Questa o quella?

“So Dorabella (or Cherubino) is the mezzo role?” That’s a question often repeated when one sees Così fan tutte or Le Nozze di Figaro for the first time. As a matter of fact, Mozart never wrote any part for a mezzo-soprano, for he never knew this terminology. In Mozart’s days, there were four voice “types”: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Therefore, all female roles in Così Fan Tutte, Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro are actually soprano roles. The first Dorabella, Louise Villeneuve, is the singer to whom Mozart wrote the concert arias Alma grande e nobil core k. 578, Chi sa, chi sa qual sia k. 582 and Vado, ma dove k. 583. It seems that she was also the Cherubino in the famous 1789 revival of Le Nozze di Figaro in Vienna with Caterina Cavalieri (the first Konstanze) as the Countess and Adriana Ferrarese del Bene (the first Fiordiligi) as Susanna. The first Cherubino – Dorotea Bussani – happened to be the first Despina too. As you see, although all these ladies were called sopranos, one can see that their roles were quite different. For instance, Cavalieri handled high tessitura in a way neither Bussani or Villeneuve would never even try. In fact, as I have written here, sopranos in mezzo carattere and buffo roles were expected to sing parts lower in tessitura than the prime donne in fully serious roles. I have been touching on the subject of mezzo carattere in Così fan tutte (a thorny matter, since Fiordiligi and Dorabella are sisters and Ferrando and Guglielmo have the same standing as officers in the army) without really explaining it – but let’s assume that Dorabella is a mezzo carattere role, as much as Cherubino (or Donna Elvira).

Of course, the human species have not suffered an evolution in anatomy and physiology between the 18^th and the 19^th centuries. Singers with the natural range of what is called today a “mezzo soprano” already existed – as it seems to be the case of Louise Villeneuve, for instance (the three Mozart concert arias rarely reach a high a). Those days, a singer like her would have to either force a bit their high notes to sing soprano roles or force their low range into contralto roles (we can’t forget that there was a long series of roles en travesti during the baroque that required singers in that category). Historians consider that Rossini is the responsible for open the way to mezzo-soprano roles; he even wrote operas in which the mezzo soprano would be considered the “prima donna role”. Rossini’s Parisian connections established a craze for the mezzo soprano voice in the French metropolis. As a result, by 1850 music conservatories in Italy and in France had already developed specific training and even written methods for the development of the mezzo soprano voice. Romantic mezzo roles are seen today as central to the repertoire, and Verdi is responsible for the establishment of what we call today “a dramatic mezzo soprano” – roles that verge on the unsingable, considering their needs of very powerful high and low notes. At this point, one would feel that the issue had been dealt with – and yet we have the problem of German roles. The word “mezzo” took a little longer to be adopted in German-speaking countries. The term “alto” would be used to mezzos until the 20^th century – and when we look on the scores of works by Richard Wagner we discover that roles like Brangäne, Ortrud and Venus are described as “soprano” roles. Richard Strauss too would use the word “soprano” for roles like Octavian and the Composer (in Ariadne auf Naxos).

It is rare to find sopranos in mezzo roles in Italian opera (I can remember Ghena Dimitrova as Amneris in Lorin Maazel’s recording and Margaret Price as a last-minute replacement for the alto part in a broadcast of Verdi’s Requiem conduced by Claudio Abbado ( if we don’t speak of sopranos as Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Sevilia with the many adaptations involved in the process). On the other hand, mezzos in soprano roles is a classic subject of discussion. The expression “ambitious mezzo” could be used for almost every leading Verdian mezzo – haven’t we heard it used for Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry and Violeta Urmana? One could rightly point out that these three singers finally tried a second career as sopranos: all three sang, for instance, the title role in Bellini’s Norma. Actually, the three ladies claimed in interviews that they were never sure if they really were mezzo sopranos in the first place. This is no diva talk – many young voice students face that dilemma. I remember a woman who showed up in voice lessons saying that she had technical problems because she was a soprano and couldn’t sing above a high g. The teacher made her vocalize and said “maybe you’re a mezzo”. She was horrified. After six months she could sing a high b, but the teacher repeated “yes, but this is mezzo soprano high b – don’t even think of going back to soprano stuff”. In her case, the tonal color screamed “mezzo”. I called her “the new Christa Ludwig” (the voice had a very similar sound), but this teacher repeated, “color means nothing – there are dark-toned sopranos and clear-toned mezzos”. According to him, the voice’s “behaviour throughout the range” would tell you the right voice category. This teacher himself had an ambiguous career as a baritone and a tenor. He once sang for me a whole scene of Verdi’s Otello, “using baritone voice” for Iago and “tenor voice” for the title role. “You just have to know where the tenor passaggio and the baritone passaggio are”, he would say with a triumphant smile. It is not that simple, of course. If that were true, all mezzo incursions in Soprano-land would be successful. Frederica Von Stade, in an interview, gave the most sensible explanation for the problem. Asked why she wouldn’t sing the role of Donna Elvira, she answered that she had tried and, although she could, it was basically exhausting. And that’s it. Voices have a natural “core range”. When you sing too often outside it, this requires effort and the whole process can be more athletic than artistic. Why is it then that so many mezzos are willing to sweat that much in soprano roles? “No pain, no gain”, I mean “financial gain”. There are more leading soprano roles in the repertoire – and one has bills to pay.

It is curious that most women would find mezzo roles more interesting dramatically speaking – they generally involve sexy, dangerous women or motherly types in impossible predicaments. I once heard a singer saying, “I have a college education, husband, kids – I’m tired of playing virginal dimwits.” It seems you can’t have everything… Back to German roles, it is curious that Wagner’s and Strauss’s “lower” soprano roles are now off-limits to sopranos. In the case of Wagner, this seems quite right. These parts gain a lot with the mezzo voice – Ortrud sounds more authoritative and edgier in the right way, Venus sounds sexier and more imperious and Brangäne acquires a motherly, warmer sound. And Wagner always has long declamatory stretches in the middle register, what is always a good place for a mezzo. I am not so sure about Strauss. Yes, it is good to have some contrast with the Marschallin or the Ariadne, but what one usually hears is a singer battling with the tessitura – especially in Ariadne auf Naxos. When the composer tells the music is a holy art, the last thing one hears in a mezzo voice is a feeling of “benediction”. On the contrary, one witnesses a singer holding to dear life in lines that require the soaring quality one hears in the soprano voice in passages like that. With the role of Octavian, there are really not moments so extreme, but one misses some nuance there. A lighter mezzo – like Anne Sofie von Otter – delivers high mezza voce as easily as a soprano, but there is a big orchestra there and less piercing quality in a basically more velvety voice too.

 

 

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