Audio 1: Monteverdi : ‘O, cari baci’. Sung by ‘Tragicomedia’.

In the early opera in Florence and Naples (1600) no voice was clearly defined, the only distinction was that a singer could sing high or low. There were basses and high or higher male and female voices.The castrato, performing as the heroic soloist, was introduced in Europe only after 1640.

In Montverdi’s later works from 1640 on, there is a clearer definition of the vocal parts. In Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea (1642) the part of Nero has been written for a high castrato, called Giovanni Gualberto Magli and Poppea has been written for Anna Renzi, a famous singer in those years. The part is written in a tessitura that a light mezzo could sing it. If Poppea is staged as a sexy young woman, this vocal color might serve as an indication to cast the role with a mezzosoprano voice, but its suits a soprano perfectly..

The ideal voice of the Western-European countries in the17th century was high, clear, pleasant, sweet and strong, which ideal was eventually found in the castrato voice. An exception has to be made for France, where the tenor voice – probably due to the nasality of the language - was very light and bright, hence the switch into falsetto was easy. That was the reason that there was no need for high castrato voices to sing the extremely high tenor parts in operas of Grétry and Rameau. The ‘Haute contre’ (contratenor altus) was the tenor in early french opera.

Georg Friedrich Händel, from German offspring, and working in Germany, Italy and finally in England, wrote a large quantity of operas in which he favorized all voices, especially the castrato voice. He was instrumental in the cultivation of the singing voice, male and female, except for the tenor, because the castrati were there! From the very few tenors Händel used in his vocal works, Francesco Borosini was the best known for his singing. Händel emphasized this singer’s upper octave and gave him dozens of high A’s but no high C.

This non-falsetto high A was the top note of the tenors who sang for Händel and even for the Mozart- tenors, with a few exceptions.

As late as at the end of the 18th century the time of the castrati was over and the tenor could grow up as a soloist. But is was a slow process. It was Mozart who used many light tenors in his early operas, they sang in modal and - because of a tessitura ranging far over A4 - in falsetto registration. The term ‘modal’ is used because the singer does not exceed the speaking range of his voice. .

The high A4 (440 Hz) has for a long time been an acoustical, or even physiological barrier for tenors, and for this reason it used to be the most normal way to continue the upward range by singing in falsetto. Vocal instruction aimed at joining the registers in a flawless succession.

Audio 2: Mozart: from Il sogno di Scipione, sung by François Soons, 2000.

It was Mozart too who paved the way for the ungelded tenor, giving him secondary, but most important roles. It happened for the first time in the opera Idomeneo that a real tenor got the title role, which initiated the eventual retreat of the castrato as the operatic hero in the 19th century.

The German singer Anton Raaff sang the premiere in 1781. He had been famous as a singer and was a knowledgeable teacher. Why did Mozart choose this old man, aged 64 already? Probably because there was no other normal male voice available in Munich, and Mozart knew his strengths. Actually, to accomodate the singer, Mozart omitted the originally intended coloratura lines in the most important air!

Audio 3: Nicolai Gedda sings a line of the air: Fuor del mar from Idomeneo

Next to him stood the castrato Vincente del Prato in the role of Idomeneo’s son Idamantes. In neither one of these parts the voice has to sing higher than a G, which for Raaff should be a G4 and for del Prato possibly a G5 (there is an occasional A in his part).

Another castrato, Domenico de’ Panzachi, sang the smaller role of Arbace. The character of his two airs is so unclear that - in the famous Handbuch der Oper; by Kloiber und Konold ) the interpretation of this role is attributed to a ‘Charactertenor’, a ‘Characterbariton’ and even a ‘Characterbass’. In the operabook by Andres Batta ) Arbaces is just a tenor.

Several decades after Mozart’s death, Rossini still wrote the tenor parts in his operas for the florid singer, the tenore di grazia, who, thanks to the technique of the castrati, took his top notes above G4 in falsetto. This is the type of voice Garcia Senior (1775-1832) had, for whom Rossini wrote several leading roles like the role of Almaviva in his Barbiere di Siviglia, Norfolk in Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra and Lindoro in l’Italiana in Algeri. Garcia sr. had been trained by the castrato Anzani and by the non castrated singer Antonio Ripa.

He trained his three children, all of them getting famous, the two daughters as singers, his son as one of the first scientists in the field of the art of singing. In his famous Traîté complet de l’art du chant (1841) Garcia jr. gave special indications where to use falsetto registration in his exercises on page 90 and 91 ). Rossini was working with tenors with an already stronger lower range (Garcia sr. sang bariton roles too!) many of them having been - in my vocabulary - ‘barinors’.

Rossini, working for several Italian theatres, for London, Vienna and Paris, knew the singers of his time and he knew their skills. From the compositions, written for these voices, one can judge the artists who sang the roles. In his Armida, written in 1817, he casted seven temors, between them was the famous Andrea Nozzari, known as an tenore mezzo carratere, say my ‘barinor’,
And in l’Italiano in Algeri the role of Lindoro has been created by Giovanni David. It becomes clear from the score that his voice was a very light tenor with a smashing falsetto register.
Rossini hated the high note in ‘chest’, which became fashionable around 1840.
It might have been one of the reasons why Rossini stopped writing operas, knowing that he could not cope with this new singing style.

This new technique was related to the concept of ȁovering’ which means darkening the voice by lengthening the vocal tract, i.e.lowering the larynx in a ‘little yawn position’ and protruding the lips. It was Garcia who formulated this and who had this technique demonstrated in modal- and in falsetto registration, by his male and female students for the Académie des Sciences in Paris, 1841 ).

The tenor Gilbert Duprez learned the new technique in Italy. This technique moved the primo passaggio (the well-known register shift around 300 Hz) of the tenor way up to - in Duprez’case - the high C. But remember that the musical pitch was more than half a tone lower than today. Mozart’s A4 was only 422 Hz! Nevertheless, the modal high C was a new goal for the tenors of those days. None of the composers had ever asked a note higher that A4 or B-flat4, being conscious of this natural acoustical barrier in the high male voice.

This barrier was taken now.

Between the tenors who were Duprez’ predecessors to the high C (in Italy) was the great tenor Domenico Donzelli. But Duprez was the first to appear in the French papers as the tenor with the High C in ‘Chest’.

Audio 4: Luciano Pavarotti sings the most exclusive high C in Auber’s La fille du régiment.

Not all tenors could imitate Duprez. Alphonse Nourrit, a singer having a good musical taste, (who was the first to sing songs by Schubert in France) was so frustrated not to be able to hit that high C that he threw himself out of a window and died.

Most of the tenors continued to use falsetto as far as in the 19th century. There are recordings from 1902 of Enrico Caruso’s voice, singing the final high B-flat of the famous air: ‘Celeste Aida’ in falsetto. This is remarkable because he sang the preceeding high B-flats in modal register.

Audio 5: Enrico Caruso with a falsetto top note

Audio 6: Enrico Caruso with a modal top note

Shortly after, several tenors were able to hit that C, and falsetto was condemned. Many tenors of our days do still not succeed in singing the high C, due to their laryngeal predisposition and insufficient bodily power. Here is Peter Dvorsky who gets an applause for just trying to sing the high B-flat.

Audio 7: Peter Dvorsky

Franco Corelli - who died in December 2003- could perform the difficult diminuendo which Verdi asked on the same top note. However, the question arises in how far recording engineers have manipulated this ideal tone!

Audio 8: Franco Corelli

And listen to a surprising solution: a recording of 1995 reveals a beautiful falsetto registration for the high b-flat.:

Audio 9: Gösta Winbergh

Tenors mostly sing an /ee/- sound when they reach their top notes, whatever vowel is written; Winbergh, producing the B-flat in falsetto, sings a nice /o/-vowel on the final word ‘sol’.

The tenor voice was the last one to acquire new prowesses and surely, he did. In the voice of William Mateuzzi and a few more of his kind, the high C proved to be not the end of the vocal range. Mateuzzi hit the notes above high C in modal registration. It is not beautiful, it is just interesting
.
Audio 10 Mateuzzi, singing Donizetti.

Now he has a successor, it is the young Juan Diego Florez, coming from Peru, who sings the most elegant D5 easily. In modal registration! Here is the new tenore di grazia, performing in Rossini’s operas. Probably the composer would not have slammed the door for this singer!

Audio 11 Juan Diego Florez singing Rossini

In the advancing 20th century the tenor voice has been accepted as a voice category..

But the Fach of the tenor voice is as multifaced as the Fach of the soprano

As a result of the non-availability of the high C many tenors had to decide not to sing most of the operatic literature composed after 1850. They had to concentrate on earlier works or on the exquisite art of Lied-singing where extremely high notes were not demanded.

.
The tenor as a Lied-singer

If we glance through the many books on singing we find, quite lonely between so many baritones, the Lied-tenor on his heavenly throne. Because of their high pitched voices, the high soprano and the tenor are not the first to be qualified as Lied-singers. Intellegibility is the first requirement for them, but articulation is impossible to be realised on higher pitches, where, due to the open jaw, the only possibility is the vowel /a:/.

The baritone Fach is better equipped for the Lied. (Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Gérard Souzay, Robert Holl, Thomas Quasthoff, Thomas Hampson). In these years there are a few prominent

singers in the lyrical tenor Fach, one of them is the exquisite singer Ian Bostridge and one of them is Christophe Prégardien, who combines the most delicate articulation with the most lyric voice and the most artistic interpretation.

Audio 12: Ian Bostridge, singing Orpheus with his lute by Peter Warlock

Audio 13: Christophe Prégardien, singing Lied beim Rundetanz by Ludwig Spohr