Information About Castrati

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.

Venetian Opera

The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opened in Venice in 1637.  The most important feature of Venetian opera was the fact that it completely depended on making money from the public.  Florentine and Roman operas were paid for by the ruling class.  

Musical style traits for opera in seventeenth century Venice were

(a) separation of recitative and aria,

(b) use of instrumental ritornelli,

(c) very little chorus or ballet to control expenses,

(d) bel canto singing, "Beautiful singing," smooth melodic arias in triple meter over simplified harmonies, separated from recitative, dominated opera oratorio and cantata.

(e) elaborate stage machinery necessary for the miraculous plot conclusions, "deus ex machine." 

 

(f)  women in the cast, and

 

(g)  no separation of comedy and trajedy.

The bel canto aria was fully established in Didone (1641) by Francesco Cavalli (1602-76), also Giasone (1649), La Calisto (1651) and Ercole Amante (1662).





 
Early examples of this school were the final operas of Monteverdi: Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria (1641) and La Incoronazione di Poppea (1642).  These two operas will appear in modern day productions.

For me a famous modern production of a Venetian style opera is Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, a work from 1651.

I very much recommend the René Jacobs version of this opera available on the film below.  It is available on YouTube in audio only, but you may buy it on Amazon with full staging.

These people are up to no good. I have a very deep feeling that this production will tell you more about Venetian opera than anything I could possibly write, or anything you will read in textbooks. Gods and goddesses come and go on bizarre stage machinery. Many claims of chastity are proclaimed, but none are actually maintained. Giove starts out as a baritone, and then makes a fabulous change over to falsetto in his disguise as Diana. There is wonderful coloratura throughout and a complete utter lack of pomposity.

Here is a different production with more famous singers and rather bad video.  

 

Viva Italia.

Monteverdi's Poppea

This film from Glyndebourne in 2008 with Danielle de Niese is my favorite.

Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea comes at the beginning of commercial opera in Venice. If we have no royalty footing the bill, we must turn to operas which might interest the masses: namely operas about sex and violence, the same things that interest us.

The sexual ambiguity of the casting is probably also authentic to the original.

The incredible Alice Coote is Nerone, originally a castrato, putting the role back into the treble where it belongs. Women definitely appeared on stage in Venice, and one of them sang Poppea.

Everything is up to date with 2008, including the staging. The prologue takes place in the audience. The first scene is a bed. Then we have a few books scattered around the floor for Seneca’s house; then a bathtub, first for Nero to kill Lucano in, then for Ottavia; then a scene at the beach created with a large drape and a picnic basket; lots of black men’s suits; in short, modern minimalism.

Of course the star of the show is actually Emmanuelle Haïm and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In the extras it is explained that the two extant scores for this work consist of the voice parts and a figured bass. For any modern performance what the orchestra plays is completely invented in the modern era. The orchestration for this performance conforms to current standards for original instrument orchestras. For my ears the recorders and tambourines sound almost medieval. 

The playing is passionate and expressive. We are still in the period of opera where most of the music is Florentine Camerata recitative. There are outbursts of incredible coloratura and instrumental interludes for variety, but the endless recitative can get occasionally a bit tedious. Try to imagine you’re Italian.

All of Monteverdi is pre-tonal, but he clearly has a personal style for how the chords progress from one to the other that is quite beautiful. He is a very great master.

Yes, there’s plenty of sex, actually surprisingly a lot. Also violence. If sex and/or violence can be going on while this dialog is being sung, it pretty much is. Both men and women are in drag. There is talk about virtue and a character who dies for it. That alone has to be unique. On top of all of that we have the gorgeous Danielle de Niese.  Danielle and Alice's voices are well paired.

Here is a film of a different version 

    

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Tragedie Lyrique

In the second half of the century opera began to spread to other countries.  The French would never be content with merely imitating the Italians and created their own unique genre.  For one thing they hated the use of castrati.  The English were more in tune with the French and followed them.

The first opera in French was Pastorale (1659) by Robert Cambert (c.1628-77) on a text by Abbé Perrin. A vogue was established with Pomone (1671) by Cambert, and quickly adopted by Lully with Cadmus et Hermione (1673). His operas were characterized by

(a) large ballets and choruses,

(b) a new recitative style with frequent meter changes,

(c) a thick, five-voice texture,

(d) French Overture, and

(e) short simple arias in aabb form.

His librettist was Jean-Philippe Quinault. Other Lully operas were Alceste (1674), Persée (1682), Amadis (1684), Roland (1685) and Armide (1686).

1670 – 1695 Tragedie lyrique

This is Lully's opera period and the period of Purcell, Corelli, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Biber and the next generation of Venetian opera composers. It is the first generation of equal importance of instrumental music, the concerto grosso and tonality.

Venetian opera

Venetian opera had become international in scope, as in La Forza dell'Amor paterno (1678) by Alessandro Stradella (c.1645-82), Giustino (1683) by Lagrenzi, La Gerusalem liberata (1687) by Carlo Pallavicino (1630-88) and Enrico ditto il Leone (1689) by Agostino Steffani (1654-1728).

Cantata

Composed by all of the above plus M.A. Sartorio (c.1620-85) and Domenico Gabrielli (c.1650-90) and in France by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1624-1704), cantatas were the experimental form of the period.

Tragedie lyrique

The first opera in French was Pastorale (1659) by Robert Cambert (c.1628-77) on a text by Abbé Perrin. A vogue was established with Pomone (1671) by Cambert, and quickly adopted by Lully with Cadmus et Hermione (1673). His operas were characterized by

(a) large ballets and choruses,

(b) a new recitative style with frequent meter changes,

(c) a thick, five-voice texture,

(d) French Overture, and

(e) short simple arias in aabb form.

His librettist was Jean-Philippe Quinault. Other Lully operas were Alceste (1674), Persée (1682), Amadis (1684), Roland (1685) and Armide (1686).

Oratorio

A pupil of Carissimi, Charpentier brought the oratorio to France. An example was Le Reniement de St. Pierre.

English dramatic music

Though operas in English were composed, Venus and Adonis (1684-85) by John Blow (1647-1708) and Dido and Aeneas (1689) by Henry Purcell (1658-96), more important from the English view was incidental music written for plays: Purcell's Dioclesian (1690), King Arthur (1691), The Fairy Queen (1692), The Tempest (1695) and Indian Queen (1695).

English songs, odes, anthems

Purcell also composed

(1) songs on ostinato basses, rondo forms and da capo arias which were collected in Orpheus Britannicus (1698),

(2) odes in several movements for chorus, soloists and orchestra, composed for large celebrations, and

(3) anthems. The distinction between full and verse anthem persisted, with the more popular verse anthem, in a distinctly baroque multi-movement form.

German opera

In 1678 Johann Theile's (1646-1724) Adam und Eva opened the Hamburg opera house.

English dramatic music

Though operas in English were composed, Venus and Adonis (1684-85) by John Blow (1647-1708) and Dido and Aeneas (1689) by Henry Purcell (1658-96), more important from the English view was incidental music written for plays: Purcell's Dioclesian (1690), King Arthur (1691), The Fairy Queen (1692), The Tempest (1695) and Indian Queen (1695).

Hit tune

Here is the famous lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas,

And here is the complete opera.

Here is another example of Purcell's extraordinary song writing.




It's an homage to this:



I had heard of Andreas Scholl, of course, but all the rest was new to me. It is two renditions of "The Cold Song" from Henry Purcell's King Arthur.

This is what they are saying:

What power art thou
Who from below
Hast made me rise
Unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow

See'st thou not how stiff
And wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold

I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath
I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath

Let me, let me,
Let me freeze again
Let me, let me
Freeze again to death
Let me, let me, let me
Freeze again to death...

This is all unbelievably weird and of course cool.

I notice that Scholl has done a whole album of Purcell. There can never be too much Purcell. 

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Neapolitan Opera

Early operas were basically of two types:  serious operas written primarily to entertain the upper classes, and commercial operas written for the general public, seen first at Venice.  When one attends a concert in the Pitti Palace in Florence, one might well remember that one of the earliest operas ever composed was presented in this same courtyard as entertainment for a Medici wedding.

Commercial opera developed in a chaotic way, as one probably would have expected.  Whatever might interest the paying customer appeared on the stages of Venice.  These operas were characterized by small casts and no chorus.  It was like Shakespeare where comic scenes and characters would appear in a serious story.

Then arrived Neapolitan Opera in the city of Naples.  

Said to have begun with Francesco Provenzale (d.1704), the style was brought to international attention by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725). Trained in Venetian style, he gradually adopted the fashion of Naples, characterized by:

(a) Italian Overture,

(b) secco (with continuo only) and accompagnato (with orchestra, for tense dramatic situations) recitative,

(c) aria forms: arioso (between aria and recitative accompagnato), siciliana (melancholy 6/8 or 12/8) and the grand da capo aria,

(d) clearly established tonality in recitative and aria,

(e) frequent use of the Neapolitan sixth chord,

(f) downward fourth cadence in recitative, and

(g) vocal virtuosity in the singing of improvised ornaments, especially by castrati. 

Operas by Scarlatti were Eraclea (1700), Mitridate (1707), Tigrane (1715) and Telemaco (1718).

Da capo Aria

 
"From the top," the da capo aria consisted of a large A section, usually with Motto beginning, a contrasting B section in a related key and a complete repeat of A, altered by extemporized ornaments.


The most obvious features were the strictly theatrical ones.  Comedy and drama became strictly separated.  A drama, called opera seria, would feature castrati as the featured performers plus natural voices.  A comedy, called opera buffa, would have only natural voices, and usually feature a buffo bass.  Both styles used secco recitative, recitative with only chords accompanying on the harpsichord, and not any spoken dialogue.

This is not written for professional musicians.  Otherwise one would go on and on about extemporizing to a figured bass, one of the defining features of the Baroque.  Composers of opera seria used the same libretti over and over.

In Paris opera also developed contrasting styles, but this had to do with which building it was to be performed in.  Perhaps this was true in Naples as well.  Comedies in Paris appeared at the Opera Comique and had spoken dialog, while serious operas played at the Opera.  Something originally from the Opera Comique had to have recitative composed before it could appear at the Opera.

From our modern perspective we notice that in instrumental music it is considered admirable when music develops a strict formal structure, but this isn't the case for opera.  We leap into the argument against an opera with endless strings of very formal da capo arias. It is important to be aware that it is Neapolitan Opera that swept the world and became a prominent art form in many European cities.