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
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.
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
As for Cherubino, Beaumarchais insists in the intro to the original play that the role must be portrayed by a young, pretty woman:
QuoteCHÉRUBIN. 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/
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).
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.
Quote from: Tsaraslondon on April 25, 2010, 09:21:15 AM
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
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
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...
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.
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.
Quote from: bosniajenny on May 23, 2010, 12:07:14 AMIt 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? >:D
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.....")!
Quote from: bosniajenny on May 23, 2010, 10:18:59 AM
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 :)
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!
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
Quote from: knight on May 23, 2010, 10:55:13 PMTaboos 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!
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
Quote from: knight on May 24, 2010, 08:35:13 AMthat after sticking two fingers up to conservitive elements, he fell back into his fundamentally middle class nature.
(http://www.barnstable.k12.ma.us/bhs/Library/images/thumbs-up_000.jpg)
And promptly wrote ARABELLA ;)
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
Quote from: False_Dmitry on May 24, 2010, 01:19:28 AM
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.
That's an interesting story.
So what was the reaction to the trousers role Ratmir in Glinka's incredibly (to my ears) Russian "Ruslan and Lyudmila"? Was that OK because it was not a self-consciously French trousers role?
Quote from: mamascarlatti on May 24, 2010, 10:42:55 AM
That's an interesting story.
So what was the reaction to the trousers role Ratmir in Glinka's incredibly (to my ears) Russian "Ruslan and Lyudmila"? Was that OK because it was not a self-consciously French trousers role?
It's an interesting question :) Of course, we don't know exactly which "whispers" Balakirev was spreading... and the "Mighty Handful" had to remain repectful of Glinka's work, since they held him to be a kind of father-figure. But as you rightly say, Ratmir's music (and the whole of R&L) are very consciously written in a newly-forged "slavic" style (although the earlier works of Bortnyansky, Dargomyzhsky & Fomin were largely and unfairly glossed-over). It's probably fair to say that OPRICHNIK does have a very different (and Frenchified) "sound" to the rest of Tchaikovky's work, though. Basmanov's aria to Morozov (the title-role Oprichnik) "No, no, you need not die!" is something of a endurance-test for mezzos*, and leads into an astonishing mezzo-tenor duet. Personally I love it - but Tchaikovsky left this style alone in the future, sadly. OPRICHNIK is mostly known only for the showpiece "caged songbird" soprano aria for Natalya
Poslyshalis' mne budto golosa, which is pretty-enough as a concert item... but conveys no impression at all of the grim and murderous story of dastardly medieval revenge ;)
* very often it is heavily cut - even Tchaikovsky's own choice of conductor for the premiere, Eduard Napravnik, introduced extensive cuts throughout the opera.
Quote from: knight on May 24, 2010, 10:16:57 AM
Whistle any two tunes from four.
;D
But the only opera with a singing shellfish :)
Quote from: False_Dmitry on May 24, 2010, 11:41:53 AM
;D
But the only opera with a singing shellfish :)
Well you
say that, but as the recent Ring productions that we have been discussing indicate; who knows what may be found at the bottom of the Rhine? Clearly those shellfish need to grab all the work they can get.
Mike
Quote from: knight on May 24, 2010, 10:16:57 AM
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
Well even he admitted to his librettists that his musical inspiration had flagged since the early operatic successes - he was well aware of this. (though of course he proved in his late works that he had never truly lost it) I still admire all of these operas to some degree - There's still a great warmth to them - Die Egyptische Helen contains wonderful singing roles even if Hofmannsthals libretto is far too dense and complex - and actually I think some of the writing is very memorable.
Friedenstag is weird but I like it more every time I hear it. It's not great, and you're right there are no tunes but it has a real character which I like. Danae and Die Schweigsame Frau are both curious affairs, but both are warm and occasionally lovely if a bit bland of course - the latter is actually genuinely very funny I think. None of these will ever be popular but I don't think they deserve complete dismissal either - they're still as interesting if not more so than any of the other late romantic opera composer's efforts.
I agree that he is not really a crowd pleaser, except in Salome and Elektra, and Rosenkavalier to an extent. In the first two lusty blood baths, the audience watches the sickening events go on with glee and joyful terror - the music asks us to revel in the action, not renounce it - Strauss is never judgemental and never asks us to disapprove.
Quote from: knight on May 24, 2010, 11:47:32 AM
Well you say that, but as the recent Ring productions that we have been discussing indicate; who knows what may be found at the bottom of the Rhine? Clearly those shellfish need to grab all the work they can get.
And Dvorak's RUSALKA offers a bit of work for the modern bass-baritone mollusc ;)
(http://www.helikon.ru/img/wysiwyg/Rusalka2.jpg)
Guido, You are right, I know most of the scores to a degree and there are fine things in each. But I prefer CDs to be trapped in a thratre with the entire works.
Mike
QuoteI 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.
(Knight)
"The curtains round the bed have been drawn back. Octavian is kneeling on a stool in front of the sofa on the left, half embracing the Feldmarschallin, who is lying in the corner of the sofa. Her face cannot be seen, only her very lovely hand and the arm, from which the lace shift is hanging down."
I translate "Hemd" as shift here, not shirt/blouse, as an undergarment is clearly indicated.
Thanks for that. The libretti I have differ from one another, so I could not suggest what the actual stage directions are.
Mike
Quote from: mjwal on May 25, 2010, 07:33:34 AM
(Knight)
"The curtains round the bed have been drawn back. Octavian is kneeling on a stool in front of the sofa on the left, half embracing the Feldmarschallin, who is lying in the corner of the sofa. Her face cannot be seen, only her very lovely hand and the arm, from which the lace shift is hanging down."
I translate "Hemd" as shift here, not shirt/blouse, as an undergarment is clearly indicated.
... though many recent productions, even the traditional ones, open with the couple still in bed together, evidently basking in post-coital bliss. Modern day sensilbilities are not so easily shocked as they might have been back in 1911.
Quote from: Tsaraslondon on May 25, 2010, 09:31:23 AM
... though many recent productions, even the traditional ones, open with the couple still in bed together, evidently basking in post-coital bliss. Modern day sensilbilities are not so easily shocked as they might have been back in 1911.
A very apposite point. Hofmanstahl was an experienced author, with a good sense of what he could get past the censor. It may well have been what he "needed" to write, rather than what he actually wanted to write. Having said that, there's also a Hitchcockian maxim that the hinted and suggested can be a much more powerful in the mind than the overtly shown... and getting performers to enact sexual excstasy is often more likely to lead to unintentional comedy ;)
Obviously Tsaraslondon's point is true, but on the other hand, to assume that Hofmannsthal and Strauss would have wanted such a display, or that it is desirable, is another question. The music of the Vorspiel represents the music of nocturnal passion - the first scene clearly shows that passion recollected and mulled over in pre-breakfast comparative tranquillity before the hubbub of the social day. Schnitzler's Reigen (La Ronde), to cite another Viennese take on infidelity etc, creates a whole lot of erotic meaningfulness through the ways "...and so to bed..." is suggested, though nothing is shown: even the film versions of this do not attempt to present us with the coital joys only alluded to by the drama.
When I said post-coital bliss, that is exactly what I meant, the clue being in the word post, as in after. They may still be in bed together, but the sexual act is clearly over. I don't see this goes against anything in Homansthal, or indeed anything in Strauss's music.
Of course I realised that, Tsaraslondon, but I was also responding to False_Dmitry's speculation on the artistic advisability of showing connubial bliss in any but a retrospective, reflective sense. I was more or less confirming the justness of what he calls the "Hitchcockian maxim". There I must point out, though, that Hitch himself suggested he would like to have shown a deal more of Janet Leigh in the opening voyeuristic scene of Psycho in the hotel bedroom - but the other H is unlikely to have regarded the opening scene of Rosenkavalier as an opportunity to thematise the nature of voyeurism. And it is, musically, permeated by a theme which seems to represent a tragic awareness of the transience of beauty and passion, so that from my point of view the glow of "post-coital bliss" has already become a (wonderful) memory to be evoked.
Quote from: mjwal on May 25, 2010, 10:05:18 AM
The music of the Vorspiel represents the music of nocturnal passion - the first scene clearly shows that passion recollected and mulled over in pre-breakfast comparative tranquillity before the hubbub of the social day.
Absolutely true - with the proviso that we only really "learn" what all that red-hot passion in the Vorspiel was supposed to be "about"
after it's happened... and we see Oktavian and Marie-Therese some time after their bodily intimacy has subsided. (You would have to be something of a mindreader to guess the "meaning" of the Vorspiel if you didn't already know).
Frankly I think Shostakovich got the immediate post-coital moment rather better with his downward-glissando trombone... a gag which women seem to recognise rather better than men, I've noticed :)
Quote from: False_Dmitry on May 27, 2010, 01:08:36 PM
Absolutely true - with the proviso that we only really "learn" what all that red-hot passion in the Vorspiel was supposed to be "about" after it's happened... and we see Oktavian and Marie-Therese some time after their bodily intimacy has subsided. (You would have to be something of a mindreader to guess the "meaning" of the Vorspiel if you didn't already know).
Frankly I think Shostakovich got the immediate post-coital moment rather better with his downward-glissando trombone... a gag which women seem to recognise rather better than men, I've noticed :)
They do, False_Dmitry, they do...... ;)