. At home with comedy or
tragedy, he was the only singer to create principal roles for
Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. His interpretation of Mozart’s
Leporello is still the preferred approach for basses today. No one
did more to popularize the role of men in opera.
Gilbert Duprez (1806-1896)
Duprez was really the first modern tenor, that is, he sang with
mainly the chest voice. Using his chest, not his head, he was the
first tenor we know of to hit a high C. Rossini did not approve of
this type of sound, but nevertheless, Duprez sacrificed vocal
agility for sheer power and a ringing quality in his tone. This
style of singing was what succeeding generations of tenors all
strove for.
Enrico Tamberlik (1820-1889)
Following the example of Duprez, Enrico Tamberlik also sang with
mainly the chest voice, although he was a superb lyric tenor as
well. After a storied debut in Rome, he traveled and performed all
over the world before he settled in St. Petersburg. It was he who
got the commission for Verdi to compose La forza del destino
for the Russian court (of course with the juicy role of Don Alvaro
for himself). Verdi thought that Tamberlik was an excellent musician
and he even approved when the tenor became the first to sing the “Di
quella Pira” (the cabaletta to end all cabalettas from
the third Act of Il trovatore), with the high Cs.
Francesco Tamagno (1850-1905)
One of the reasons that Verdi’s Otello is not performed all
that often is because it is so difficult to justice to the title
role. Today, when this opera is produced, it is usually a Wagnerian
tenor that performs the lead. This part was created by Francesco
Tamagno for an opera that is dominated by a tenor, despite great
parts for the soprano Desdemona and the baritone Iago. Tamagno had a
huge, but nevertheless clearly Italianate voice, the likes of which
is rarely heard today. Like his immediate predecessors, Tamagno sang
with a chest voice and exulted in his ringing high Cs. During his
career he was as popular as any prima donna.
To be continued |
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