Octavian, Cherubino, the Composer (Ariadne) as counter-tenor?

[Guido]

Have any of these roles ever been performed by counter tenors? I somehow doubt the Strauss roles would be possible for a countertenor even if they could reach the notes... but it would be interesting to know whether it had ever been attempted.

EDIT:

just found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRD4D5jpQF8

[Superhorn]

   I've never heard of these roles being sung by countertenors, but I doubt they would sound right for them. Opera fans are so accustomed to hearing them sung by women this might sound weird.
   And I wonder what Strauss himself would have thought of this idea.
  Countertenors sound very baroque-ish. They don't have the kind of timbre which would be suited to Richard Strauss in particular.

[knight66]

Odd up to a point. But I agree that the Strauss is too heavily orchestrated to enable most countertenors to penetrate the textures. I have often thought the part of the Angel in Gerontius could be managed. There are written-in options for the climactic high notes, which will be beyond the reach of most counter tenors.

Britten and some other 20th cent composers have written with the countertenor in mind, so they are not entirely stuck in Baroque-land. Recently a number have been experimenting with music in between modern and Baroque; an example is David Daniels' recording of Berlioz.

Mike

[Wendell_E]

As for Cherubino, Beaumarchais insists in the intro to the original play that the role must be portrayed by a young, pretty woman:

CHÉRUBIN. Ce rôle ne peut être joué, comme il l'a été, que par une jeune et très-jolie femme; nous n'avons point à nos théâtres de très-jeune homme assez formé pour en bien sentir les finesses.

I'd bet Mozart and da Ponte (and Strauss and Hofmanstahl), would have felt the same way.

Edit:  Come to think of it, there was a 1925 film version with a male Octavian, who was in his late twenties when it was filmed.  Of course, it was silent.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017338/

[kishnevi]

One visual point to consider: Octavian and Cherubino are teenagers, while the Composer is probably just barely into his twenties, and it's much easier for a woman, even in middle age, to appear to be boyish than an adult male who is more than, say twenty five.

Another similar role (which was also written for a female) is Romeo in Bellini's version of R&J--although in that version (not based on Shakespeare) Romeo is probably not a teenager.

Mozart gives some more instances of females singing adult male characters in Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito; it might be feasible for a countertenor to sing those.

One role that would probably do very well with a counter tenor is Gluck's Orphee (which was originally written for a "high tenor", IIRC, before Berlioz revamped it for a female).   

[Tsaraslondon]

Jochen Kowalski sang Orlovsky (another breeches role written for a mezzo) at Covent Garden, and there's always Ivan Rebroff's ghastly falsetto version, which thoroughly spoils the Kleiber Fledermaus.

Gluck's Orfeo was originally written for a castrato, kishnevi. Gluck refashioned the role for a high tenor (haut-contre) for the Paris production of 1774. Subsequently Berlioz made his own version, in 1859, for the mezzo Pauline Viardot. However in recent years  the role has been sung more regularly by countertenors. The original 1772 Vienna version and the 1774 version differ in quite a few other aspects than just the pitch of the title role and Berlioz used elements of both the Vienna and Paris scores in his version.

[knight66]

Gluck's Orfeo was originally written for a castrato, kishnevi. Gluck refashioned the role for a high tenor (haut-contre) for the Paris production of 1774. .

Yes, that is my understanding of the sequence. The original concept was did not include a tenor.

Mike

[Sarastro]

As far as I am concerned, the reason why mezzo-sopranos but not counter-tenors sing Cherubino is because the role is supposed to portray a hairless and harmless boy who, for the first time in his life, experiences enamourment with women, but, with all that, he presents no viable threat to the women in the castle. So, Mozart intentionally made Cherubino a role for mezzo-soprano to underline that harmlessness and purity of the boy, as opposed to a fully developed male singer, already done with puberty, who poses a real carnal threat to the Countess. I learned that from Bejun Mehta's interview with LA-opera. Here, you can listen to the podcast, too: http://www.behindthecurtainpodcast.com/pr/laopera/podcast-post.aspx?id=2249

[mjwal]

That's an interesting theory - for me, no theory is necessary to justify using a mezzo-soprano rather than a hooty male soprano (the term counter-tenor was a misunderstanding from the start) - but have you considered that a) even in the opera, the Cherubino figure is considered a possible rival for Barbarina by the Count and perhaps also for Susanne's affections by Figaro, who is glad to see him off ("Non piu andrai" b) in the third of the trilogy of plays by Beaumarchais, La Mère Coupable (which Milhaud turned into an opera), Cherubino is discovered to have fathered a child on the Countess, Léon? And if you say that he (Cherubino) is too young to father a child at the time of Les Noces de Figaro, I point out that he is not too old to be sent off to war -  why would the Count bother to do that if Cherubino represented no competition? - and that in the sequel, 20 years after, his son with the Countess is already old enough to be romantically entangled with the Count's illegitimate daughter. And of course Octavian in Rosenkavalier is a conscious act of homage to Mozart's and da Ponte's figure - nobody doubts Octavian's sexual maturity...

[False_Dmitry]

Handel saw no real problem with female performers singing castrato roles, and in fact there are numerous instances where he cast things this way.

For the opening night of RADAMISTO his star castrato (Senesino) was still delayed arriving to the UK (unable to break his contract in Germany as early as hoped) so he cast Margarita Durastante in the principle male role (Radamisto), and put Anastasia Robinson into the female lead.  However, once Senesino finally arrived, Robinson was unceremoniously shunted out of the cast, Durastante moved over to play the female lead, and Senesino put into the cast in the title role.

Again in SERSE Handel might have originally intended the two rival brothers as two castrati.  Things didn't work out that way, however, and although he had Caffarelli as his "secret weapon" to trounce the success of his "Opera Of The Nobility" rivals (who now had both Senesino and Farinelli) he had no second castrato at all.  Instead the role of the secondo uomo was sung as a breeches part by Maria Marchesini, better known by her stage nickname of "La Lucchesina".

There's quite a lot of mention that "starting-out" castrati would regularly play female roles,  but I don't know of any actual examples of this happening in practice.

I have no problem with countertenors playing "breeches mezzo" roles if they can get around them vocally.  There are not so many countertenors who have a developed upper register, but they are around - Oleg Ryabets, for example, quite comfortably sings the Handelian soprano-castrato roles.

[bosniajenny]

Counter-tenor? Ive always called them male altos, but I suspect that comes from the British church choral tradition (Byrd, Gibbons, Tallis). Certainly the texture of early English church music ("Spem in Alium" anyone?) calls for male altos.

Interesting question about Octavian and why it was written for a mezzo. It seems to me that both Mozart and Strauss (composer and librettist) may have also been playing, consciously or unconsciously, on the old European tradition of the masque or "pantomime" (Grand Guignol and it's counterparts which goes back for centuries if not thousands of years). Why in British pantomime (a traditional Christmas show mainly for children) is the main male role (Aladdin, Cinderella etc) played by a young woman. This clearly harks back to the old "pantomime" with it's double cross dressing (the "pantomime dame", the other main character in the pantomime, is played by a bloke in drag!!) How all this has come to be considered entertainment suitable for children I don't know, but that's us Brits for you!

Anyway, I am pretty sure (although there's only internal evidence) that both those roles were conceived partly as a homage to the Grand Guignol tradition and the Venetian masques.

[False_Dmitry]

It seems to me that both Mozart and Strauss (composer and librettist) may have also been playing, consciously or unconsciously, on the old European tradition of the masque or "pantomime"

You don't think Strauss or Hofmanstahl might have been awake to the box-office possibilities of an opera which had two women in bed together, at all?   

[bosniajenny]

False_Dmitry you are absolutely right! The intro and first scene are, well.....That doesn't rule out my theory about the pantomime and the Grand Guignol/masquerade thing - they were very clever, though (pity we can't overhear the conversations: "I say, Richard, this would be a bit of a goer.....")!

[False_Dmitry]

False_Dmitry you are absolutely right! The intro and first scene are, well.....That doesn't rule out my theory about the pantomime and the Grand Guignol/masquerade thing - they were very clever, though (pity we can't overhear the conversations: "I say, Richard, this would be a bit of a goer.....")!

Yes, even having Andreas Scholl (vocally impressive as he might be!) would sell the opera short a mite in that respect    And having Mozart to put forward as their precedent would have given them a water-tight case with the Viennese   

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Grand Guignol" in relation to ROSENKAV, though?  I can't think of anything particularly bloody in it    But masquerade, certainly!  Of course, there existed, until C19th piety nobbled it in the 1820s onwards, a Christmas-time tradition of "burlesque" performances of famous works in the English theatre... by which was meant "travesty" productions in which the sex-roles were reverse.  Drama troupes would play pieces like TAMING OF THE SHREW,  but the biggest box-office draw was in the opera troupes (presumably because of the grotesqueries resulting from men singing female arias, and vice-versa).  The best-selling was THE BEGGAR'S OPERA TRAVESTIED - traditionally played with the regular cast, but singing each other's roles.  "Mrs Crouch" was the most famous of the swashbuckling female Macheaths - being the Prince Of Wales's mistress probably didn't hinder box office sales either   Strict adherence to the original script meant they could get away without application to the Lord Chancellor's Office for a new permit for the show, despite the anarchic nature of the event

[bosniajenny]

Maybe I didn't mean Grand Guignol - there's another term used to describe the cross dressing/pantomime/masquerade/carnival (carnevale) tradition and I can't think what it is at the moment. You've used "burlesque"; but that's not what I was thinking of, and its meaning, particularly in US usage, has changed a bit over the years, I think.

Anyway, interesting stuff on the Macheath and so on! The Shakespeare plays are full of it, of course, and I think the usual explanation (that women were at that time not allowed to take part in the theatre because it wasn't "respectable") is probably a nineteenth century add-on/cop-out!

Whatever, it does add a "texture" to Rosenkavalier that wouldn't be there otherwise!

[knight66]

Cross dressing goes right back to the beginnings of drama. In ancient Greece, women were not permitted to act on stage, so such as Elektra and Medea would have been played by men.

The tradition was brought forward in fits and starts, for example, the same bans were imposed during Shakespear's time and the Catholic Church reinforced in where and when it could.

The tradition has therefore been played with by writers and composers, often making what happens on stage subversive, sometimes politically so.

One playfulness that was utilised was to have a boy playing a girl playing a boy. So it is only to be expected that we get the mirror image of that 'trope' once more freedom is available.

I think it has often been more about sedition and exploring gender roles than about getting two women into bed on stage.....I am not sure the stage directions state that Octavian would be in the bed when the curtain rises, though the romps in the prelude make it clear what is going on before we clap eyes on the characters.

With Strauss, whatever fantasies he may or may not have had, he was besotted with the female voice and I think the cross dressing is at least as much to do with the vocal opportunities afforded as it is about that other supposed male obsession.

Taboos were tested to the then limits by Salome then Elektra, I imagine it gave Strauss some amusement to distort a tradition in such a way as to play around with the sexual roles in such a way that for once it did not provoke outrage.

Mike

[False_Dmitry]

Taboos were tested to the then limits by Salome then Elektra, I imagine it gave Strauss some amusement to distort a tradition in such a way as to play around with the sexual roles in such a way that for once it did not provoke outrage.

Although I think outrage was exactly what Strauss had in mind in SALOME 

Unfortunately his tendency to longwinded over-writing (a flaw I find throughout his operas) pulled the legs from under what might otherwise have been a more tightly-focussed work.  I usually find myself wondering which train I might catch in the last half-hour of SALOME.

Of course French Grand-Opera had a genre expectation that there would be a "breeches mezzo" role - Siebel in FAUST, Nicklaus in HOFFMAN etc.  When Tchaikovsky sat down to write his first large-scale commission THE OPRICHNIK, he consciously used French operatic models, and even included an extensive travesti role for the young Oprichnik, Basmanov.   Although the opera was an instant hit with the public (netting Tchaikovsky a great deal of money and a publishing contract with Jurgenson) these "French" elements came back to haunt him.  Balakirev began a "whispering campaign" against the work and its composer, alleging that it had sold Russia's national pride down the river.  The casting of a mezzo in a heroic male role is assumed to be one of the aspects the conservative Balakirev found most distasteful.   Even Tchaikovsky himself became convinced his work was a ghastly mistake, and he would later disown the piece - even requiring his publishers to destroy the printing-plates.

These are topics which provoke extreme reactions on occasion!

[knight66]

An interesting tale about Tchaikovsky, I did not know it at all.

As to Strauss, I agree, it was a very calculated kind of shock that he indulged in. But I think that after two such, he and Hoff decided to go more mainstream...and Strauss retreated from the expresionistic style of composing. I don't think he was by nature he was a crowd pleaser, rather, that after sticking two fingers up to conservitive elements, he fell back into his fundamentally middle class nature.

Mike

[False_Dmitry]

that after sticking two fingers up to conservitive elements, he fell back into his fundamentally middle class nature.

And promptly wrote ARABELLA 

[knight66]

Like I say....not exactly a crowd pleaser.

Then there is The Egyptian Helen....Friedenstag....Guntram....Die Liebe der Danae.......

Whistle any two tunes from four.

Mike