Sonority in Singing: A Historical Essay by George Newton VANTAGE PRESS lew York | Washington / Atlanta Los Angeles / ChicagoFIRST EDITION All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Copyright © 1984 by George Newton Published by Vantage Press, Inc. 516 West 34th Street, New York, New York 10001 Manufactured in the United States of America ISBN: $33-05863-5 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 83-90848 Acknowledgments ‘The author wishes to thank the following for permission to reprint selections from their publications: Oxford University Press, for material from Dr. Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe (ed. by Percy A. Schloes) © Oxford University Press 1959, by permission of Oxford University Press; Promusica Press, for material from Elements of Vocal Science (by Richard Bacon), now out of pri The NATS Bulletin, for material from ““The Age of the Castrato Voice, by Frederick Brondnitz, The NATS Bulletin 32, No. 4 (1976) and Le Nuove Musiche by Giulio Caccini, as translated by George Newton in The NATS Bulletin 29, No. 2 (1962); and S. Karger AG, Basel, for ‘material from “"The Psychology of the Castrato Voice’” by Paul D. Moses, Folia Phoniatrica 12 (1960).Preface In his pioneering study, Bel Canto in Its Golden Age, Philip Duey said, “the story of singing has never been told.” Perhaps it never can be really told, because until this century, when the song ended, it could live only a little longer in memory before it was gone altogether. Here and there one finds partial glimpses of past singing that make one long for more. Other studies that examine singing historically are Early History of Singing, by W. J. Henderson, Concerning the Principles of Voice Training during the a Cappella Period and until the Beginning of Opera, by Bernhard Ubtich, The Art of Singing. by Brent Jeffrey Monahan, and Training the Singing Voice, by Victor Alexander Fields, Finally, bringing the story up to the present generation, there is Teaching Singing, by John Carroll Burgin. Monahan covers the century and a half from the end of the bel canto era, and Fields describes two decades following that. There is also Techniques of Singing, by Richard Miller, 1 study of national trends in teaching singing. ‘The purpose of this essay is to complement these studies with an attempt to paint a word picture of the sounds that resulted from these pedagogical ideals and practices, to make vivid in the mind, if possible, the actual vocal sonority that Gabrielli, Monteverdi, Handel, and Mozart composed for. Thus, not only what voice teachers have said is included, but the informed comments of listeners are particularly emphasized: those of other musicians, writers of letters and memoits, travellers. 1 hope the result will flesh out the far more rigorous objective research of the other books without straining the imagination. J admit freely to leaning on the research of many scholars, and 1 am most grateful. There is one scholar, however, whose interest in my viiproject caused him to give me help for which I can never thank him sufficiently. That scholar is Edward Foreman. He has lent me books and manuscripts from his own library, always giving generously of advice and criticism concerning my manuscript. The responsibility for the final result, for good or ill, is nevertheless all mine. viii Sonority in SingingChapter 1 The art of music labors under a difficulty not present in other artistic media (except some literary forms): it requires the services of a per- former. After the composer has done his work, he is at the mercy of that performer and if there is a verbal text, the problem is compounded by the necessity of making a verbal as well as a musical communication to the audience. ‘The relationship between composer and performer on the one hand, and between performer and audience on the other hand, is complex and fascinating. Does the composer have any rights after his work is com- pleted? Is the performer free to use the composition, to perform it in any way that seems most likely to entertain an audience, using per- formance in its broadest connotation? On the other hand, is he obliged to follow all the instructions in the score-script faithfully, all the im- plications of style, or leave the piece alone? Ifthe performer has changed with the generations, and the audience is attuned to quite a different kind of music, is it reasonable to expect the music to remain unchanged? Historically, it is clear that different styles of music, in different cultures, vary widely in the degree of fidelity with which the seore- script is treated. In the various kinds of popular music today, the com- poser is not expected to provide more than a skeleton, which is to be fleshed out by the arranger and the star performer. This situation was nearly identical with almost ail music in the Baroque period, and many other styles and cultures have reduced the creator's role and increased the role of the interpreter. On the other hand, there are musical styles in which the performer is allowed no freedom of interpretation: he is merely the executant ofa rigidly controlled text. Most music performed today lies between these extremes. 1No matter what the style, the historical period, or the national or racial characteristics, the essential core of a singer's successful per- formance is empathy. The ability of the imagination to project its own consciousness into another being (the composer) is the heart and soul of style and interpretation. Theodore Greene says Really to recreate a work of ari is to apprehend the content which the author actually expressed in it, i.e, c© interpret it correctly as a vehicle ‘of communication. Such apprehension implies not only a general un- derstanding of the medium employed, but a familiarity with the artist's Tanguage and idiom, and these, in turn, are determined by his school, period, and culture, as well as by his own personality. It also implies 1a knowledge of the artist’s times and of his intellectual and spiritual (Greene 1973, 371) As the generations that separate the performer from the composer increake, it becomes ever more difficult to find an interpretation that could reasonably be expected to satisfy the composer, or even be rec- ‘ognizable to him. Musical forms change, and with the forms themusical styles change. Sometimes, with the best will in the world, performers find it very difficult to make outmoded forms and styles expressive. The esthetic climate underlying those forms and styles has long since become history. In spite of the inherent problems, if one is to achieve any empathy, every effort must be made to find the appropriate style, to recover the outmoded form, to hear what the composer heard, No matter how great 1a composition is said to be, a performance of the notes in an inappro- priate style can only result in a partial performance. ‘The problem involved in the authentic performance of older music has received increasing attention during this past half-century, so that ‘an ever greater proportion of musicians and music lovers are answering the performance question in favor of the composer and his rights. The ‘musicologist and his historical findings have been treated withinereasing respect, sometimes to the point of very dull performances. ‘Authenticity in this area is more complex than the casual music lover might think. The esthetic temper that underlies all artistic work swings like a pendulum between romantic and classical, and sometimes toward a realistic temper. Instruments rise in popularity because they seem best able to project what the composer is expressing, and then are abandoned if they cannot evolve to meet changing modes of expression. The sound itself is obviously crucial when that happens. The notes written down by a composer do not exist in a vacuum; they were conceived with a certain sonority in mind, and that sonority would naturally be what the composer was familiar with. It can be safely assumed that the characteristics. and capabilities of the instrument af- fected the resulting composition, and that different instruments would have made a different composition. Thus, if one concludes that the composer knew what he wanted to say, as well as the best way of saying it that was available, one must also inevitably conclude that the best performance will be the one using the instruments specified by the composer. One of those instruments was the human voice, which, while not changed physiologically, is now required to perform music so very different from what existed formerly that an entirely different technique has developed, with quite a different sonority as a result. Too often glossed over or ignored altogether is the wide variety of vocal sound that has been used—is being used—for artistic com- munication and expression. This reflects the wide variety of cultural influences found in different social groups. Those who enjoy grand opera and the vocal sound associated with it often look down on other singing styles as unworthy of notice. But who is to say what are the perimeters of artistic expression? Any sonority that is a successful me- dium for communicating feelings and emotions to a social group can become artistic expression. Value judgments of good and bad art are irrelevant at this point; the only criterion is the success, or lack of success, in communicating with the chosen group. Most of us ate too filled with our own predilections and prejudices to render objective Judgments on the many different styles and sounds of singing. It is theatres of Italy without ceasing to keep the sound under the control which Italian music requires. French singing requires all the power of the lungs, the whole extent of the voice. "Louder," say our singing ‘masters; "more volume; open your mouth; use all your voice.”* “Softer. say the Italian masters; “don't force it; sing at your ease; make ySur notes soft, flexible, and flowing; save the outbursts for those rare brief ‘moments when you must astonish and overwhelm.”* Now it seems to me that when itis necessary to make oneself heard, the man who ean do so ‘without screaming must have the stronger voice. ‘(Rousseau in Strunk 1950, 641 fn.) Why did the French pedagogy seem to lead to a much poorer result in this technique of blending and equalizing the vocal range? In 1754, Jean-Baptiste Bérard published his L'Art du Chant, one of the first singing methods based on a combination of practical experience and, physiological study. He was one of the foremost singers of his day, and Tater a most influential teacher, making use of the scientific evidence available to him as much as he could. 6to form high sounds it will be necessary to make the larynx rises that to form a sound six times higher than another, the larynx must raise itself by six deprees—by six lines, for example; that to form a sound a half-degree higher, the larynx must be made to rise by a helf-ne. It is understandable that because of the inverse reason, the larynx must be rade to descend for low sounds, and that the degrees of lowering are ‘in exactly the same propertions as the degrees of elevation in highsounds. ‘One can convince oneself ofthe teuth and exactitude of these proportions by placing a finger on the larynx when making high and low sounds. (Bérard 1969, 68) Bérard then says that this should not be taken “‘in a strict geometrical sense,” because it is possible to make higher and lower pitches without moving the larynx. It should be noted that Bérard comes at the very end of the style period, the beginning of which was marked by Becilly. Bérard also devotes a large part of his work to French pronunciation and inflection. The! ornamental and declamatory style taught by these two men had become grotesquely exaggerated, as the remarks of Rousseau and others indicate and it was soon to be superseded by the reforms of Gluck with his emphasis on truth and simplicity. Is there evidence of anything similar in Italian teaching? As always, no Italian writer gives details about technical procedures; Tosi's remarks are typical Let him take care, however, that the higher the Notes. the more it is necessary to touch them with softness, t0 avoid scream (Tosi 1926, 19) ‘There is, however, one writer trained in the Italian schoo! who testifies to this rising larynx. 1. Nathan was a student of Domenico Corsi, and Corti was a student of Porpora in Naples. His book was published in 1836, and thus is a late testimonial; nevertheless, it is worth reporting. Nathan asserts that the larynx is distinctly scen rising in the produetion of high tones and descending in low tones. For the purpose, therefore, of effecting the greatest possible clevation of this organ, we slmost involuntarily throw back the heed in _gteat efforts of singing. (Nathan 1836, 119) 2 Itis interesting to note the difference between these two statements. Bérard tells the student that he must move the larynx up to sing high notes, while Nathan says it “shappens.”” This active local control rec- ommended by the French pedagogue can lead to trouble, as most voice teachers know. Mancini has already been quoted about the dangers of moving the head back, which would cause the larynx to rise or the reverse. The Italian way of letting things happen worked best (and still does), A century after Bérard, Garcia was using the same method to achieve his clear timbre, while for the sombre timbre the larynx was not allowed to rise. As every voice teacher knows, the rising larynx is the norm for the untrained voice (especially when no good models are near); this ean be seen most clearly in young tenors, but it is true to some extent with most young singers. I think it can be presumed that the lowered larynx is the later learmed act. It also seems reasonable to prestume that Italian, German, and English singers al allowed the larynx to rise somewhat with higher pitches, for the simple reason that nowhere earlier is there found any suggestion that the larynx must be kept down. ‘The French emphasis on conscious control was surely a contributing factor in making French singing so inferior during the eighteenth cen- tury, It should be noted here that during the early nineteenth century French singing improved so much that increasing numbers from that nation were filling the gap left by the declining numbers of good Italian singers German Singing German pedagogues and theorists, as well as composers, looked to Italy for inspiration, and so the best singers evoked praise with much the same words and phrases as the Italian singers. Praetorius leaned on Caccini for his ideas, and a century later Agricola translated Tosi into German. One finds the same warnings from all the German authors about the voice in the nose or in the throat, opening the mouth too little or too much. The general expression of a gentle smile is advised more often than not, There was good singing in Germany, chiefly from vis- iting Italians but also from a few native Germans and Austrians. Bumey 63‘was pleasantly surprised “to find that the German language, in spite of all its clashing consonants and guttural, is better calculated formusic than the French”? (Burney 1959, 2:31) However, most of the singers there were unable to free their voices to sing like the Italians, and so the generality of German singing was considered bad by Bumey, just as he labeled the generality of singing in England. Quantz has already been quoted at considerable length, ard Mattheson felt the same way. In the latter's book, Der volikommene Capellmeister, one of the most important books on music in the eight- centh century (1739), he says that German teachers don’t seem to care whether the throat is free from constriction, and so it rarely is, English Singing English singing in the eighteenth century was completely domi- nated by Italian singing. Handel brought castrati as well as Italian trained women; Tosi and other Italians taught in London; and the English singers who succeeded all imitated the Italians. Before the eighteenth century there had been French influence, especially after the Restora- tion, However, there were no professional singers outside the church and the court, because opera had not made its way that far north. When Handel came, all previous influence was smothered, AA litte later, with the success of John Gay's The Beggar’ s Opera, anative English musical form emerged, and comic opera in the vernacular existed side by side with the opera seria in Italian. With some exceptions, the English sang the former while Italian imports sang the latter and there were a few, like Naney Storace and Michael Kelly, who could and did do both. A. comparable situation existed in Germany with the Singspiel, Articulation It is virtually impossible to separate a discussion of articulation from a discussion of phonation, and of course the lenguages used are central to both discussions. Everyone is aware of the way the nasalized vowels in French have always tended to push the other vowels in that language toward a similar nasality. In the past, Halian singers have also 64 been accused of too much nasél resonance. On the other hand, according to Bacon, the English had a pronunciation (in his day, anyway) that ‘was sibilant and slightly guttural, Bumey, as we have just seen, found that German vowels had good sonority in spite of the language's bad consonants. For the French, the word was all-important: an opera was a musical setting of a play, and the music must never get in the way. Gretry (1742-1813) sums up the problem for the French composer, had remarked that a frightful distortion did not disturb the pleasure of the average auditor at the performance of dramatic music, but that the Teast false inflection at the Théétre Francais caused a general murmur [therefore aimed at truth in declamation after which I believed that the ‘musician who knew best how to transform it into song would be the most skillful, Yes, it is at the Theatre Francais, from the lips of the great actors, that declamation, accompanied by theatrical illusions, gives us ineffaceable impressions which the best-analysed precepts will never replace. (Gretry in Strunk 1950, 724) Gretry was a foreigner, a Belgian, who decided that French comic ‘opera was what he wished to master, so he analyzed what the people wanted and “‘my music slowly established itself in France.”* It is im- portant to realize that even in this light-hearted medium music always had to subordinate itself to the play. . ‘The two most important French teachers and writers on singing in these two centuries, Bacilly and Bérard, devote substantial portions of their books to the articulation and pronunciation of all French sounds. Incidentally, this is interesting because some of these details differ from present usage, as described by Pierre Bernac in his authoritative ex- postion, The Interpretation of French Song. There is, in particular, careful examination of long syllables and short syllables. Since syllables are a concem, not of enunciation in singing but of quantitative poetic fect, it is instruction for the composer rather than the singer and it demonstrates again the ascendancy of poetry over music. It is not sur- prising then that, with this emphasis on declamation, the making of beautiful sounds with the voice became a secondary consideration often neglected. It is also not surprising that no one but the French appreciated 65this declamation; all that forcigners heard was bad singing caused by faulty technique, together with an unwillingness to modify the vowel for the sake of sheer beautiful sound. As time went on, this declamation became exaggerated, to the excruciating degree described by Rousseau in the earlier quotation and corroborated by Burney, Quantz, and, in fact, every non-French writer. The principal reason that the French had so little passage work in their airs seems to be that such roulades and divisions would have distorted the verbal phrase, making it harder to understand. Italian singers were just as interested in projecting the text as were thé French, but they realized that most people principally wanted to hhear music. As always, there was very little detail about how good articulation could be achieved while maintaining beautiful sound. ‘Atte same time he must be careful that the Words be well pronounced, and perfectly understood; that the Recitatives be expressed with Strength, and supported without affectation, Cosi 1926, 76) ‘Tosi distinguished very carefully between the expressive styles proper for church, theatre, and chamber, exhorting teachers to be con- scientious in making their students master good pronunciation, but there is none of the detailed explanation given by Bacilly and Bérard. Man- cini, a little later, is more explicit, especially in regard to opening the mouth Every singer should position his mouth as he positions it when he smiles naturally, that is, in such a way that the upper teeth be perpendicularly ‘and moderately seperated from those below; and now see how this same rule may be put into practical use. ‘Admittedly the master should make this rule known to his student ‘with evidence to show that this same position ofthe mouth ought to serve for every articulation ofthe vowels; 1 convince him ofthe absolute truth of this, have bim pronounce the five vowels A,E,1,0,U withthe indicated position ofthe mouth, and he will se that no change is necessary, except in pronouncing the O and the U: because in the pronunciation of the vowel O, an almost invisible ehange in the shape of the mouth is nec- cessury; and in pronouncing the vowel U, one must move the lips forward together slightly; and in this manner the mouth does not go far from its natural position, but remains in its original form, and avoids and shuns all the pernicious affectations. One should not believe, however, that for 66 this reason the mouth should be deprived of its customary motion, and fone should admit its necessity, not only to interpret the words, but also to expand and clarify the voice to that degree taught by the same art. (Mancini 1967, 30) This method of articulating all the vowels with one jaw position assured a vowel equalization not possible in any other way. It meant that the resonance area remained substantially the same size no matter how much the shape of the area changed with tongue and lip movement, 50 that a uniform quality was achieved throughout the entire vowel spectrum, It did two other things as well, First, with less movememt and more tongue and lip action, it permitted a more efficient way of artic- ulating consonants, because it “avoids and shuns all the pernicious affectations” such as excessive mouthing of words. Second, it was most important in joining the two registers, as was asserted by Miksch in the earlier quotations: * . . . the joining of the two registers can be achieved by nothing more than the holding fast or standing firm of the mouth, the tongue, and the throat—while singing.”” It also enabled the singers to maintain a pleasant or otherwise appropriate expression on the face. ‘The contrast is great between this and “the affected and unnatural howling of the singers’ (Quantz), ot “that incurable and insufferable expression’ (Bumey) of the French. Earlier it was stated that the English were largely under the influ- cence of Italian teachers and Italian models in their singing. This became more and more pronounced through the eighteenth century, especially in the desire for vowel equalization. Bacon writes about the best English singers at the tum of the nineteenth century as he compares them with the Italians, In analysing the technical attributes of the wo styles, I shall first consider the tone; and | think I shall be borne out, by close observers of the fact, ‘when T say that English tone is more pure than the Italian. It may seem strange that they who derive the only certain method they possess of training the voice to its point of perfection, should by mete adherence to the rules laid down, excel their masters: yet so { believe it will be found to be; and | venture to suggest the Following reasons:—In the first place, the English singer (I speak of course only of the educated per- former—Miss Stephens for instance) accepts the Italian theory without any attempt to modify it. A certain position of the mouth isto be chosen. orhich produces the best natural sound—namely, one which is most free from any adulteration of the nose, the throat, the mouth, or the lips. Such 2 tone is actually neither di pesto or di testa, neither from the chest nor the head, but from a region somewhere between both, where it receives its last polish. To this I say they adhere, and their adaptation ofthe notes Of the voice to passion is always subjected to this grand provision. ‘The tone must never be vitiated, even if modified—so says the rule, and to this we adhere with unbending scrupulosity. Those masters of our school, ‘Harrison, Bartleman, and Vaughn, have been used to accommodate the pronunciation of vowels to the production and the preservation of an uniformity of voicing, which even detracts greatly from their elocution, ‘Observe, reader, I do not instance the example of those great singers a affording a precedent of perfection in the tone itself, but as elucidating the sacrifice of the words to their theory of its production and as con- forming exactly to the capital prevailing notion of equality. From hence the mal-pronunciation of the letters / and y, as in doy for die, thoy for thy, ete.—in short, a general equalization by means ofthe leter 2. These rounded their tones. The Italians are anxious to atlenuate, and as it were, render the sound more volatile and delicate, But this isthe best and the least ofthe modifications sound undergoes in their employment of it ‘The genius of their pronunciation is essentially different from ours. Ours is sibilant, slightly gutural, and employing the agency of the movth and Doth lips and palate. The defect of the Italian language, trifling though it be as compared with other tongues, is, that itis nasal, which arises from the strong accentwation of the letter i, and thus in such words as ‘mio, addio, etc., Italians are often, not to say always, nasal, particularly towards the decline of the voice and the coming on of age. think I have rarely heard an Italian, even of the first rank, who was not to be accused jn some degree of this defect. As a whole, ! should certainly pronounce the voicing of our best English females to'be more pure than the Italian, ‘(Bacon 1966, 54) have quoted this long paragraph because, as Foreman says in his “Introduction’” to this new edition, Bacon was knowledgeable, unu- sually observant, and he writes with clarity. Quite obviously, English singers elevated one aspect of vocal technique in importance until its exaggeration affected all their singing adversely. The Germans also earned from the Italians, but it was well into the nineteenth century before German singers made any considerable impact on the interna- tional scene. 68 ‘Summary ‘This survey of vocal sonority in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has inevitably spilled over into the nineteeth century, because change does not take place all at once, and certainly not because « new century appears. The old tastes and techniques were a long time dying. Heriot quotes Goethe and Schopenhauer, both of whom were enthu- siastic about castrato singing. The former wrote: { reflected on the reasons why these singers pleased me so greatly, and T think Ihave found it, In these represenatations the concept of imitation, and of art was invariably more strongly felt, and through their able performance a sort of conscious illusion was produced. Thus # double pleasure is given, in that these persons are not women, but only represent women, The young men have studied the properties of the female sex in its being and behavior, they know them thoroughly and reproduce them like an artist; they represent, not themselves, but a nature absolut foreign to thera (Heriot 1974, 26) Schophenhauer wrote about Crescentini in his diary. His supernaturally beautiful voice cannot be compared with that of any ‘woman: there can be no fuller and more beautiful tone, and in its silvery purity he yet achieves indescribable power. et Heriot also quotes the French music historian Fétis, who describes ‘how Crescentini was brought to Paris by Napoleon, where he “*reduced the prince, the courtiers, and all the assembly to tears when he sang in the role of Romeo.”” Here is testimony from three who might be called the most important men in Europe in the early nineteenth century; the poet, the philosopher, and the soldier. That testimony is almost identical ‘with what was said by many a century earlier. However, change had been in the air for half a century or more, It can be said to have begun with the empfindsamer Sri found in the ‘music of Bach's sons and their contemporaries; at least that was the first manifestation of a kind of musie emphasizing simple personalfeeling, rejecting the abstract doctrine of the affections. A few years later, Gluck tried to eliminate what he called “ridiculous and weari- some” ornamentation in his search for truth in expression. This was also the generation of the Mannheim orchestra, which electrified its audiences with the new and exciting technique of crescendo and dim- inuendo. Music was being made in new and different ways, and those ‘who loved the old ways were not happy. Bumey reports an interview with the Italian playwright and librettist, Metastasio, who said, he did not think there was now one singer who could sustain the voice in the manner the old singers were used to do. I endeavoured to account for this, and he agreed with me, that thestrical music was become too instrumental; and that the cantatas at the beginning of this century, which were sung with no other accompaniment than a harpsichord or a violoncello, required better singing than the present songs, in which the noisy accompaniments can hide defects as well as beauties, and give £0 a singer. (Bumey 1959, 2:104) ‘The complaint about loud accompaniments will sound more and more frequently from now on. Voices were trying to respond to the changed climate in the opera house. Bérard’s account of the light and dark tones for varying interpretation has already been quoted. Mancini has this interesting and enigmatic passage: | will end this article with a charming paradox, which will amaze you; 1 say that there may be natural defects which’ are more beautiful a attractive in the voice when they are not corrected by art. Give me a veiled voice which has enough body to be heard in any place no matter hhow large; it entices, pleases, and softly seizes the human heart by means of its marvellous thick color; never crude, never strident. (Mancini 1967, 21) Can this be anything buta kind of covered tone, the sombre timbre? As a castrato and teacher of the old school, Mancini would find this, a wrong technique, a wrong sound and yet honesty compelled him to say he liked it. Singers gradually discovered that with this darker sound great increase in intensity was possible without loss of quality. A different sort of mixing of the chest voice and the head voice (or falsetto) 70 became the subject of experiment, with the object of meeting the vocal and dramatic demands of the new romantic music. This is the story of the nineteenth century, and it can be epitomized as the progress (cer- tainly change anyway) from Crescentini singing at the court of Napoleon to Caruso singing at the Metropolitan Opera House exactly one century later. nChapter 4 ‘The latter half of the eighteenth century and first half of the’nineteenth ‘was, for singers, a petiod of changing tastes and standards. As we have seen, the last of the great castrati were thrilling audiences, Perhaps the {greatest of them all was Pacchierotti, for whose singing the normally judicious—and certainly knowledgeable—Mount Edgcumbe had ab- solutely total enthusiasm, Pacchicrotiis voice was an extensive soprano, full and sweet in the highest degree; his powers of execution were great, but he had far too ‘good taste and too good sense to make a display of them where it would hhave been misapplied, confining it to one bravura song (aria d’agiliza) in each opera, conscious that the chief defight of singing, and his own supreme excellence, Iay in touching expression and exquisite pathos . .. entering at once into the views of the composer, and giving ‘them all the appropriate sprit and expression. . . . [have often seen his auditors, even those the least musical, moved to tears when he. was singing. (Batl of Mount Edgeumbe 1973, 12) Obviously, this was the best of the old style. But there were other sounds in the air; the technique of darkening the voice for expressive purposes. mentioned by Bérard, had been de- veloping for a long time. It seems logical to assume, although difficult to prove, that the coloring of the voice for variety of expression was the singer’s response to the new esthetic of the mid-eighteenth century. For the first time, simple, heartfelt emotion was called for, what Gluck called truth in art. The abstract impersonal expressiveness that char- acterized the doctrine of the affections was no longer satisfactory. It 2 must have become apparent that the kind of musical performance de- scribed and called for by musicians like Quantz and C. P. E. Bech was ‘more easily attained by mixing the darker sound with the more custom- ary “*white tone." Singers also must have discovered very quickly thet, as they leamed this new technique, they could develop greater emotional intensity, and consequently greater volume, without loss of quality. Thus, the new sound was developing and maturing, perhaps often un- noticed, alongside the old. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, singers went in one of two ways, ways that are best exemplified by (wo contrasting individuals—Catalani and Donzelli Catalani and the Old Style Angelica Catalani, born in 1780, can lay claim to being the most spectacular female singer of all time. It can also be said that musical integrity reached its nadir with her; no other performer cared more about displaying her skills and less about the music used in the display. Her voice hal a respectable range from G below the staff to the B above, and in the lower and middle registers it is full and strong. The passage to the upper register, around E and F, however. is quite conspicuous, ‘and three or four tones in this area are noticeably weaker than the very Tow and the very high. In order to cover this defect she sings all the figures that occur there in half voice. , Her trill is especially beautiful, whether in whole or in semi-tones, ‘Much admired was a run through the half-tones, actually an enharmonic seale, since each half-ione occurred twice. I found it more remarkable than beautiful, sounding something like the howling of the wind in a ‘smokestack. What I missed most in her singing was soul, Her recitatives were rendered without expression, almost carelessly, and her adagios left one cold, . . . | must still mention certain unpleasant and obtrusive manner- {sms which at her age she can hardly be expected to overcome. Among them isthe habit, in passages, and particularly in full voice, of chewing ‘out each tone in such a way that even a'stone-deaf listener, if he saw her ‘sing, could distinguish between ejghths and sixteenths as she goes up and down the scale. Particularly in tills, the movement of her chin is such that each note can be counted. (Spohr 1961, 116) 2BSpoh’s opinion is valuable: he was not only one of the foremost com- posers of his time, but one of the first traveling instrumental virtuosos. Mount Edgeumbe’s comments add to this mixed review. Her throat seems endued (as has been remarked by medical men) with ‘a power of expansion and muscular motion by no means usual, and when she throws all her voice to the utmost, it has a volume and strength that tare quite surprising, while its agility in divisions, rumning up and down the scale in somi-tones, and its compass in jumping over two octaves at once, are equally astonishing. It were to be wished that she were less lavish in the display of these wonderful powers, and sought to please ‘more than to surprise: but her taste is vicious, her excessive love of, ‘ornament spoiling every simple air. (Earl of Mount Edgeumbe 1973, 98) It must be added that Mount Edgcumbe considered Catalani one of the really great artists of his time; in fact, he thought she was “the last great,singer heard in this country whose name is likely to be recorded in musical annals." He may only mean the most recent, but such predictions are very dangerous. While she was at her peak, younger singers were maturing who would equal or surpass her, and changing tastes would make her style obsolete. ‘Someone said of Catalani’s voice that “it bore no resemblance to any instrument except we could imagine the tone of musical glasses to be magnified in volume to the same gradation of power’ “Ferris 1979, 135). For our ears, that would be a most unusual voice, at least when belonging to the most famous prima donna of the day, It would be a very penetrating sound with little vibrato, a rather simple sound acoust- ically. Lacking strong upper partials, itis hard to imagine a tone spark- ling and brilliant. Garcia uses the identical comparison in speaking of the sombre timbre. Sometimes, he says, the sombre timbre makes the hhead voice pure and clear “ike the sounds of a harmonica."” ‘The harmonica is, of course, the glass harmonica invented by Benjamin Franklin, which consisted of a series of graded glass basins on 2 horizontal spindle, fitted into a trough filled with water to keep the glass wet. It enjoyed extraordinary popularity even into the nine teenth century. Would such a tone quality be equally popular in the later twentieth century? I find that very hard to believe. Catalani is @ perfect example of the decadence of much of Italian 74 opera singing at the end of these two centuries of supremacy. Mount Edgcumbe has this to say about Marchesi, one of the last great castrati alittle before Catalan. His execution was very considerable, and he was rather too fond of splaying it; nor was his cantabile singing equal to his bravura. . and had he been less lavish of ornaments, which were not always appropriate. and possessed of a more pure and simple taste. his performance would have been faultless. . . . But his flowery style was absolute simplicity to what we have heard in latter days. (East of Mount Exgeumbe 1973, 61) ‘Mount dgcumbe liked the earlier singing style, but he insisted that it be expressive. It is obvious from many contemporary accounts that Italian singing hed declined. Both Metastasio and Hasse, two of Italian music’s most illustrious names, had earlier told Burney that the good school for singing was lost since the time of Pistocchi, Bemacchi, and Porpora. Of course, this simply means they did not like the changes from the older style. Cleariy, the singers who were committed to the old style exag~ ‘gerated that old style more and more in their inereasingly frantic efforts to please the public. This, of course, displeased such connoisseurs as Metastasio, Hasse, and Mount Egcumbe, but it also probably led those gentlemen to become still more estranged from the wave of the future, the new romanticism with its emotional expressiveness and dramatic fervor. Even the older Garcia, whose son said that he was following in his father's footsteps in his teaching, had his feet planted in eight- ‘centh-century singing style. Spohr reports hearing him sing Don Gio- vanni at the Theatre Italien in Paris, “transposing much of it up, and embellishing it excessively” (Spohr 1961, 237). The New Style and Donzelli “The other kind of singing was beginning to attract notice. Mount Edgcumbe, near the end of his opera going, reported hearing “‘a tenor «with a powerful voice which he did not modulate well” (Earl of Mount Edgcumbe 1973, 205). This was the Italian Domenico Donzelli, born 15in Bologna about 1790. The Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung said of the same man: “He has @ beautiful mellifluous tenor with which he attacks the high A in full chest voice, without once resorting to fal- setto"*(Pleasants 1966, 160). _ He was very popular in England when Chorley began his opera going. Henry Chorley was a professional music critic who exercised a wide influence, not only in England but on the continent. As Emest Newman points out in his Introduction’ toa new edition of the Musical Recollections, Chorley’s opinions of the music and singing during the middle third of the nineteenth century were usually the prevailing opin- ions of the time, including his dislike of the young Verdi and the increased demands made on singers by his music. Of Donzelli he said: He had one of the most melifluous low tenor voices ever heard—a voice ‘which had never by practise been made sufficiently flexible to execute Signor Rossini’s operas as they are written, but who even in this respect \was accomplished and finished, if compared with the violent persons who have succeeded him in Italy, each one louder and less available than his predecessor. The volume of Donzelli's rich and sonorous voice was real, not forced. When he gave out his high notes there was no misgiving 1s to the peril of his blood-vessels; and hence his reign on the Italian stage was thrice as long as that of any of the worse-endowed, worse- ‘trained folk who have since adopted the career of forcible tenors. (Chorley 1972, 4) Undoubtedly, Donzelli was a herald of the new singing, singi that could touch te listener ina different way, could express pasion and sentiment, not by a stylized language of the affections, but directly, personally. The term “forcible tenors” clearly refers to the new style of carrying the chest voice as high as possible, instead of letting it shift into falsetto or into the lightweight mixture, which was still normal Loss of flexibility, inevitable with the new technique, should also be noted. According to Chorley, Donzelli could not manage Rossini’s florid passages, but his voice was still more flexible than many who followed. (Ik must be remembered that Rossini was the fist Malan “omposer to write out those flori in hi composer owt ot hose id passages in his attempt to control the believe that three things must be kept in mind in evaluating that statement. First, his standards, based on the most flawless techniques he heard, were far beyond anything we now have ever heard. There 16 ‘simply is no reason for today’s singers to spend hard years of work on 4 voice that would be lost in the larger theaters, larger orchestras, & voice that would sound like a child’s voice beside the prevailing sound of our other operatic voices, in order to acquite coloratura technique far beyond what is necessary for any repertoire but a small number of museum pieces. It should not be doubted that acquiring that technique must keep the voice relatively small. "The second thing to keep in mind is that, as the nineteenth century progressed, it can be safely assumed that voice teachers and their stu- Gents found a compromise solution, which enabled them to combine at least some technical facility with the new technique of power singing. ‘But the most important thing to keep in mind is that for the first time voices were classified into types that became more and more narrowly defined. Of course, voices and singers had always differed in temperament as well as in size; some excelled in the brilliant style ‘and some excelled in the pathetic style. ‘There were also different kinds of arias. Italian opera categorized them into aria camabile, aria di ‘portamento, aria di mezzo carattere, aria parlante (which was divided ‘nto aria di nota e parola, aria agitata, aria di strepito, and aria infuriata), and aria di bravura (or d'agilita) (Bacon 1966, 24). Not everyone used all these terms and there were other terms not included here. Whereas previously all singers had gone through the same train with the emphasis on even scale (portamento), beauty of tone, and agility, there was now something new and different: a striving for Volume of tone to perform the new dramatic and realistic musie Better. ‘Thus began the division of singers, with the voices that responded to developing volume concentrating on roles that required or could be adapted to that kind of voice, and avoiding roles that required more agility. Those singers whose voices and temperaments were not suited to the new style concentrated on the roles that featured more florid music, as well as lyrical singing without heavy dramatic demands. ‘The End of Bel Canto ‘At this distance in time, itis very difficult to evaluate the impor tance of the composer in the matter of vocal sonority. Did the singing change because the music changed, or was it the other way around? 1‘One of the most interesting and perceptive comments about the changing ‘world of music at this time comes ftom Marie Henti Beyle (1783-1842), ‘who wrote under the pseudonym Stendhal. He was, of course, primarily a great novelist, but he also wrote several books on music, including a life of Rossini. {thas been implied that Stendhal was creative in his writings on musical subjects, for example in his treatment of facts; but he had a very sensitive ear. It must be remembered that his Vie de Rossini was published in 1824, when the composer was at the height of his fame, Stendhal was very conservative in his musical tastes; never- theless he recognized the genius of Rossini, while decrying many things he did. The following passage is from a chapter entitled “Some Details concerning the Revolution inaugurated by Rossini,”” a heading indi- cating that he was awate of the radical changes taking place. The supreme qualities of the soprani feastratos] and their pupils were seen at their most resplendent in the execution of large and canrabile spranaro passages. ... . Yet this precisely was the type of aria which Rossini, ever since the moment when he arrived in Naples and adopted ‘what is now known as his “second manner," has been a the greatest pains t0 eliminate from his operas. In former days, a singer might train for six or cight years before being able to achieve a true largo; and the patient perseverance of Bernacchi, for instance, is proverbial in the his- {ory of the art. But once this degree of perfection, purity, and sweetness, which the generation of 1750 considered to be the sine qua non of good singing, had been finally attained, the singer had nothing further to do bur reap his reward; his reputation and fortune lay ready to hand. How- fever, since Rossini has appeared on the scene, success or failure in the execution of a largo passage has become a matter of sublime indifference, and if ever such a passage were to be offered to our own audiences today . . that poor audience would be bored to death: and the reason is simple—because it would find itself being addressed in a foreign language which it thinks it knows. . . . The older style of singing could ‘stir a man to the innermost recesses of his soul; but i¢ could also prove rather boring; Rossini’s style ttllates the mind, and is neverboring. . ‘The subleties involved in sustaining a long holding-note, the art of por- tamento, the technique of modulating the Voice so as to make it fall with equal stress upon every note ina legato passage, the skilled control wich enabled a singer to draw breath quite imperceptibly, without interrupting ‘he Tong-drawn phrases of vocal melody so typical of the arias of the old school-these and similar qualities represented formerly the most difficult and the most essential attainments of a good performer. The mete agility, 8 remarkable or otherwise, of the voice served only one purpose: it was employed in the execution of gorgheggi, i.e. it represented a Iuxury, it was used for display or. in a word, for Supplying an clement of superficial glitter, and never for providing those essential qualities which ‘were to shake and stir the soul. . . . Rossini has been responsible for ‘musical revolution; but even his sincerest friends blame that revolution for having restricted the boundaries of the art of singing, for having limited the qualities of emotional pathos inherent in that art, and for having rendered useless, and therefore obsolete, certain technical exer cises, valueless in themselves, but which eould ultimately lead to those ‘transports of delirium and rapture which occur so frequently in the history ‘of Pacchierotti and other great artists of an earlier generation, and so very rarely today, The source of those miracles lay in the mystic powers of the human voice. (Stendhal 1972, 351) ‘restricted the boundaries of the art of singing.”” Let us pause and examine that statement. And in what way did Rossini cause @ ivsical revolution? Surely we would say that Rossini extended bound- aries, that his romantic approach was a breath of fresh air, that the beginnings of realism gave to singing a new emotionally charged aspect. Even so, after the revolutions in music that have occurted since, it is difficult to sense much difference between him and his immediate pred- ecessors. Itis clear, however, that his contemporaries felt the difference. ‘They felt the change that would lead away from pure singing, that would lead to dramatic speech, that abandoned pitch, with everything sacrificed to realism. This was the revolution, and the singers who developed the new style could no longer sing in the old style; that was the narrowing of the boundaries. ‘Another interesting idea expressed by Stenahal is the assertion that mere agility was secondary, in eighteenth-century bel canto technique, to the ‘the subtleties involved in sustaining a long holding-note," breath ‘control, and everything that goes with adagio singing. A century before, Tosi had said, “divisions have not power sufficient to touch the soul”(Tosi 1926, 51). The naive madrigalisms of earlier generations were long gone, and now the rhetorical style that was incorporated into the doctrince of the affections—the Affektenlehre—had also died. With- out the artistic integrity of a Pacchierotti, mere technical facility became hollow and meaningless, except where a genius like Rossini, by writing it all out, coukd now and then resurrect some of the old expressiveness. 9Years later, Manuel Garcia II pointed out the shortcomings of most singers when confronted with arias in the legato style. In the spianato style it is necessary, for the very reason of the simplicity ofthe forms, thatthe tis str the soul, under he pain of appearing level [al] and iss. Also the clomsines ofthe peter pat our sagen, inthis said and deliotesiyle, has ebliged the composers o subsite for in hci works; syllabic metoes witha Sosed yh Ths 2p iit mach et othe pm, sis nae het of conttontng the met ofa broad Seging ses he spre te sedy of the shades, the chiroscur, of eared vocalization, the varies of Sle and fil that abonous and complete preparation which she testo se oral hat ey ae Cone abt ving ofthe voice athe exaggeration Of he flings by tat fue one arrives at the decadence of the art. scteciaaaaas (Garcia 1975, 2:191) ‘That is what signaled the end of bel canto, and it was recognized as such both by those who disliked the change and by those whe caused it. The castrato Crescentini, who had been such a favorite of Napoleon, said in a letter to a friend: : You ar sigh in saying hat msi today s noting but he amasingo yrnd‘f exesvlynoiy notes, and he tenon why the oe Singer mos fight wih sth a any ofthe and wit be oat of tempat, mombones, nal tes devsh wind ise taken are shut ad eanot lone sah eos vloe St wi he abs hot han ope re er soo the fae road fe now taveling, and loo hope tu. hv th end ofthe se of eae and crcsenos tat en plein ey pce of mticby or pent dy composes ne wets eth Rosen bonis, we shal rer oa npc, tac sje, ta wil give ts human ole what ts ovm ab belong otha wl rt the lng for singing, fr Secaming an mot for sounding for tn sag which tinge do tony because tty cent ep tag when fase by the bad taste introduced into voeal composition. (Weinstock 1971, 16) It need hardly be said that there was no return to any “simpler, truer style." Whether or not Rossini was trul i i was truly responsible for the change, he was the first and most successful composer in the new style 80 and Mount Edgeumbe, like Crescentini, blames him for the changes he did not like. He reported that Velluti, the last important castrato, would ‘sing only one of Rossinis earliest operas. Aurelian in Palma, in which hhe “had not yet, in his efforts at originality, fallen into that wild, unnatural style which characterizes so many of his works” (Earl of Mount Edgcumbe 1973, 167). The same observer complained about overwhelming the singers with loud accompaniments, as did Crescen- tini. Its finales, and many of its numerous pez2/ concertai, are uncommonly oud, and the lavish use made of the noisy instruments appears to my judgement singularly inappropriate. (ibid, 128) Before one dismisses such statements as too ridiculous to be con- sidered, one must bear in mind that Lord Mount Edgcumbe was an avid operagoer for more than fifly years; that, while an amateur, he had composed an opera that had been performed by Banti, the foremost female singer of her time; and that he was personally acquainted with the artists, hearing them sing in private homes as well as at the opera house. It is we who must try to hear as he heard, and as other older ‘contemporaries of Rossini heard, composers like Paisiello and Zingar- elli. The former had called Rossini a “licentious" composer who paid litle attention to the rules, while Zingarelli banned the reading of his, scores by Conservatory students (Weinstock 1968, 47). : Rossini himself recognized that music and singing had changed, although it may be doubted that he blamed himself. Indeed, it may well have been that he adopted his ‘'second manner’’ quite consciously, because the older style with its polished legato and expressive oma- mentation had deteriorated so much that very few of its practitioners could keep it from being boring. Stendhal, in his Life of Rossini, tells how the young composer, just twenty-two, became acquainted with Velluti. The handsome young ‘castrato was to have a role in the opera Aureliano in Palma (mentioned above), and Rossini had written a cavatina for his part before they met ‘At the first rehearsal with the orchestra, Velluti sang the aria straight through, and Rossini was dazzled with admiration; tthe second rehearsal 81Velluti began to embroider the melody. and Rossini, finding the result ‘both exquisite in performance and well in keeping with his ownintentions fas 8 composer. approved; but at the third rehearsal, the original pattern Of the melody had almost entirely disappeared beneath tho marvellous Filigree work of embroidery and arabesque. At last there dawned the arcat day of the premiere; the cavatina itself, and in fact Velluti's whole performance created a furore; but Rossini found himself confronted with insuperable difficulties in trying to identify what Velluti was supposed to be singing; his own music, im fact, had grown completely unrecog- nizable, For all that, Velluti'é performance was a thing of unparalleled ‘beauty. and enjoyed untold popularity with the audience which, afterall, ccan never be blamed for applauding something which itsowholeheartedly enjoys. (Stendhal 1972, 340) ‘Thus it was that Rossini, realizing that all singers were not such artists as Velluti, decided that he would control the omamenting by doing it all himself. He would not leave room for even a single approggiatura. ‘Velluti was really en epigone: what he could do in making the old style of singing expressive was by this time virtually a lost art. Rossini told Ferdinand Hiller that “‘the true art of bel canto ended with the disappearance of the castrati; one must agree with that, even if one cannot wish to have them back”? (Weinstock 1968, 264). Answering Richard Wagner's question about the decline of singing in Italy, Rossini said (1860) it was owing to the disappearance ofthe castrati . . . incomparable teachers —their raster schools were suppressed and replaced with some conservatories in which, although good traditions existed, nothing of bel canto was, preserved. bid, 295) This reference to the term bel canto as having a special meaning other than its literal meaning of beautiful singing is surely among the earliest. Duey found no one before Vaccai (ca. 1840) who gave the term any particular meaning, The opera seria and bel canto, especially toward the end of the cra, depended on one thing only: the beautiful voice with a fabulous technique. If the voice was not of the best and the owner of it not a great artist, there was nothing to take its place. ‘The drama was usually 82 nothing, and the music from the composer was in skeleton form only, ‘with the simplest of accompaniments. Thus, Italian opera had to have great artists, artists who understood how to embellish the plain melodies effectively and affectingly. French opera was quite different: the singing could be very bad, but if the play was well acted and the text correctly pronounced, the result could be a success, Rossini wrote out all the embellishments that were needed because he did not trust the singers; they were too eager to add far more than was good. After a century and ‘a half, the exaggerations had become grotesque. ‘There was another change instituted by Rossini. Bei interesting essay on singing and vocal music, A Travers Chant, writing about one of the Italian composer's first Paris operas, Le Siége de Corinthe, says that Rossini had noticed, not without chagrin, the somnolence of our large theatre's audience during a performance of the most beautiful works . . . and Rossini swore not to suffer such an affront. “I know very well how to keep you from sleeping!" he said. And he put the big drum everywhere, ‘as well asthe cymbals and the triangle, the trombones and the ophicleide for bundles of chords. (Berlioz 1879, 389) His instincts were right-—Rossini’s audiences did not get bored. ‘The combination of larger theaters and louder orchestras forced singers to concentrate on power in order to avoid the situation that Spohr encountered at the San Carlo in Naples. But for opera itself the house is too large. Although the singers. Signora Colbran, and the Signori Nozzari, Benedetti, ete, have very strong voices, only their highest and most stentorian tones could be heard. Any kind of tender utterance was lost. .. . Of the singers there is little more to say than that they have good strong voices. Whether they have good interpretive style is, in the theatre, impossible to say, since one either hears them shout or doesn’t hear them at all. (Spohr 1961, 176) ‘The San Carlo, built in 1737, was the eatliest of the large opera houses, and it was here that Rossini developed what Stendhal called his “second manner,” to keep the audience awake and not bored. Except 83for one opera by an amateur composer, Spohr does not say what operes he heard to form his judgment. However, by the time of Spohr’s visit, Rossini had become the god there; so it can be assumed that at least some of the operas he heard used the larger and louder orchestral ac- companiments. It should also be mentioned that Signora Colbran had been a student of Crescentini and thus had been trained in the old style. She later became the wife of Rossi ‘Spor was told that the acoustics of the San Carlo were not as good as they had been before the fire. On rebuilding, the proscenium had been made a little wider, the ceiling less arched, and stucco omamen's had been added on the walls, which had inhibited resonance somewhat. Nevertheless, Spohr found that, when he played there, his violin carried easily throughout the hall It is a little difficult to evaluate all this, but certainly the size of the accompaniment could be a critical factor when the hall was large and the voice was lacking the kind of full sonority developed during the following century. Burney, speaking of a soprano, asserted that ste “appeared here [referring to a small opera house] to much greater advantage than at Milan, where the theatre is of such a size as to require the lungs of a Stentor to fill it”* (1959, 173). La Scala in Milan was not quite as large as the San Carlo in Naples, but both apparently were abit large for most voices at that time. Stendhal makes an interesting comment in this connection: be seems to feel that Rossini was protecting the singers (and himself ), covering up fatigue and poor technique. Rossini was often obliged to write for singers whose voices were red or strained. If he had allowed them to sing solo or thinly accom- panied, or if he had provided them with broad, sustained melodies t0 execute, he would have had to fear lest their technical weaknesses, falling too much in evidence, or being too distinctly audible, would prove fatal to singer and composer alike. On one occasion in Venice, when someone commented reproachfully on the lack of fine, well developed melodies in slow tempo, Rossini retorted: Then you don't realize what sort of dogs. I write for? Give me a Crivelli and then see. It is a fairly generally accepted principle that, for large theatres, it is essential to increase the proportion of ensemble numbers. La Gazza Ladra, which was composed for the enormous auditorium of La Scala, seems much heavier thaf it really is, when it is performed in a tiny theatre like the Louvois and, incidentally, by an orchestra which seems to specialize in a mood of 84 superd disdain towards all subtlety of shading, and which treats any passage marked piano with a sneer of inexpressible disgust (Stendahl 1972, 135) Stendhal was certainly a great story teller and given to hyperbole, but even with generous discounting there remains much food for thougiit Jn what he says about the new and different music of the first decades of the nineteenth century It should be noted that Berlioz inveighed against large halls where the audience could hear but not feel the music. if the art of singing has become the art of screaming, as it is today, the too great size of theatres is the cause of it How big were the very strong voices" that Spohr heard in Naples? We will never know, but it seems evident that they were not nearly as strong as the operatic voices of today, who sing in theaters as large as San Carlo everywhere without comment. Surely Colbran's voice was not as strong as these: as a student of the great castrato, she was taught by the old methods that stressed quality, flexibility, and control, with no evidence that vocal size was also a goal to be sought. Economic necessity has determined the size of virally all opera houses, and singers have had to learn perforce how to sing with sufficient power, often at the cost of beauty of sound and subtlety of intexpretation. This ig especially true when the voice is not naturally of unusual size and ‘so must be used constantly somewhat above a comfortable dynamic norm. Those who developed larger voices often found it impossible to seale down those voices for more intimate singing. Mount Edgeumbe, speaking of Pasta, the great artist from whom Bellini composed Norma, sai In a small room her voice was too oud, and sometimes harsh her manver too forcible and vehement; but in the theatre all blemishes disappeared. ‘Then he adds in a footnote: _ modeen music spoils the singers for concerts, especially in private houses. The constantly singing concerted pieces, adapted only for the theatre, gives them the habit of so forcing the voice that they know not how fo moderate them to the small space of an ordinary room. ‘(Garl of Mount Bdgeumbe 1973, 169) 85[As everyone knows, this has become increasingly truc in the century and @ half since he wrote; an opera singet who can sing a song recital equally well is a rare bird indeed. ‘There were @ number of reasons, perhaps interlocking, for the death of bel canto. Certainly the disappearance of the castrato was important, but behind that were the reasons for the disappearance of the castrato. There was the changing taste that preferred simple, direct emotion to what secmed like the artficialitics of the doctrine of the affections. Chorley, writing about Persiani and her superb technique and artistry, said that nothing could be more poignant, clear, audacious, ready to the ‘moment, than her execution of the variations to Paisiello's “*Ne Cor" 2 form of vocal music originated in obedience to Catalani’s bad taste Certain of her freaks and fancies in this (in particular, a variation of enormously distant intervals) recur to me as best among the best of axhibitions of the kind. “The kind" is now disdained. Such absurd use of the voice by way ‘of instrument, as these solfeggi imply, can hardly be too severely dis- dined, . . , But because ofthese abuses, to disdain altogether the science ‘of voeal ornament as superfluous, meretricious, absurd, is equivalent t0 preferring the brute diamond . .. to the same jewel when all its lustre has been brought out. . . . The newfangled pedantry which declares that ‘2 composer writing for singers shall avoid everything showing that they know how to sing. if carried to its extreme, would simply make an end of music (Chorley 1972, 191) When Chorley wrote those words about 1861, the shift from bel ‘canto was complete and realism was in full command of the opera When Persiani was singing with Rubini and the others twenty to thirty yeats earlier, only the beginnings of realism were present. There were still some singers trying to stay withthe old technique, and still a portion of the audience that loved it. Ten years after Chorley wrote, Verdi, in a letter to his publisher Ricordi, said that “so-called vocal perfection ‘concerns me little”” (Verdi 1942, 303), ‘The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries had found the esthetic pendulum swinging back toward Ro- ‘manticism, an outlook on life comparable to the Romanticism of the early Baroque, which had invented opera and dramatic music. Now, 86 however, singers had something different to develop in their response to the new romantic and dramatic music—the sombre timbre that held the possibility for real dramatic singing. Neither the natural voices of the earlier period nor the castrati had had this possibility, nor could the bel canto style include this type of singing. But perhaps the main reason for the disappearance of bel canto was the simple fact that it had been the ideal singing style for a century and a half or more everywhere except in France, and audiences simply wanted something different. ‘They were more and more rarely enraptured, while they were more and more frequently bored. A New Kind of Singing Voice In 1840, the Gazette Médicale de Paris published an article by two physicians, Diday and Pétrequin, entitled “*Report on a New Kind of, Singing Voice.”” ‘Te at of music has been enriched recently by a new kind of voie, whose discovery insoduces& new element nthe problem of phonation, tnd seems to Be bound to bring about a fundamental change in ths xection and study ofsnghg. =. When in 1837 a celebreted singe reduced ton out foremost yi tage, it tracted the genera atetion ‘once, and crow as all he more songly exited beease this te Of rs nnn thn wen byte ari who was using it How had the vocal organ, previously piping and expres Sones, been modified wihivextea? (Diday and Peteguin, 1840) This startling introduction to a paper written by scientists for scientists appears to be the first detailed study of the new vocal technique that had enabled the French tenor Gilbert-Louis Duprez to sing high C in chest voice, the first time anyone had achieved such a thing. ‘The authors go on to report that everyone is agreed that there are two kinds of voice: chest and falsetto; also, that the former can be produced in two ways. one, used all the time and analyzed by the classic authors who have concentrated only on it in all the theories which they have advanced on 87shonation: he oer, of more een origin, explained uni nw, and Spon which we proponents ep to foc tention. te fae (Ibid) ‘They call the first “ordinary voice or white voice, a term used by antists,”” and the other ‘‘darkened voice.”” The difference was caused by the position of the larynx, plainly evident to the touch and often visibl ‘sre this was corroborated in the same year by Manuel Garcia 1 in a Mémoire sur la voix humaine presented to the French Academy. Garcia's Traité complet sur Art du Chant was first published in 1841, the following year. In the preface to the treatise, he describes more fully than did Diday and Pétrequin the differing techniques. The mod- ifications of quality produced by different means can be reduced to two principal ones: the clear timbre and the sombre timbre, Each imparts its character throughout the range of the voice. ‘The clear timbre gives brilliance to the chest register, sometimes so much that it is called “white voice."" When this is carried to ex- aggeration, it makes the voice shrill. ‘The sombre timbre, on the other hand, gives more roundness to the tones in the chest register. With this type of tone, the singer can achieve much greater volume of sound. When this timbre is carried to excess, the tone becomes t00 covered and is stifled. Garcia names particular notes in specific arias sung in clear timbre by such tenors as his father, Rubini, and Duprez, and by the great basso Lablache, to leave no doubt as to what he is talking about. What would ‘we not give to hear those sounds? Later, he describes how these different timbres are achieved. The reader must understand that Garcia considered falsetto a register lying approximately between middle C and the octave above, for both men’s and women’s voices. The head voice began above that, and it was normally lost by the male voice at puberty. [As the voice rises in the chest register from the lowest tones, when the timbre is clear, the larynx at first is positioned a little below the rest position. As the pitch rises, the larynx rises until the voice reaches the highest pitch it is capable of in that register. These highest notes in the chest voice will become thin and unmusical, but of course the trained singer will shift into @ higher register before that occurs. 88. This same movement of the larynx recurs as the voice rises through the falsetto and head registers; it goes back to the same low position it had for the lowest chest tones, rising very slightly as the pitch rises. ‘When one Keeps the sombre timbre as the pitch rises from the lowest tones, the larynx does not rise but remains 2 little below the position of rest. This is particularly true when the singer wants to give his voice all possible volume; he tips the head forward a litte to keep the larynx down ‘A change in the position of the larynx leads inevitably to a change in the timbre. One can demonstrate this to his own satisfaction, says Garcia, by producing tones on each pitch in his range, singing first he ‘most sombre timbre and then the clearest timbre, He will feel the larynx moving lower or higher accordingly. From all this, it is clear that there was indeed “a fundamental change in the execution and study of singing,” as Diday and Pétrequin said. When they spoke of the ‘vocal organ, previously piping and expressionless,” they were including, by implication, all previous sing- ing (or at least all singing that was not striving toward the new sound). To describe all the singing that preceded with such words—that of men, women, and castrati—is obviously extravagant prejudice, but it gives strong evidence that the new vocal sound was indeed very different. Additional evidence that the “ordinary voice”” was. as they said, “used all the time and analysed by the classic authors” lies in the remarkable similarity between Gareia’s description of the clear timbre and that of Jean Baptiste Bérard (already quoted) a century earlier. ‘The most striking fact to emerge here is the rapidity with which the clear timbre disappeared from vocal pedagogy. From this time for- ‘ward there is only rarely any mention of clear timbre and sombretimbre, and still more rarely is there any singing method advocated that could possibly lead to the clear timbre as it was earlier described. It is equally interesting that before Garcia there is virtually no mention of any tech- nique that could be construed as deseribing the sombre timbre, although singers had been approaching this sound gradually for several genera- tions. Indeed, Garcia says in the ‘Preface’ to his Treatise that his ‘method is substantially the same as that taught by his father, the tenor for whom Rossini wrote Count Almaviva in 1! Barbiere di Siviglia 1 found no other book on singing, before or after Garcia, that 89describes, analyzes, and teaches both the clear timbre and the sombre timbre. Before him the methods used—breathing, position of thetongue, larynx, lips, ete.—all tend to result in the clear timbre, After his book ‘was published, the methods advocated led more and more to the sombre timbre. This does not mean that Garcia was responsible in any way for the shift; it simply means that he was the watershed, looking back to what had been and locking forward to what was coming: increased demands on the voice made by composers and clearly perceived pos- sibilities of satisfying those demands with the new technique. By using both techniques, Garcia gave his students a much wider interpretive range. In the section on timbres, he describes modifications of the two basic timbres as they should be used in a large number of examples taken from the repertoire of his day. For instance, Edgardo’s curse, “"Maledetto sia I'istante,"” in thé finale of Donizetti's Lucia, “equires not only the clear timbre, but also all the brilliance of the voite.”” On the contrary, the words “lo credeva che alcuno’* (Rossini, Otello) should, because of the mental exhaustion overwhelming Des- demona, be pronounced with a “clear, but smothered and colorless voice."" A little later, coming back to Edgardo’s curse, Garcia says, “"The chest tones above f are intolerable when one uses them in re- strained songs; but here, for the very reason of their shrill effect, they adapt themselves to the accents of despair and rage” Garcia 1975, 161-62). The palette of colors for interpretation has become very wide, at least ideally. ‘More than anything else, it was the movement or the non-movement of the larynx that made the difference between the two timbres, the old ‘way and the new way. However, during the years that followed, singers ‘gradually Iearned how to brighten or darken the tone without raising the larynx, or with only a minimum of movement. The change inquality was doubtless considerably less, but it was sufficient for interpretive purposes, and it could be achieved without much loss of volume or intensity. Singers were then able to abandon the double technique, ‘which must have been difficult to manage. However, it would be @ mistake to say that there is no such thing today as the clear timbre described by Garcia To someone who has had no training and has not tried to imitate some favorite singer, raising the larynx is the most natural way to 90 increase the top range. Any other way of extending the range has to be earned. Every voice teacher notes the rising larynx in beginning voice students (especially tenors), and works immediately to eliminate it What appears to have been lost in this past century is a technique for producing the kind of beautiful sound in the clear timbre that enchanted music lovers of the so-called bel canto period. The Tremolo Clearly, singing was becoming something quite different. Even those who still strove for perfection in coloratura technique were work- ing for greater volume as they never used to do. In addition, the Italians \were introducing something else, which was partly a result of the push for greater intensity and partly due to the desire for greater emotional involvement. ‘She was @ good musician and sang with taste; but her voice—a so- rano—ere she came had contracted a habit of trembling, in those days it always have remained so) to which English ears were (Chortey 1972, 4) Bef; however, Rabi came nln is wie ha comme so OF ting or tembting ha, then new er which af Te has een abused ad nauseam. : eceeee bid, 21) ‘The tremulous quality of his voice (that vise of young Italy, bad school- ing and fae noon of effec becare mor monotonous and tesome than the eoles placiity could bave been (bid, 146) This new feature of Italian singing seems to have appeared rather suddenly in the 1820s and 1830s, at least in England, and it was quite probably an exaggeration of the common Baroque ornament. What had ‘been an occasional substitute for the trill became an important part of Romantic expressiveness. Garcia, in Part Il of his Treatise, describes the “‘inner agitation which comes to us from the fullness of an expe- 1nced feeling," quoting passages from Rossini, Donizetti, Mozar:, and others to show where this is an appropriate response. ‘When the same agitation is produced by a grief so vivid that it completely dominates us, the organ experiences a kind of vacillation which is im- parted to the voice, This vacillation is called sremolo. . . . The tremolo Should only be used to portray the fecling which, in real life, move us profoundly... . Even in those circumstances the use of it should be regulated with taste and moderation; as soon as one exaggerates the ‘expression or the length of it it becomes tiresome and awkward . .. it fs necessaty to guard against altering in any way tbe security of the sound, for the repeated use of the tremolo makes the voice tremulous. (Garcia 1975, 149) ‘The point at which the tremolo becomes “tiresome and awkward” is, of course, quite subjective, and English ears apparently did not tolerate as much of it as did some other ears. Garcia cautions about its overuse, but itis clear that many singers overdid it. In this connection itis interesting to remember Roger North's plaint about the overuse of the wrist shake on the violin more than a century earlier. As in vocal music, the object was greater emotional expressiveness. In each case, ‘what had been an occasional embellishment gradually became a constant technique. By now not only stringed instruments and voices use this excessive vibrato or tremolo constantly, even the wind instruments have learned the technique. ‘This last isa recent development, as the following story will attest Georges Barrtre, the great flautist ofthe first thitd ofthis century, was asked by an admiring lady how he achieved such a beautiful vibrato in his playing, He said, “Madam, my most constant effort is to eliminate any vibrato from my playing."” What the lady heard was a vibrant tone with no more than the natural vibrato of human physiology Catalani, sounding like musical glasses, could not have had a noticeable vibrato. Nor is such a thing mentioned in describing Mme. Pasta, the great singing actress of the twenties and thirties. And yet Pasta, from what we read, had almost every possible flaw to overcome in achieving her mastery of the singing art. The “tremulous quality” seems to have been found more often in men's voices, but there was no mention of it in describing the singing of the elder Garcia, nor even of Donzelli, the first of the Italians Chorley called “forcible tenors.”” 92 Chorley described Rubini’s tremolo as it was when he first heard him in 1831, but he was writing in 1861 when te said that the practice had been abused ‘“ad nauseam.” Rubini remained a light tenor, refusing to force his voice in the new style; so his tremolo seems to have been strictly an expressive device. Other, younger singers, striving for ever greater intensity, discov- cred that the tremolo appeared automatically with the volume and was almost beyond control. Before the end of the century, the results were apparent, and George Bernard Shaw for one was blaming it on the bad vocal writing of the Italians, particularly Verdi. Shaw was a man of ‘many prejudices, but he was also a man with a very perceptive musical ear. It was his contention that good vocal writing lies in keeping the normal plane of the music, the tessitura, in the middle of the singer's range. Unfortunately, the middle of the voice is not the prettiest part of it; and in immature or badly and insufficiently trained voices it is often the ‘weakest part. There is, therefore, a constant temptation to use the upper fifth of the voice exclusively, and this is exactly what Verdi did without remorse. He practically treated the upper fifth as the whole voice, and pitched his melodies in the middle of it instexd of in the middle of the whole compass, the result being 2 frightful strain on the singers. ‘The upshot ofthat, except in the case of abnormally pitched voices, was displacement, fatigue, intolerable strain, shattering tremolo, and finally, not as one could have wished, total annihilation, but the development of an unnatural trick of making an atrociously disagreeable noise and inflicting it on the public as Italian singing, with the result that the Halian ‘opera singer is now execrated and banished from the boards of which. he was once the undisputed master. (Shaw 1955, 143) Shaw also averred that neither Jean Baptiste Faure nor Victor Maurel, two of the greatest baritones of the later nineteenth century, could sustain a tone without a tremolo. Some tremolo can be heard on carly recordings of most Italian singers, both male and female. It can even be heard occasionally in recordings of the great Ezio Pinza, al- though I have no recollection of such in the many times 1 heard! him sing. Of course, one must not be too confident that the sound emerging from a record is identical with the sound that went into it, especially when it was done a half century or more ago. Nevertheless, there are 93recordings of non-Italians made at the same time that show no sign of the tremoto. ‘Shaw was right when he insisted that vocal technique could not cope with the new demands, with a few magnificent exceptions. Vocal pedagogy, of necessity, tends to be very conservative; each teacher at least begins by using the method that was most successful in his orher case. A singer or teacher can only know what the preceding generation hhas taught. Any new ideas must be absorbed and grafted on to the prevailing methods. Thus, it usually takes several generations of teach- crs and singers for new ideas to take over and dominate, no matter how good they are. Of course, Shaw was exaggerating grossly when he asserted that Verdi “treated that upper fifth as the whole voice,"” while with Wagner the tessitura was in the middle of the range, and consequently Wagner did not destroy voices. Anyone with patience to count notes will find that, in most Verdi scenes and for most characters the tessitura ties pretty well in the middle, as it does for most of Wagner. Now, it is possible to find a few arias and scenes in Verdi's operas in which the tessitura is high and at least a plurality of notes are in the upper fifth of the range, as opposed to the middle or lower fifth. Aida’s “0 cieli azzurti"® and Radames’ “Celeste Aida’” are examples, It should also be pointed out, since Shaw doesn't mention it, that Wagner's orchestration is much heavier, and it is not only “badly and insufficiently trained voices” that have a hard time being heard. Shaw ‘was not a vocal pedagogue or he would have known that all voices, especially women’s voices, are weaker in the middle than on top. With sopranos and mezzos, the middle tones are often the last to respond to study. As a result, Wagner is as likely to cause strain as Verdi, although in a different way. Just as Mount Edgeumbe blamed the decline in singing largely on Rossini, on what seemed to him loud ensembles and heavy accompan- iments that made singers scream instead of sing, so Chorley, like Shaw, laid much of the blame for bad singing on Verdi. Speaking of an Irish soprano who appeared in London, Chotley said: Her style too pleased in Italy, because it approached the Tong-drawn, 94 false, overemphatie style which Italy has liked since Verdi's eign began, Dut which we have not as yet accepted. (Chorley 1972, 159) What Chorley called the “false, overemphatic style’” was of course, the romantic passion and realism that had begun to appear earlier in the century, both in the music and in the performance, but by the 1840s and 1850s had become full blown. It cannot be reiterated too often that this study of the evolution of vocal sound is based on the opinions of some of the most cultivated ears in each generation, as well as on the prevailing teaching methods. Our understanding of this evolution could not be helped by ignoring Mount Edgcumbe’s opinion of Rossini, nor Chorley's opinion of Verdi, a8 t00 ridiculous to be considered. All the writings of these two gentle- men give proof that they were not only thoroughly knowledgeable, but that they had very sensitive cars. Their conservative tastes were de- ‘veloped in their youth, and those tastes colored all their writings. That is the fascination of it. ‘Mount Edgcumbe was born when the Baroque style prevailed in Italian opera. When he wrote his Reminiscences, the Romantic period ‘was in full sway, but his benchmark was inevitably the castrato Pac- chierotti and the soprano Banti. Thus, he could hear the difference that developed in Rossini’s music and the increased demands on singers as we no longer can. If we could, we would not use the term bel canto in referring to Rossini and his contemporaries. If that term is to have any definition at all, it should coincide with the heyday of the castrato and end with the eighteenth century. When Chorley was born in 1808, Romanticism was in the air, and by the time he began going to the opera Rossini was the god. England had always been rather slow to accept novelty, and so neither Chorley nor England was able to accept Verdi or Wagner for quite a while. Chorley’s benchmark was thus different from Mount Edgcumbe’s, though still conservative in his taste in singing technique. ‘Bemard Shaw was born while Chorley was writing his reviews for the Athenaeum, and thus, by the time Shaw was hearing opera, Verdi and Wagner had become the reigning gods. Shaw, however, was also conservative as regards singing, insisting that realism in the theater did 95‘not mean shouting and screaming. Every generation must be judged on its own terms. Tastes were changing constantly; music was changing, perhaps progressing, and teachers and singers were trying to find tech- niques that would be most successful in performing that music, Dramatic Singing Coupled with the increased volume of sound that everyone was making in the theater was the reappearance, in fresh guise, of a style that had been abandoned two centuries carlier. ‘This was dramatic music—a new stile concitato, a stile rappresentativo, which featured 4 continuous accompanied and expressive recitative and arioso, rather than the set aria, separated by rapid parlando, which advanced the plot. Now vocal pedagogy could respond, however slowly and tenta tively. This is really the story of nineteenth century singing. Loss of agility and widespread tremolo have already been discussed as results of that response fo the demands made by Romantic music. Realisim and dramatic intensity were in the air, and the rapid change in the esthetic climate is nowhere more vividly shown than in the extreme ‘contrast between these statements by two of the greatest dramatic com- posers. Mozart said: passions, whether violent or not, must never be expressed in such ‘a way as to excite dispust, and as music, even in the most terrible Situations, must never offerd the ear, but must please the hearer, ot in ther words must never cease to be music (Letter to his father, September 26, 1781) Verdi, only a little more than a half century later, said: ‘Tadolini sings to perfeetion, and I don’t wish Lady Macbeth really to sing at all. Tadolini was a marvellous, clear, brilliant, powerful voice, land for Lady Macbeth | should like a raw, choked, hollow voice. « ‘And these two numbers (the duet between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and the sleep-walking scene) absolutely must not be sung: they must be acted and declaimed with a very hollow voice, veiled. (Letter to his librettist, Cammarano, November 23, 1848) ‘One of the earliest and most successful of this new type of singer was 96 the German soprano Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, Born of theatrical parents, she was first of all an actress, an actress blessed with anaturally beautiful voice. Henry Chorley tells of the sensation produced in London when Beethoven's Fidetio was introduced with that gifted lady in the title roe. Within the conditions of her own school she was a remarkable artist Her voice was a strong soprano—not comparable in quality 0 other ‘German voices of its class—but with an inherent expressiveness of tone which made it more attractive on the stage than many @ mote faultless organ. Such training as had been given to it belonged to that false schoo! ‘which admits of sich a barbarism as the defense and udmiration of “nature singing."" Why not speak as well of natural playing on the violin, or other instrument which is to be brought under control? A more absurd phrase was never coined by ignorance conceiving itself sagacity. Why hot ss well have nature-civilization—nature-painting—nature-cleanli- ness? But on the rock of this difficulty German singers and German ‘composers have split. A man whose fingers cannot control the strings would hardly have a second hearing, did he atiempt instrumental musi ‘But a woman, supposing she can correctly flounder through the notes ‘of a given composition, has been allowed, too contemptuously. to take rank as a singer. Such a worvan was not Sontag—neither, of later days. Mille, Lind. ‘The two had leaned to sing. Schroeder-Devrient not. Her tones were delivered without any care, save to give them due force. Her execution was bid and heavy. There was an air of strain and spasm throughout her performances, of that struggle for vietory which never conquers. (Chorley 1972, 38) Having said that, Chorley willingly testifies to her skill as an actress, drawing tears from every member of the audience as she por- trayed the faithful Leonora. She was one of the first singers to abandon completely the notes written by the composer during intensely dramatic recitative-like passages. For this she was severely criticized by Berlioz *"T cannot tell the aversion I fee! for this anti-musical declamation. To my mind it is a hundred times worse to speak in opera than to sing in tragedy (Berlioz. 1879). Surely everyone now would take an exactly opposite view. Berlioz, however, felt that canto parlato “ought always to adhere to the tonality.”” Richard Wagner, on the other hand, thought that Schroeder-De- 7vyrient’s dramatic singing was inspired. It was certainly more in tune with that master’s concept of opera as a synthesis of all the arts, and, in fact, her singing is said to have been a stimulus to him in developing that concept. It was also more in tune with the esthetic concept of realism, which was certainly the wave of the future in opera everywhere. ‘Verdi's instructions for Macbeth could scarcely be more explicit. This dramatic singing that occasionally abandons pitch scems to have appeared first in eighteenth-century French opera. A realistic effect ‘occurred in which the voice was foreed to the point of losing definite pitch, together with any sort of beautiful sound. This came to be called uurlo’ alla francese (French howling) or école du cri (school of seteaming), and the rest of the world was not ready for it. Its sufficient to recall the numerous quotations from Dr. Burney and others, as well 15 Rousseau's description of a recitative passage in the current repertoire in which the singer turns a tranquil recital of events into the “shrill and noisy intonations,”” with “perpetual shrieks which form the tissue of that part of our music even more than that of the airs.”” What had begun ‘as an occasional effect for pathetic intensity gradually became a normal way of singing, and it received additional impetus with Gluck and his reforms in favor of presenting emotional truth directly. As the new, heavier singing became more and more popular in Italy, dramatic screaming developed with it. Edouard Robert, co-director of the ‘Théatre-Italien in Paris, said (1830); In Milan J encountered the urlo francese, which Rossini had sid us of at the Opéra, and which seems to have established its empire in Hay. Such delicious talents as Rubini and Tamburini are not listened to when they sing in a ravishing manner. Now the Italians listen to music likethe English and neither applaud nor call out the actors except when they ‘shout Ike demons; also, these unhappy singers are worn out; they lose their talent and shorten their careers (Weinstock 1968, 449) Concerning his remark about English taste, 1 have found no evi dence to contradict Chorley’s numerous assertions that the English did not like shouting. Oddly enough, it seems as though the French were abandoning the école du cri as the Italians were taking it up. 98 the French element was already beginning to take a large share of our Italian Opera House, owing to the decadence of the great Italian art ‘of singing. and to English unwillingness to accept vocalists who could only baw! and gesticulate, in place of the real women and men who, by their singing and acting, had for a century past charmed London into a knowledge and a naturalization of ltalian opera. (Chorley 1972, 167) With most singers this striving for realism, for personal involve- ment in the expression, tuned into striving for greater volume, with consequent loss of quality and agility. The Italian audiences apparently loved it. Chorley, writing in 1861, said: Fourteen years ago we were litte used to the coarse and stentorian bawling which the Italian tenors have of late affected. The newcomer, naturally anxious to recommend himself by the arts which had delighed his own people, seemed to become more and more violent in proportion 2s the sensation" failed to be excited. But he piled up the agony, forte on forte, in vain, That so much noise should be receiyed so coolly was somewhat whimsical, bitter disappointment though it must have been to fone misled by home raptures, Alas! | already look back 10 Signor Fras- chini as a moderate, if not a temperate, Italian tenor, when compared ‘with-many who have since made the ears of right-minded persons suffer, (ibid, 190) It was not only tenors who were foreing their voices. Ernant was spiritedly performed. The heroine, Mme. Rita Borio, was, in every sense of the word, a stout singer, with a robust voice—a lady ‘ot inthe least afraid of the violent use to which the latest Italian maestro forces his heroines, but able to scream in time, and to shout with breath enough to carry through the most animated and vehement movement of those devised by him. (ibid, 165) In Paris, Rossini’s Guillaume Tell had been a favorite role of Adolphe Nourrit, whose voice was light in weight and was undoubtedly ‘one of those voices called by Diday and Pétrequin “ordinary or white” voices. When Duprez came back to the Opéra after his metamorphosis from a light tenor to a dramatic tenor, he made his debut as Tell. He won the audience and drove poot Nourtit out of Paris. because everyone 99recognized that the heavier voice was so much more suitable for the heavier music. But many regretted the change. August Laget, a former singer, complained about Guillaume Tell, ‘‘that destructive opera which has exterminated three generations of tenors in twenty years” (Wein- stock 1964, 166). Duprez’s singing of other roles was not so readily accepted Duprez was splendid in the vigorous music, such as the passage in the sextet where Cellini threatens to smash the statue. But already his voice (1838) had coarsened to the point where smoothly produced tone and Quiet or reflective music no longer came naturally to him. (Berlioz 1969, 245) |As I had foreseen, Duprez, who ten years before when his voice was small, and light, had sung Tony in Robin des Bois, could not now adjust his big heroie tenor to the part. bid, 352) ‘The preeminence of Halian opera as well as Italian singers had been challenged since the rise of Romantic opera in the early years of the nineteenth century. Even the center of its development was Paris rather than Milan or Naples. Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, even Bellini—all went to Paris. The Italian and French opera met in Vienna and stimulated the rise of German opera. Italian singess and voice teachers had spread out over Europe and unquestionably influenced the development of singing wherever they went; however, Italian singing methods took on local coloring in each country because of language differences and national personality. ‘The reader will remember the description by Richard M. Bacon of the sound of English singing quoted in the last chapter; the English seemed to take their Italian instruction so literally that their singing became a distortion of the model. National characteristics became i creasingly noticeable as each country developed its own national oper. It has already been pointed out that the official Méthode for teaching singing at the Paris Conservatory was written by the Italian Mengozzi, 2 pupil of the Bemnacchi school. It can certainly be argued that French singing improved as a result of this Méthode: far more singers were being engaged outside France than before it was written. But of course, 100 French taste and the French language are so different from the lian that there is a limit to the possible change in vocal sonority. The same is true with German singing, ‘As always, there were some great Italian artists, but evidently there ‘were not enough to go around. As the supply of castrati had been reduced to almost nothing by the end of the eighteenth century, their places had been taken by tenors a8 well as by women, With the rising fide of realism in the theater, however, women stopped singing male roles unless they were called for in the play, and soon there were not enough tenors to export over Europe, partly because the rest of Europe did not care for the sort of forced sound described by Chorley. That ‘gentleman, recounting the events of the year 1849, said: We had now come to a time at which the supply of Italian opera with Italian singers could no longer be counted on, and when the names of French, German, and Belgian artists began to figure largely in the pro- grammes of the year, e (Chorley 1972, 243) But all singers and their mentors were struggling with the problem of developing larger voices to meet the demands of the operatic music now being written, voices that would still have flexibility and agility. Dut, above all, voices that would still be beautiful, There was one part of the old technique that could not be adjusted to meet the new demands; it could only be abandoned. That was the blending of the falsetto jnto the rest of the voice, which had been one of the most important parts of bel canto technique. Falsetto could still be retained for special effects, but in dramatic singing proper it had no place. ‘The Falsetto ippears ‘The increased demand for intensity and volume of tone from singers ‘was not an isolated phenomenon. At the very same time, all the in- struments were being rebuilt for bigger sound. It is a sobering thought that Beethoven's orchestra was not only about half as large as orchestras 101today (with the additions being all strings), but that every instrument, ‘with the exceptions of the kettledrum, trombone, and cymbal, has been altered for greater volume of sound. Higher bridges were fitted on all the stringed instruments, necessitating rebuilding the necks, as well as a.targer bass bar and sound post to allow much greater bow pressure. {All the wind instruments were being fitted with the hardware they now have, which allows a much wider dynamic range and, at the sametime, more accurate intonation, particularly of the chromatic alterations so much a part of the new romantic music. The piano was developing the wide dynamic range we know today. The harpsichord had already been discarcied. Concert halls and opera houses were getting larger to ac- ‘commodate the growing audience of the prosperous new middle class. ‘The esthetic underlay of all this striving for volume was romantic expressiveness, a personal involvement in the music. This expressive ness had begun with the sentimental music of mid-eighteenth century, had gchieved a perfect balance with musical form during the short decades of the Classical period especially with Haydn and Mozart, and had then broken the bonds of restraint to find entirely new values in the musical art. Operas were being written about historical characters, her- ‘ocs and villains with whom the audience could identify. Their passions were real passions, and singers were asked more and more to project that reality across the footlights. Thus the contrast between Mozart and Verdi quoted eater. In such a climate, the delicate falsetto sound was doomed, just as the lute and viol had been doomed two centuries earlier. Male voices were affected most obviously. although everyone leamed how to use the now sombre timbre, and with it a heavier voice, especially for high tones. Some tenors, like Rubini and Nourrit, refused to push their voices, while others, like Duprez, showed the way to express the new realism. The two vocal techniques existed for a time side by side, often used by the same singers in different passages as part of their repertoire of interpretive skills. For example, Nathan says that “falsetto would be bad in ‘Sound an Alarm’ (Handel, Judas Maccabaeus) but proper for tender songs”*(Nathan 1836, 146). The old style coule still generate excitement as this account of a Rubini performance shows. Giambattista Rubini was considered by many the greatest tenor of the nineteenth century; certainly he ruled the lyric stage for a long time. 102 In the song of Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, “Il mio tesoro,"* Rubin began a trill on the high A softly, enlarged it gradually, arriving at a prodigious loudness, then returning little by litte to the intial intenity and ending with a shower of vocalises with perfectness and uniformity: all that lasted seven to eight measures of 4/4 time moderato, and was ‘sung on a single breath, What an effect! What enthusiasm! It was delir- jum! The hall stamped, they roared in the hall. They were standing on the benches. (Martini 1913-31, 897) ‘This could not possibly have been done with Duprez's new tech- nique: it had to be the old singing method using falsetto. It is amusing to speculate on the reception that would be given to such a performance today. Of course, musicians would be horrified at the desecration of Mozart's music, but, on the other hand, singing like that might bring ‘many who find opera dull into the opera house. However, in the middle third of the nineteenth century, the pre- vailing trend in singing was all the otter way. Duprez enjoyed enormous success as the first in that honorable line of dramatic tenors, although it must be admitted that not everyone liked his top tones in chest voice. Berlioz recalled that Rossini likened the sound to the “squawk of capon having its throat cut” (1969, 539). Obviously, Rossini was ac- customed to having the high notes in his music sung with a much lighter voice. Although Duprez seems to have been a superior actor and artist, his new voice did not last very long, and he spent the remainder of his life teaching, Jean-Baptiste Faure, the great French baritone who is known now as the composer of “*The Palms,"” was one wito deplored the disap- pearance of the falsetto, According to him, the reaction against the virtuosity that goes with falsetto and the lighter voice came from Italy. |At the same time the liking for vocalise is lost in Italy, they began to ridicut the falsetto voice, by the aid of which tenors increased by several hhotes the range of their scale. Without needing fo insist on the incon- venience which results from the abuse ofthe chest voice outside its limits, ‘without the harmony also with the truth of expression, one can easily see the disastrous effects which this practise must produce on the voice, destroying the velvet, the sweetness, and the intonation, when it does not lead to complete ruin. (Arger 1913-31, 991) 103Abandoning the falsetto led to some problems when reviving older music, particularly with tenors. Shaw tells of a revival of Rossini’s Otello in 1877, in which Christine Nillson was wonderful but Tamburlik “sings in a doubtful falsetto."” Was Shaw doubtful of the propriety of a falsetto, or was Tamburlik doubtful about how it should be done? In either case it was a mismatch of music, singer, and audience. “For the C sharp in the celebrated duet, he substituted a strange description of a shriek at about that pitch” (Shaw, 1961). Now, Tamburlik was uni- versally considered one of the great tenors of his time, but he had made his first appearance in England in 1850. ‘Thus he was well past his prime when Shaw heard him, but he probably never did have the technique expected by Rossini in his operas, the technique possessed by Rubini and earlier singers. Itmust be remembered that almost all operatic roles until the middle third of the nineteenth century or later, were composed with particular singers in mind and were frequently altered to suit later singers of those roles. It is ridiculous to expect tenors to sing without alteration roles that were composed expressly for Rubini, who blended his light tenor voice perfectly into a falsetto. Most of Rossini’s heroines were originally for mezzo voice, be- cause that was the best range for the prima donnas who first sang the roles. Don Basilio’s great aria in! Barbier! is too high for most bassos, and so it is usually heard transposed down a step. If the prima donnas, can have their music transposed up for effective performance, why ‘cannot the tenors have their parts transposed down for the same reason’? ‘Surely this is not all tenor ego. Rossini would certainly not have pitched the tenor arias where he did for any tenor living today. The falsetto is rot now an acceptable sound, except for particular and unusual effects, and so tenors rarely use it. ‘Another factor that makes insistence on original keys rather ridic- ulous is that, when this music was composed, there was no standard pitch and there never had been. It is very difficult for us today, with ‘our pitch pipes, tuning forks, and instruments to measure frequency with great accuracy, to conceive of a situation in which every chapel or cathedral, every opera house or court orchestra, decided on its own pitch. The notes on a staff and their names were like our ‘movable do’: they were related to each other but could be any pitch. The Harvard 104 Dictionary lists a sampling of pitches from different parts of Europe for which there is reasonable evidence—either organ pipes or tuning forks—between 1500 and 1850, giving the frequency of A, (middle A). ‘The pitches vary in frequency from 377 double vibrations (about @ minor third below our 440) all the way to 563 (more than a major third above our pitch). It includes Handel's and Mozart's tuning forks, both ‘at 422, and two pitches at the Paris Grand Opera: in 181] at 427, and in 1856 at 446. These two figures correspond rather loosely with the frequent assertion that Rossini’s music (and that of his contemporaries) was performed a half step lower than we sing today, and that older vocal music generally was performed at a lower pitch than is now the case However, the problem of pitch is far more complex than that Every city with both a court orchestra and a cathedral used two pitches, and if there was a town band in addition, three pitches. The cathedral ‘organ was normally tuned higher than the orchestra, and the brass band ‘was still higher. In some opera houses, there might be still another pitch usually lower. Problems of transposing and thcir solutions fill many pages in the instruction books of this time. For singers, the problem is to find the key that results in the best tessitura and range forthe particular avia; although it is not mentioned, it was surely an important factor in rewriting for different singers or opera houses. In summary, although we can rarely know for sure exactly what pitch was used in any given place or time, we do know that it varied widely until an international agreement was reached in 1889 at a'con- ference in Vienna. Thus, it seems that there is no real meaning to the term “original key" when it is applied to music more than a century old. ‘The time has come when the hard question must be faced: what ig meant by the term falsetto? Or, more precisely, what did voice teachers of earlier centuries mean by the term? What is the difference in the usage, if any, between falsetto and head voice, mixed voice. voix mixte, voce mezzane, voce finta, between falscttist and countertenor? ‘The semantic problem is peshaps insuperable; most writers, past and present, have contributed to the confusion rather than helped to alleviate it, Each teacher knew what he meant when he used the terms, and so probably did his immediate audience—his students, If they knew the 105meanings, then a precise description and definition became unnecessary, and with such terms precision is impossible anyway, with its reliance on words to describe sounds, and a primitive physiology behind those ‘words. With this imprecision it was quite natural for different teachers, oyer a number of generations, to vary the meanings of these words ‘gradually according to their individual perceptions, tonal ideals, and pedagogical methods. Even today, with our greatly expanded knowledge of physiology and the wide range of sophisticated equipment for research, there is still no clear agreement about vocal registration. ‘The teachers and physiol- ‘ogists who are doing this research seem to be zeroing in on the truth in this area, as well as in the other areas that are part of the singing act, ‘but there are still some uncertainties, and the researchers have scarcely begun to convince large numbers of voice teachers who believe oth- erwise on empirical evidence The “otherwise” may take any one of several different forms, and ‘may include the beliefs of many successful teachers. It is probably true that most of these teachers believe physiological fact to be less important than what the senses perceive to be fact, and that what i really important is the experienced car of the teacher. As we try to probe into the minds ‘of voice teachers one, two, three centuries ago, to discover the meanings ‘of the words they used, it is well to remember that before the middle of the last century all voice teaching was based on empirical experience. ‘Thus, this study is not so much interested in correct vocal pedagogy as in what used to be perceived as correct pedagogy. Of course. historical evidence suggests that it worked extremely well with the music being sung and that problems did not arise until the voice was given different music in the-early nineteeth century. Then, it seems, new techniques began to appear, and some words began to take on new meanings. ‘The most obvious example of this was Manuel Garcia Il and his theory of registration, which included chest, falsetto, and head. Ac- cording to this theory, the chest register in male voices extends from Jowest notes up to about C, (the highest notes that tenors sing), while the falsetto extends from about G, to the same C;. The adult male has no head voice. These are, of course, extreme limits, but note that the upper half of the male range can be sung in either chest or falsetto according to Garcia. The woman’s chest voice has only a few notes 106 below G,; the falsetto extends from there to about C,; and the head voice is everything about that. Thus, in his view, the falsetto was the same for both men and women; in the male voice the chest was the principal register, while with women the falsetto and head voice were of about equal importance. Since Garcia was a most successful teacher, quite obviously this theory worked as pedagogy, but his definition of falsetto remained his own, accepted by few, and now entirely discarded Let us deal with the countertenor first. This term referred to the third part in Renaissance music, and itis clearly described in the Harvard Dictionary. Its range was about the same as the tenor until it split in two parts: the contratonor altus or, simply, altus, and the con- tatenor bassus or, simply bassus. This process explains the name alto high) for a part which, from the modern point of view, can hardly be considered a “*high" part, as well as the use of the term countertenor for the male alto, (Harvard Dictionary of Music, 183) “Those who sang this part seem to have been singers with naturally light, high voices, voices similar to our Irish tenors, who shift, with scarcely any change in quality, to a bright, clear falsetto (using that term as we ‘understand it today). This voice, after being discarded for two centuries or more, has been revived with the revival of interest in old music and old instruments. So long as no attempt is made to develop power and intensity, this sound can be very lovely as well as containing a certain impersonal, disembodied quality especially appropriate for early music. ‘A few countertenors today do not permit their voices to use anything ‘but falsetto and, consequently, are even more limited dynamically, but ‘most have acquired a technique of mixing and blending with the heavier ‘mechanism, s0 that the lower part of the range has considerally more body. In France, where the castrato was never generally accepted, there were many countertenors in solo roles during the Baroque period. The most popular singer of the early eighteenth century was a countertenor named Jelyotte. ‘The falsettists, who were replaced in chapel choirs by castrati at the beginning of the Baroque era whenever possible, seem to havebeen quite a different type of singer. Whereas the countertenor was a light 107voice capable of extending its range upward by mixing with falsetto, the falsettist was probably a natural baritone who developed a false voice to sing soprano (or the descant), because women could not sing in church and boys" voices were not strong enough. The two parts of the voice were never joined, These are the same voices heard singing alto today in some surviving all-male cathedral choirs. It is certainly possible for writers at the end of the sixteenth century tohave condemned the falsettists, not even thinking of countertenors. We would surely not think of Irish-type tenors while objecting to the quality of the male alto voice. Nevertheless, from a physiological point of view, the top notes, of the Irish tenor are the same as all the notes of the falsettist’s voice. The mixed voice (voix mixte, voce mezzane, voce finta, feigned voice) is a useful pedagogical term, the precise meaning of which can vary from teacher to teacher, according to his tonal ideal and his method of achieving an even scale without register breaks or suciden change in the quality or quantity of tone. Because the same term is found every- ‘where iti likely that, in western Europe from the Renaissance forward, this even scale was an important part of good singing. In general terms it uswally referred to a tone or group of tones straddling the shift from chest voice to falsetto. Those pitches can be sung in either voice, enabling the student to find a gradually changing mixture for the tran- ition from one voice to the other. Most early voice teachers spoke of only two registers, but as early as Conrad von Zabern (1474) the middle voice was developed as a bridge between chest voice and falsetto (Ulrich 1973, 111). A century or so later the falsetto was rejected by musicians developing the new dramatic Baroque music. Caccini says that when one is singing alone over the chittarone or some other stringed instrument with- ‘out having to accommodate himself to others, let him choose a key in which he can sing with his full and natural voice, avoiding the falsetto, When the pitch is too high, whether falsetto or not, too much breath is, needed to keep it from sounding strained and thus offending the eat. For this breath is needed to give greater animation to the crescendo and diminuendo, to esclamazioni, and to all the other effects we have dis- ‘cussed. Let him make sure that it does not fal him when it is required From the falsetto the nobleness of good singing can never arise; that can ‘come only from a natural voice singing easly in whatever range the artist ‘can manage, depending on his ability (Caccini in Newton 1602, 14-18) 108 ‘Although Zacconi (1592) speaks of the voce mezzane as a bridge, itis clear that Caccini (1602) is willing to lose a little in range in order to preserve naturalness. Before the end of the seventeenth century, with the ascendancy of the custrato, the intensely dramatic style of the early Baroque had disappeared, and once again the chief object of the teacher was to blend the two basic voices and thereby increase the range. ‘The physiological activity of the vocal cords is essentially the same whether the singer is castrato, male, or female. Tosi does not mention any middle register, but he must assume some mixing tones, in order “to unite the feigned and the natural voice." As we know, vocal cord activity in singing varies from vibration as a whole forthe lower part of the range to very limited vibration of the edges of the cords for the highest notes in the range. Between these extremes, the center of vi- _bratory activity moves gradually to the anterior portion of the cords as tie piteh rises, with less and less activity in the posterior portion. However, knowing this i o ttle help in determining exactly what seventeonth-, cighteenth-, or even nineteeth-century pedagogues meant when they speak of falsetto. Manuel Garcia Il was the first to see vocal cords in action, so it might be supposed that clarification would come from him but, as we have seen, his descriptions are inadequate and his solution was not semantically acceptable. Finally, what was the difference, if any, between falsetto and head ‘voice in the minds of vocal pedagogues before Garcia's time? This is without doubt the most difficult question because singers andl teachers today know quite well what they mean by the two words. As has been said earlier, there is a great deal of evidence indicating that the two words were used interchangeably, while there is almost none to denote areal distinction. It has already been mentioned that J. E, Galliard and J. F. Agricola, translators of Tosi’s Opinioni into English and German, were two of the very few who tried to make a distinction between falsetto and head voice. One paragraph in the first chapter of the English version says this: Let the Master attend with great care to the Voice of the Scholar, which, ‘whether it be di Pert, or di Testa, should always come forth neat and Clear, without passing through the Nose, or being chosked in the Throat Which are two of the mast horrible Defects in a Singer, and past all Remedy if grown into a Habit. (Tosi 1926, 22) 109To this, Galliard adds this footnote, ace di Pet ie fl Voie, wich comes rom te Breas by Sent tna the mast wnoous and expsine, Vow scones oe fom the Tot thin fom he Be epee of moe Vu. Fasc is fered Voice, whch i ely formed Inte Tat has me Vohbliy tan ay, bu of stance Nothing in this footnote is in the original Italian; it is included here because it must represent the thinking of at least some pedagogues. ‘Three paragraphs later in the Tosi texts the already quoted passage about the necessity of uniting the falsetto with the natural voice. The word “feigned” is used here interchangeably with falsetto. The next paragraph, continuing the description, says, ‘the Voce di Testa has a great Volubility, etc." Guisto Ferdinando Tenducci, one of the later ‘castrato virtuosos, says (1785 Never fre the voice in order o extend its compass inthe Voce di Pero upwards bat ratherto clive the Voce d esta n what ical fae (Monahan 1978, 130) | believe it is permissible to conclude: 1) that castrati and other ‘male singers did use, in the Baroque period and later, what we would call falsetto in their highest tones; 2) that one of the chief aims (if not the chief aim) of vocal technique was to eliminate the break between the natural voice and the falsetto; and 3) that singers very gradually Jeamed how to change the mixture of those intermediate tones that bridge the two voices. They leamed the technique of the larynx kept low, which enabled them to darken the tone and to carry the mixture of natural voice and falsetto to a higher pitch. Without doubt, there were always some voices, probably of exceptionally light character, that were able to reach almost to the top of their range without losing the natural male quality entirely. This could easily account for such statements as that of Galliard, who, it must be remembered, was an oboist and 2 composer, not a singer. ‘The principal difficulty one faces today in trying to hear the sound of early singing mentally isthe inability to believe that any singing that included falsetto a5 an integral part could possibly have amounted to 0 anything, especially singing in a theater with an orchestra. In our time, pop singing uses this technique extensively, but always with micro- phone, and the notion that without amplification, an evenly balanced scale including falsetto could possibly result in a sound of sufficient power to fill theaters is hard to believe Nevertheless, anyone who has read this far could not help being impressed by the new note in the criticisms and descriptions of per- formances in the first half of the nineteenth century. Large halls, loud orchestras, screaming, loss of agility, constant tremolo—these are all new, not found in earlier comments whether favorable or unfavorable. ‘Two things become quite clear. The old technique, which resulted in the “ordinary or white voice” previously used by everyone, could not cope with the new demands made on the voice for romantic passion, personal involvement, and greater volume, The other obvious conclu- sion is that a new singing technique took several gencrations of singers to develop, and so there was a lot of screaming, excessive vibrato, and loss of flexibility while that was taking place. ‘As soon as one is able to.accept this watershed in vocal sonority, it becomes possible to think of earlier singing more objectively. One ccan remember the great emphasis on the portamento, the blending of all the tones in the scale, including the falsetto. It scems to have been true that only the Italians were successful in this blending, but the remarks quoted earlier from writers like Quantz, to the effect that neither the French nor the Germans could blend the falsetto with the chest voice, show very positively that both voices were used. Bacilly says nothing about joining the two voices, but, after comparing the relative strength of male and female voices, he adds 1 feel compelled to comment upon a certain widely held opinion con- ‘cerning the falsetto voice. (This particular opinion is an almost worthless fone, but heard far and wide.) Whether because of a self-imposed attitude ‘or because this type of voice might be considered to be in some sense ‘contrary to nature's ways, it is ery easy to pile abuse upon it and to rake inappropriate remarks about falsettists (Which are entiely untrue. On the other hand, witha little sober reflection, itis soon realized that the vocal art owes everything to this high falsetto voice, because of the fact that it ean tender certain portsde-votx, intervals, and other vocal decorations in a fashion entirely different from that of the normal tenor voice Bacilly 1968, 23) uwFrom this it is easy to deduce that at least some French singers avoided the falsetto, which very possibly resulted in the complaints voiced by so many about the sound of forced and unnatural French inging. Berard, in a passage quoted earlier, speaks of the Italians singing with a smaller volume of voice and higher sounds than the French. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Italians appear to have been the most condemned for screaming. Shaw quotes John Ruskin, ‘who reported back from Italy in a letter Of bestial howling, and entirely frantic vomiting up of damned souls through their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, Twill ever endure the hearing of again, in one of his summers. (Shaw 1978, 178) Now Ruskin was a critic of art and morals, and is not known to have been an expert on music, He may not even have been an opera lover. Also, very possibly, his quote may not refer to one of the major opera houses. Even so, such total condemnation from a man like Ruskin is ‘worth mentioning, ‘The New Technique Emma Seiler, a German voice teacher who immigrated to America, remarks that “tenors, who formerly sang their upper tones in falsetto, are required by custom in her time (1871) to sing the upper tones in full voice.” (Monahan. p. 130. Quoting from The Voice in Singing by Emma Seiler) Here is direct contemporary evidence. Jean de Reszke, the first great Wagnerian tenor, did not allow his male students to sing falsetto according to his biographer Clara Leiser. Luisa Tetrazzini has this to say: ‘The voice is naturally divided into three registers—the chest, medium, and head. Ina man's voice of lower quality tis last is known as falseto, but in the case of a tenor he may use a tone which in sound is almost false, but is really a mezza voce, or half voice, This latter legitimately belongs to a man’s compass; a falsetto does not. The most important register isthe medium, particularly of tenors, for this includes the greater 12 part of the tenor's voice and can be utilized even to the top of his range if rightly produced. (Tetrazzini and Caruso 1975, 54) This statement fairly well represents the prevailing beliefs about vocal registers at the tun of the twentieth century. Of course, there were singers with lighter-weight voices, who were recitalists, lieder singers, and operetta singers; probably most of them did not hesitate to use falsetto on occasion. But in the opera house, the performance ‘of a Rubini was gone forever. Not only tenors, but almost all voices, ‘were learning a new vocal technique that would add volume and dra- matic intensity to the sound. ‘Only the soprano leggiero was exempt from this striving for a different sonority, and she found herself increasingly limited in the roles considered suitable for her voice. It is interesting to note the late flow. ‘ering of these prima donnas with light voices specializing in the earlier music. Although Wagner and Verdi took center stage during the last half of the nineteenth century, these coloratura sopranos made their way to the top mostly by concentrating on music of the past. Rossini, Don- izetti, and Bellini were the staples of their repertoire, with only rare excursions into Verdi and virtually never into Wagner, There were a few French roles being composed that were suitable to their voices, but mainly they lived on a past for which there was still a large audience. ‘Adelina Patti, Pauline Lucca, Christine Nilsson, Emma Albani, Mar- cella Sembrich, Emma Calve, Nellie Melba, Emma Nevada—surdly there was never a better or larger list of prima donnas, and they appeared when the esthetic of opera was going in an entirely different direction. ‘Ata time when almost all operatic singers were going for the big sound, there were still a few (usually sopranos like these mentioned) who stayed as close as possible to the old technique. ‘This marked the beginning of the opera house as a museum of the past. Until this time, composers and librettists were busy supplying ‘operas for the coming season, revising last season's operas for different singers, and rarely going back more than a few years to fill the repertoire Mozart was, of course, frequently revived, but very few other composers ‘were so honored. It must be noted also that Adelina Patti is the only Italian on this list of coloratura prima donnas. 113