Opera from Monteverdi to Rossini contains a dirty little secret: the castrato. Dramatic presentations in Rome in this period, whether operas or oratorios, used all male casts, because of the church’s complete oppression of women. For some reason not clear to modern minds it was felt better to castrate men so that they would retain their high child voices than to allow women to appear in public performances. The Roman opera, from its origin in the 1620’s, performed with all male casts with castrated men playing the female roles. L'Orfeo by Monteverdi also used all men for the high parts.
The notes to Cecilia Bartoli’s Sacrificium goes into detail about when, where, how and how frequently the castration took place.
Outside Rome, though, the castrati generally played most of the male roles and women sang the female parts. That means that throughout the entire period from Monteverdi to Rossini major male parts were assigned to sopranos and altos. The dramatic tenor who became the hero in opera in the romantic period had not been invented yet. I maintain that Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio was the first dramatic tenor.
It is virtually never the case with comic operas that roles are intended for castrati, which explains why we are so familiar with Mozart’s comedies and only rarely see his more serious operas. There are no castrato parts in the comedies. Cherubino is part of another tradition—assigning teenage boy roles to women. Castrati were big guys. They just had high voices and no beards, like any eunuch. Cherubino needs to appear pre-pubescent and harmless, and a woman is better for that. Mozart intended Cherubino to be sung by a woman.
Why castrati? The only possible explanation is the sound. Early opera must simply have meant the sound of castrati singing. The original idea was to eliminate the requirement for women singing in public, but soon many of them became celebrities.
This is a huge body of opera and encompasses all of opera seria, including all the operas of Handel. Mozart, Gluck and Rossini all composed for this voice and all wrote major roles for castrati. Opera seria is the Italian term for serious opera of the type invented in Naples.
All included roles for castrati which no longer exist in the modern world, and to present these operas to modern audiences this problem has to be solved. Just using the available videos we know easily which solution has worked the best: the Marilyn Horne solution. She can be seen in all her glory on the Bel Canto Society’s Semiramide. For years the San Francisco Opera only presented opera seria when Marilyn was available. In my memory the stunning Orlando Furioso of Vivaldi stands out. As long as Marilyn was still singing, this was the preferred solution.
One solution is to transpose the role down an octave and give it to a tenor or baritone. This was the solution in Maria Ewing’s performance of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea. The role of Nerone is supposed to be sung by a castrato. To accept the tenor solution you must accept that the music now sounds very different. A duet for two sopranos is quite a different sound from a duet for soprano and tenor. It is also difficult to find coloratura tenors capable of executing the ornamentation. This solution is not preferred. For those who hate cross-dressing, this is the preferred solution.
Contrast with this version where Nerone is sung by Alice Coote in the original pitch. In both examples Poppea is sung by Danielle de Niese.
Now that Marilyn has retired we have to move on. In Mozart's Mitridate Re di Ponto there are three castrato parts. In the video I reviewed two were assigned to women and one to a countertenor or falsettist. If the castrato was a true soprano, it is difficult to find a countertenor capable of singing that high. In Mitridate the part assigned to a falsettist is the lowest of the three.
One curious fact about countertenors is that they’re usually baritones. Maybe it’s easier for a baritone to slip completely into falsetto at a lower pitch. This is key, because the whole role has to be sung in falsetto, not just the high parts. Here is an excellent discussion of how falsetto works. It explains why the tone is so uninteresting.
In Idomeneo the castrato part is sung by Cecilia Bartoli. In Julius Caesar Cecilia sang the heroine, and the three castrato parts were sung by two men and a woman. Julius Caesar was sung by a man—Franco Fagioli. He was actually quite spectacular for a countertenor, but slips occasionally out of his falsetto on the low notes.
So those are the three solutions: transpose it down, give it to a woman, give it to a man singing falsetto. None are ideal. Transposing it down violates the musical intentions. Giving it to a woman creates a certain amount of gender confusion. Marilyn was not very tall, but wore big hats. Susan Graham plays men more often than not and is quite convincing. She was excellent in Alcina. The countertenor solution might appeal to many, but there were no countertenors in Italian Baroque opera.
This is strictly from my imagination, but a castrato voice has to have sounded very much like a powerful woman’s voice. Marilyn was probably not too far off. The one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that they did not sound like falsettists.
