Higher and higher
On the recommendation of tipster La Malipasta, La Cieca presents a snippet or two from a January 14 performance of Meyerbeer’s Il crociato in Egitto at the Teatro Fenice. Heard in a duet from the first act of this rarity are two sopranos of differing genders, Michael Maniaci and Patrizia Ciofi.
Part One Ah non ti son piu caraPart Two Non v’e per noi piu speme
And one more thing, When I said that Ciofi “made a funny sounding Susanah”, I actually meant it as a compliment, listen to her Figaro recording with Jacobs and you’ll know what I mean.
Oh, No Opera Chanteuse — I was just flying off the handle about someone who has a blog and whose first initials are AC. It had nothing to do with you.
I do think Cioffi can sound rather pinched. It’s very noticeable on the Villazon Monteverdi disk where Haim tunes at A=481, an amazing choice and poor Patrizia has to really neigh through her nose on some attacks.
(Alessandroni, one of the great Monteverdi scholar-performers has argued the pitch was MUCH lower, perhaps in the A=415 range.These arguments can never be won — some people take church organs as the way of establishing common pitch but I think that’s unreliable and unrealistic — it was a time of tenors (this is Venice 1630-60), high (French called them haute contre), medium and low.
To establish so high a tuning almost mandates countertenors or castrati — though I will say that Villazon, having to bring his voice forward sounds much better than usual (IMO) on record. But Monteverdi would never have used a counter-tenor, and there is some debate about whether castrati were involved in his operas (Ottone in Poppea may have been a castrato because the historical Otho was described as ill shaped with long bandy legs and a weird head, which pretty much is how castrati looked — the literate audience would have been in on the joke. But Nero? I believe this might have been a high tenor who could use a re-enforced falsetto to blend with Poppea — the lines over lap so it’s clear that they’re fucking but also to blend with Lucano in act two (“Hor che Seneca e morto) — ‘pur ti miro ‘(not by Claudio I’m certain) needs the soprano blend, but the Lucano duo needs for the men to sing in thirds not tenths (which happens with a counter tenor or soprano).
Wheew! What a relief. Thanks for clarifying.
My two-cent opinion about bel canto:
BC is a term usually employed rather loosely to define a type of singing, an aesthetics of singing if you want, which seems connected to, or perhaps even required by, Italian operas composed between the early eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, say Alessandro Scarlatti to Bellini/Donizetti. Of course the compositional style and dramaturgy of works composed in this ca. 140 years changed enormously, but the basic approach to singing didn’t really. The big change seems to have come in the 1830s and 1840s. That’s why many singers who perform Pergolesi and Handel also perform Mozart, Rossini and Bellini, but not Verdi, Wagner, Puccini or Strauss. Ciofi is a perfect example of this attitude. This doesn’t mean that operas composed after 1830/1840 cannot be approached from a bel canto standpoint. But negotiations will have to take place when this happens. As for definitions, it’s hard to come up with a satisfactory one. Here is what I found in the latest edition of Grove’s dictionary:
“Generally understood, the term ‘bel canto’ refers to the Italian vocal style of the 18th and early 19th centuries, the qualities of which include perfect legato production throughout the range, the use of a light tone in the higher registers and agile and flexible delivery. More narrowly, it is sometimes applied exclusively to Italian opera of the time of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. In either case, ‘bel canto’ is usually set in opposition to the development of a weightier, more powerful and speech-inflected style associated with German opera and Wagner in particular.”
Apolgies, I am sometimes possessed by a malign spirit called Albert, and then what terror!!!!!! Eman I think the problem is the ‘general’ use of the word, which most people take to refer to florid singing.
But the ‘period’ about which my nemesis AC was pontificating on Opera-L, is from roughly 1800-1860. It doesn’t only concern vocal line, but the entire approach a composer takes to creating a long term form. Gone after 1800, for example was the sonata allegro act finale (of which Mozart was the greatest master), in fact the use of sonata form to establish emotional/dramatic context was done away with (Mozart does this in ‘ah taci ingiusto core’ from Don Giovanni). Also there is a very different view of sonority and much freer use of arioso within recitative (this had occured in the first operas too but the sound of it in the prima ottocento is different). Finally sonority and sequences become very important — the sonority richer than before, the use of sequences (instead of ‘development) was frowned on before 1800. Finally the deliberate use of dancing or marching rhythms was largely an invention of the Italian school of the prima ottocento but can be found in Chopin, Schubert, Verdi, the younger Wagnerm Mendelssohn’s lyric pieces (the songs without words), much of Liszt’s first period piano writing, a lot of Berlioz and so on.
To speak of styles of singing is complicated, partially because we don’t have recorded evidence of what people sounded like.
However, ‘bel canto’ as a term for singing won’t do for the first hundred years of opera. What was required there was ‘recitar cantando’ and the words were crucial, they could be declaimed off the note (Monteverdi in letters to his librettist friend Striggio and to singers) insists his notes, and their values be ignored if they impeded declamation.
Though florid ability was a given in the first hundred years, scores require much more — there are long recitatives, there is a kind of stychomachia called the stille concitato (an invention of Monteverdi’s taken up widely), there are recitatives with little songs sometimes used as refrains, or as end points (these are called ariettas). The fluent movement of the vocal line from declamation through all kinds of singing is one of the remarkable aspects of this period.
The ended with the rise of opera seria, which shortly became very rigidly enforced. There recitative was confined to secco, and the vocal lines were written with florid passages composed, with room for further decoration in the da capo (which did not exist in its extended form before the opera seria). The great composer of opera seria in its most popular form was Alessandro Scarlatti.
Handel has been discovered where Scarlatti mostly hasn’t been, but Handel took a much freer view of the seria format.
There is a vast difference in the treatment of vocal lines between Bellini and Donizetti let alone the two of them and A. Scarlatti.
Also Verdi imitated both Bellini and Donizetti very heavily in his first period into his second (compare Lucrezia Borgia and Rigoletto), compare Madre Pietoso Virgine to many of Bellini scenas.
I think the ‘basics’ of what you are calling bel canto continued until the first world war. Just listen to Plancon or Escalais, an Otello who can handle runs and trill wonderfully or the mezza voce and florid brilliance of Battistini. But enough of me for one year!!!!