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From:  Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
Date:  Mon Mar 26, 2001  9:28 pm
Subject:  Mozart in falsetto/ how styles change (was: grumpy mozartians)


> > often sung today in a half-baked manner with a
> > tone quality that is excessively light
> > and without any kind of basic male heft.

> We've all heard ad nauseum about the famous William
> Tell High C... if tenors were singing with a much
> lighter High A, B, C before William Tell, then
> it stands to reason they were singing much more
> lightly in the notes leading up to that range to
> satisfy the bel canto ideal of a unified voice.

Lloyd says that excessive lightening of tone sounds
half-baked in Mozart, while Tako points out that
Mozart's intention was undoubtably a light sound, and
it is only our current perceptions that lead us to
call it "half-baked."

So, by the accounts of history, Mozart was quite a
good composer for the tenor of his day -- what we
would call a tenorino today, one who switches to a
very heady type of resonance early in the passaggio
and sings a high B and C in falsetto. Thus tenors who
sing Mozart full-voiced are distorting his intentions.

This tenorino approach isn't desired today --
full-voiced high Cs are the norm. Imagine a Rodolfo
singing falsetto in "Che gelida manina" -- the
audience would feel cheated. Tomatoes would be
thrown. Today's esthetic demands a full, open,
Pavarotti-type B and C from an operatic tenor, no
matter if he is singing Handel or Mozart or Verdi or
Puccini.

It reminds me of the recent reviews of Dessay's Amina
in Sonambula at La Scala. A small percentage of
critics praised her for her technical skill and lovely
voice. A larger percentage criticized the choice of a
tweety-bird coloratura, when Maria Callas had forever
changed the perception of Amina and made it
unacceptable for a lyric coloratura to sing it.
Bellini (like Mozart) intended the lighter voice to be
cast; these days, people prefer a different sound.

This makes me wonder if all the opera fans who moan
and groan about the loss of dramatic voices today
(we've all heard them do it) simply have heightened
and unrealistic expectations. Did Puccini write the
role of Turandot for Nilsson? Did the coloratura
Mozart composed Queen of the Night for have the kind
of big, brilliant sound (of a Cristina Deutekom, for
instance) that we expect from the role, when sopranos
like Sumi Jo are bashed for recording arias (like the
Queen's) she wouldn't be well-received in on stage?
Likely Mozart's original queen was the "tweety bird"
of today, one who would be laughed off of the world's
stages as inaudible and "just another canary."


Who remembers that Opera News article from some years
back about the changing tastes in vocal art? I'll
find it, hang on.

It's called "The Slow Fade of Style" by Eric Myers, in
1995 or 1996. I quote:

"When Harold Prince's revival of _Show Boat_ opened on
Broadway, one of its most highly-praised stars was
Lonette McKee. When McKee sang her two classic
numbers, 'Can't Help Lovin' Dad Man,' and 'Bill,' she
raised the roof. Her husky alto sounded like a mix of
Gladys Knight, Lena Horne and Aretha Franklin, and she
tore into the phrasing like Whitney Houston. Was the
effect thrilling? Absolutely. It is what Kern and
Hammerstein intended us to hear? Not on your life.

"Back in 1927, the original Julie, Helen Morgan,
posessed a plaintive, quavery soprano. Hers was the
devastated sound of a woman trampled by life but
struggling to carry on."

The article goes on to talk about tenors who "distort"
older music by bringing the chest voice into the upper
regions of the voice, as in the post-Puccini era.

If the current push toward more dramatic/fuller-voiced
sounds continues, will it someday be acceptable to
hear women belting their way through opera? If Mozart
heard Wunderlich singing Ottavio's arias, would his
reaction be the same as ours if a soprano were to belt
her way through "Un bel di"?

I'm just as guilty as the next person -- I prefer
Deutekom's Queen to the pipsqueak coloraturas -- I'd
much rather hear a full-voiced lyric sing Ottavio than
a light and reedy tenorino -- I prefer the kind of
Gilda who can sail easily over the storm scene to the
kind who can twitter prettily through the aria.
Bigger really *is* better -- the dramatic impact is
heightened, the balance of singer to orchestra is
better, and larger voices just sound more satisfying
than the lighter/thinner ones. Am I, too,
contributing to the demise of the "dramatic voice," as
our tastes slowly push the envelope of expectation
into more and more unrealistic waters?


So (gosh, this is getting long, and forgive the
metaphor above), should we as singers bend to the
changing esthetic tastes of audiences (thus forcing
tenors to shout their way through Mozart's high
tessitura, for example, and making only a soprano of
Nilsson's volume acceptable in the dramatic roles)?
How much does "what the composer intends" really
matter?


Isabelle B.

=====
Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
ibracamonte@y...




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  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
10624 Re: Mozart in falsetto/ how styles change (was: g Tako Oda   Mon  3/26/2001   2 KB
10630 Re: Mozart in falsetto/ how styles change (was: g Lloyd W. Hanson   Tue  3/27/2001   4 KB
10631 Re: Mozart in falsetto/ how styles change (was: g Lloyd W. Hanson   Tue  3/27/2001   4 KB

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