Bruce Charlton's Notions

Luigi Alva's performance of Ecco Ridente from the best of all comic operas - The Barber of Seville - is my favourite of those I have heard; and it occurs in a truly wonderful filmed version conducted by Abbado and with an unsurpassed Teresa Berganza as Rosina and Herman Prey as Figaro.


Alva has a sweet tone, effortless agility and actually separates the notes in the 'runs' (rapid scales) - although sometimes as the cost of aspirating a little between them. He also has an 'ardent' quality that suits the role of the Count (in disguise), and he does a decent acting job - although nowhere near as good as those true masters of this difficult art: Berganza and Prey:


 However, getting back to Ecco Ridente - I have come across this performance by Richard Conrad:


Like Alva - Conrad also has a lovely, sweet flexible voice. Conrad's performance lacks 'drama' and he does not fully separate the notes in the run - however; his use of trills as decorations (a trill is the rapid alternation between two notes) is astonishingly good.

Indeed, I have never heard any tenor who comes near to Conrad in his control of the trill: it is extremely rare for any singer to be able to do it, and much rarer in men than women (at least, with modern vocal production techniques - the fact that trills were written for men in the Bel Canto era suggests that the ability was commoner in the past).

In fact the only other really convincing trill I have heard from a male singer was John McCormack in this Handel aria:


Unsurprisingly, McCormack and Conrad have the same basic type of voice - similar strengths and limitations; and I think this is the case for all singers, and indeed all people - are strengths are the other side of the coin of constraints: and this is why it is good to have many singers (and people...)!

There is no perfection in singing - not least because the single most important aspect of singing is tone; which is natural infinitely subtle and unfakeable; becuase it is expressive of the person, of the inner self. All great voices are expressive of distinctive personalities.

At the bottom line, we want singers of beautiful and affecting tone - we want to be moved by singing: and other technical aspects must be fitted-in around tone as best as maybe.

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I love the tenor voice above all others, and am very fond of Rossini - but it is very, very seldom that Rossini is sung better than adequately by tenors.

Indeed I know of only one tenor - Luigi Alva - who has sung the Rossini tenor roles as they should be sung.

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Mostly Rossini is sung by tenors with far too heavy a voice - of the examples below Gedda was a Spinto tenor, which is of the same type as Pavarotti. Although he skillfully held-back on his full tone and volume, and lightened it - he cannot get anywhere near singing the decorations of the aria.

Florez is a lighter and much more flexible modern lyric tenor - but still too heavy a voice for Rossini - because although he manages most of the decorations, he cannot separate the notes, and this shows up especially in the runs (the scales).

Listening to Alva after these is a revelation: that is how it should be done. The notes in the fast decorations are separated.

Alva was not perfect - there is sometimes a audible aspiration between the separated notes - but he is the only one capable of singing Rossini in the style it should be sung - in which the decorations contribute a great deal of the value of the music. Without hearing these decorations given full value, the music does not reveal its full value.

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Nicolai Gedda - adequate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2uuTJfQOXY


Juan Diego Florez - good: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_ma50DYZo


Luigi Alva: how it should be done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xqRx5ggOqs

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I first heard this aria sung, as above, by Luciano Pavarotti - and this is, for me, the greatest performance overall. But the role was clearly Not written for a tenor of Pavarotti's type - with such a full, ringing and loud voice. (This is indeed known from multiple other sources of evidence.) 

Therefore, despite that Pavarotti sings every other note with his usual, perfectly even and glorious tone, he cannot reach the high F without switching to a falsetto (head-voice) voice production which marks a qualitative break in tonal quality. The run-in to this note is from 4:25. He does the high F beautifully - yet it sounds like someone else is singing that particular note. 

Pavarotti had probably the best high C of any full-voiced Italianate tenor - and what is more he possessed equally fine high C-sharp and even D - as may be heard in this aria; yet there are extremely few tenors of his type that can manage these notes using the same mode of vocal production as the high C. 

But the high F is three semitone above D - and that is a long way when singers are being judged by exact standards - and way beyond what any big-voiced tenor could produce in his normal vocal tone. 

You can hear this from a compilation of recordings of this notorious note - which is, I think, by far the highest note in the mainstream operatic tenor repertoire - since it is very seldom any tenor is required to go above high C at most - and that only once or twice per opera. 

Ignore the drivel in the comments! - What you can hear is that any tenor who has the kind of loud, ringing tone of a Pavarotti - someone like Gedda - must change to a qualitatively different tone for the high F. 

This is because all tenors have a 'break' in the voice, above which the tone must become falsetto; this break can be raised by training - but it is because of this that full-voiced tenors will sometimes 'crack' on high notes. This is like a yodel, and for the same reason - the voice suddenly, but uncontrolled because accidentally, flips into falsetto. 

(Yodeling is a controlled flipping back and forth between falsetto and the ordinary voice.) 

So, is the high F 'impossible'? 

There are tenors who, instead of having an abrupt break, gradually introduce more and more falsetto - their voice gradually and evenly changes from normal to falsetto as the notes get higher. (I have a friend with a naturally deep and sweet-toned voice, who does this spontaneously - and who has been able successfully to sing bass, baritone and tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan!) For such tenors, this high F may have more, or less, falsetto according to how high the break occurs. Some tenors have a very high break, and therefore the high F has less falsetto. 

However, these tenors invariably have a 'lighter', quieter and less ringing kind of tenor voice than the likes of Pavarotti and Gedda (or other greats of Italian Opera such as Caruso or Gigli) - they are, in essence, a different kind of voice (leggiero or tenore de grazia are some of the terms) - and such tenors are nowadays most often seen in Rossini, because only lighter voices can manage rapid coloratura (decorative passages of many quick notes). Luigi Alva was of this type.    

It seems certain that Bellini was writing for a just this type of leggiero, ligh-voliced singer, who used falsetto-flavoured production for the high notes. However, the tenor plays a man in nearly all operas, what is more the hero; and so he needs to sound masculine in vocal quality. 

This need for a heroic quality can be a problem for most high-voiced tenors, including who can best manage the high F with the minimum of falsetto. For perfection, the tenor should be able to integrate the high F with the whole of the rest of his voice - so that there is a completely-seamless transition in vocal quality. 

An example of musically-desirable seamless integration is Bruce Brewer (from 4:20):

However; Brewer sounds too-much like a female contralto - and not at all heroic!

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I did not touch the sublime in music until I experienced opera in my mid-teens - and the first time that opera hit me with full force was in watching TV.

There were two: the funniest opera - The Barber of Seville by Rossini, in the performance conducted by Claudio Abbado and starring Berganza, Alva and Prey; and then there was Ingmar Bergman's Swedish-language movie version of the best opera/ the best piece of music ever written - namely Mozart's Magic Flute.

When I got from the record library the Magic Flute excerpts conducted by Georg Solti I felt for myself musical greatness - as in the above-linked performance of Sarastro by the gigantic Finnish Bass Martti Talvela.

This is music which Bernard Shaw, the greatest British music critic of his day (as a young man) said was the only music which it would seem appropriate to hear from the mouth of God.

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Mozart's Magic Flute is both the simplest and easiest, most child-like of the canonical operas, and also the deepest, most heavenly. Through its five contrasting main characters it touches on the most important human emotions and types - Tamino, the heroic poet; Papageno, the earthy, lusty, family-loving Everyman; Pamina the innocent maiden; Sarastro the noble sage; and Queen of the Night, the beautiful, insightful, gifted, proud demon.

Bergman's film version is not just the best of all opera films, and a fine musical rendering (with good although not great singers) - but Bergman's subtle reworking of Schikaneder's inspired but chaotic libretto matches more closely the depth of the music with the words. For instance, Bergman unforgettably makes Sarastro into Pamina's father - which makes perfect dramatic symmetry.

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The role of the Magic Flute in my life was spiritual, as well as aesthetic. I recognized, but struggled to make sense of, the vision of something higher and beyond. It is to my credit that despite professed atheism I did not reductively explain-away this experience of the transcendent - but unsuccessfully tried to articulate it within my covert and imprecise belief in Creative Evolution (a doctrine which was also derived from Bernard Shaw - especially as it was put-forth in my favourite play of that time: Shaw's Man and Superman, an explicitly Mozartian drama).

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My enjoyment of The  Magic Flute and Barber of Seville led onto an intense period of opera exploration on LP recordings, with the vital assistance of the Bristol City library - such that over the next four year I listened to the whole of the canonical opera repertoire from the classical and romantic era. Sometimes I was seeking aesthetic experience, often it was a love of singing - especially technical aspects of the tenor voice.

Music, especially opera, became a serious activity: a religious activity. As often as not I would borrow a musical score of the opera - and read that as I listened; if not, I would follow the libretto; and while I listened my focus was intense - I would not be doing anything else.

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Naturally I wanted to participate in this world of classical music, and did so in the only way I could - by singing in choirs and choruses, and on my own at home - which was unsatisfying but better than nothing. I had vague, unformed, but important-to-me notions of doing something musical more seriously at some point - perhaps being a music critic.

The best of Classical Music, especially opera, was the highest thing I knew, and I deeply wanted to be 'inside' it - somehow.

But at the same time I always held back from commitment, somehow knowing that even if the luck went my way; music could not provide me, with my nature as it was, and very limited aptitude and inadequate training, with what I sought.

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