Lloyd Hanson wrote: [...]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.[...]
Dear Lloyd and co vocalisters,
Here I completely agree. A year ago I went to a Zauberflöte, where Tamino sounded like he was Pamino's baby-brother, instead of a brave young man, that is very seriously in love. Not to mention the tenors, that sound like they would prefer Papageno over Pamino:) But also in other Mozart opera's a tenor that is not too light, but has evened out his passagio perfectly, makes the opera both musically and dramatically complete. Of course, on recordings extremely light tenors can be lifted to a normal level, but on stage they cannot (unless you use this singer's doping, the microphone), and the tone colour stays problematic with tenorino's or English tenors.
Yet the question is, why Wunderlich succeeded, where (most) others fail. Wunderlich was praised for stopping the wave of 'micro Mozart tenors', so performing Mozart was then as problematic as it is today. Was his voice so completely different from other tenors? Better, yes, but so much better, that he was the only one who could do it this way? I think it had mainly to do with the way he was trained, which also explains his 'Schmelz'. His teacher never always avoided talking about the passagio, because she feared this might this would cause a psychological barrier for a singer. And when you listen to Wunderlich, you hear an even quality of tone throughout his complete range. He also does hardly cover, if at all, and has no problems singing an [i] sounding like an [i] on an a4 flat, e.g. It has partly to do with his Pfälzisches dialect, that made him change the vowels slightly in a natural way. But another fact is, that Wunderlich did not try to sound like an Italian tenor. Well, I should say: he did not try, except for one time, but after that the could not sing for three weeks (I think it was after hearing Guiseppe di Stefenao, which gave Wunderlich the bad idea to imitate him). So in my opinion the ideal Mozart tenor is a quite normal, good, lyrical tenor, but with a technique that allows him to sing the passagio (and higher-) notes in a very natural, which means: neither verismatic, i.c. heavily covering, nor 'English-tenoral' way.
Where I don't agree, is on the fact that Mozart did not know how to write for tenors. Given the fact, that Mozart was seen as an extremely intelligent man, maybe even the most intelligent man of his times, the fact that he had a tenor voice himself, that he once wrote an aria in such a way, that a certain soprano who had the habit of moving her head up an down when singing lower and higher, had to move her head all the time so she would look like a goose while singing that aria, just to amuse Mozart, giving all those facts, I simply cannot imagine Mozart just did not know what he was doing.
I think Mozart wrote his tenor-aria's on purpose like he wrote them, to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for tenors he did not want them to sing his aria's, to perform his music. And for the Bildniß-aria, the tenor for whom it was written, asked Mozart to put in many [i]'s and [e]'s, probably for the same reason. Sometimes Mozart maybe went to far, like in 'Il mio tesoro', but you also could say: he succeeded, depending on your point of view.
And finally: one should not forget, that in Mozart's times the 'Kammerton' (key?, tunefrequency?) was lower and men were smaller.
Best greetings,
Dré
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