Dear Grumpy Mozart Vocalisters:
Try this assessment of Mozart as a composer for the tenor. I am sure
there will be many differences of opinion on this.
Mozart had little feeling for the natural qualities of the tenor
voice. He consistently selected the wrong vowels for almost every
note in the tenor passaggio and only seemed to have a feeling for the
voice when he asked it to sing leaps into the head voice. (Dies
Bildness , comes to mind).
His experience as a teacher of his first love, who happened to be a
soprano, gave him a wondrous understanding of this voice type and he
wrote for it with precision and pushed it to new heights of beauty, a
beauty that can be achieved by almost every well trained soprano.
But only special tenors seem able to make Mozart sound like tenor
music, with some exceptions. Consequently it is often sung today in
a half-baked manner with a tone quality that is excessively light and
without any kind of basic male heft. Yet, his roles are not for this
kind of personality. There is a dichotomy here that is seldom
addressed and only when it is, (Wunderlich?) do we hear the voice
quality that the role needs.
--
Lloyd W. Hanson
Professor of Voice, Vocal Pedagogy
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
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