Chapter Four
THE LOWER MALE VOICES
The lower male voice had historically always been called the bass. In the Age of Bel Canto, this category split in two with the emergence of the baritone voice. In the Middle Ages, a low tenor was sometimes called barytonus, but was not really identified with the bass voice. Antonio Tamburini (1800–1876), Georgio Ronconi (1810–1890), and Francesco Graziani (1828–1901) were famous early Italian baritones. Felice Varesi (1813–1889) is less well known today, but he was the first Macbeth, Rigoletto, and Germont. The composer who wrote the greatest parts for the baritone voice was, of course, Giuseppe Verdi.
As he created his music dramas, Richard Wagner began to visualize a new kind of voice that could cope with the increased size and power of his orchestra. These were called Helden or heroic singers. The Heldenbariton parts are typically sung by voices that are closer to the bass than to the tenor. Franz Betz (1835–1900) possessed such a voice. He created the parts of Hans Sachs, Wotan, and Der Wanderer, as well as singing other parts, such as Telramund and King Marke. Camille Saint-Saëns attended the 1876 performances of the Ring. His remarks are illuminating: “ ‘Betz, the leading German baritone,’ Saint-Saëns thought ‘an admirable singer’ but a ‘mediocre actor.’ ‘Singers really worthy of the name are rare in Germany. . . . the majority of those taking part in the Ring shout instead of singing.’ ”1
Apparently, the institution of Sprechgesang (or speech-song), which is usually blamed upon Julius Kniese and Cosima Wagner, was in place long before they took over the management of Bayreuth. This explosive method of over-pronouncing consonants has been called “the Bayreuth bark” and was, in Ernest Newman’s opinion, “canine sounds emitted by some Wagnerian singers who had never learned to sing”:
But nothing could be further from Wagner’s intentions than this method of hurling masses of craggy consonants at the suffering listener without any regard to either beauty of tone or accuracy of pitch. Wagner’s musical ear was much too fine to enable him to endure ugly sounds either from the orchestra or from the human throat. No man of his epoch was more sensitive to sheer beauty of melodic delivery. The very life of a work, he always insisted, was in its melody: [italics mine] his constant complaint against players of the last Beethoven quartets in particular was that they had not “sought out the melody,” or, having unearthed it, could not make it sing. A priori, therefore, it would be the height of absurdity to suppose that in his own works he favoured mere incisiveneness of declamation at the expense of beauty of sound, a mere “speaking through the tones.”2
It is clear, therefore, that Wagner wanted beauty of tone above all else, which, of course, demands a flawless technique. No less important to him was that the words must be clearly understood and must be expressed with every shade of meaning inherent in the text. That was not enough. Wagner insisted that his artists must comprehend the larger issues of the artwork and even change their personalities to become more like the roles that they were playing.
HEROIC TENORS
One presumes this kind of coaching was given to his prototype heroic tenors or heldentenors, Joseph Alois Tichatschek, the first Tannhäuser and Rienzi and the best of the early Lohengrins, and Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who created Tristan. Schnorr was only thirty at the time of his death, and some said that Wagner had killed him with overwork. The early Wagnerians had remarkable loyalty to Wagner, subordinating themselves to his magnetic personality, some even singing for no fee. The distinctive baritonal timbres of Albert Niemann and Georg Unger did not please Saint-Saëns, who was used to the “headier” sounds of the tenors of the Opéra in Paris. Interestingly enough, the greatest names in the category of heroic tenor over the years were not German.
Figure 4.1. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
Figure 4.2. Jean de Reszke as Roméo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
Heldentenors of note were the Pole, Jean de Reszke; the Dutchman, Jacque Urlus (1867–1935); the versatile Czech, Leo Slezak (1873–1946); and the “Great Dane,” the incomparable Lauritz Melchior (1890–1973), who sang 223 performances of Tristan alone.
SIRENS AND NIGHTINGALES
The nineteenth century also witnessed two developments, or really, a splintering off of categories, of female voices. The first, as we have observed, was that of the mezzo-soprano. We do remember that Faustina Bordoni had such a voice in the eighteenth century. Previously, there had been only sopranos and contraltos. In the early part of the nineteenth century, there were several artists who could not sing quite as high as other sopranos, but the composers conveniently wrote their parts to suit their voices and no special mention was made of a new category. For example, the parts of Cherubino, Dorabella, Carmen, Mignon, and Isabella are all designated as soprano parts by their composers. In addition, Rosina is specified as soprano and La Cenerentola as contralto. They were both premiered by the same person—Geltrude Giorgi-Righetti (1785–1850). Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot, Giuditta Pasta, and Signora Rossini—Isabella-Angela Colbran (1785–1845)—all had such voices. One of the enduring fixations of mezzo-sopranos is the frustration of singing parts that are identified with the seconda donna. Many mezzos have attempted to rise to the great soprano parts over the years and many have come to grief. Singing high notes is one thing; sustaining a high tessitura is quite another. In our era, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, and Christa Ludwig have all made such forays into the soprano repertoire with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the best advice is that given by Pauline Viardot, the champion of vocal versatility: “Don’t do as I did. I wanted to sing everything, and I spoilt my voice!”3 Later on in the century, the mezzo-soprano category was more clearly defined but subdivided into coloratura mezzo-soprano, mezzo-soprano dramatico, and others. Amneris, Eboli, Octavian, Charlotte, Marina, and Ortrud are clearly delineated as mezzo-soprano parts.
One curious phenomenon is the disappearance of the contralto. Women have not changed much physically for thousands of years. We have six billion people on the planet, so where are the descendants of Vittoria Tesi and La Todi? The answer is that they are not in fashion. Composers have continued to relegate the contralto to character or secondary parts such as Ulrica or Erda, so lower voiced women all call themselves mezzo-sopranos in order to have a chance for more work. A recent Musical America Annual listed 456 mezzos and only 24 contraltos!
NEW CATEGORIES
Sometimes vocal limitations are dignified by becoming special categories. A tenore di grazia, like Tito Schipa, for instance, is a tenor who cannot sing loudly or high enough for the big parts, but compensates in some measure by a smooth delivery and an elegant style. The coloratura soprano category came about in just such a way. As the Age of Grand Opera wore on, some sopranos who had high voices and great agility but who could not cope with the declamatory works of Verdi and Wagner carried on the great tradition of florid music, mostly in Italian works. Such light voices still carry great emotional impact, even in dramatic operas, by enlisting the sympathy of the audience for vulnerable femininity under attack. Gilda and Lucia are such roles. The light-voiced soprano also is used to portray peppy ingenue characters, called “ina” roles in the opera world—Rosina, Zerlina, Despina, and Adina, for example. The term coloratura soprano as a special category may have been coined to describe the art of Amelita Galli-Curci (1882–1963) and so is a relatively modern term. The pure, young, sweet sound of such singers is sometimes called voce bianca (white voice) or voce infantile (childish voice).
Henriette Sontag (1806–1854)
The prototypical coloratura soprano was a beautiful German, with a clear, light, high, and melodious voice and a sunny vivacious personality, who inspired “Sontag-fever” among her devoted fans. In Göttingen, members of her ardent audience threw her post-chaise into the river, because “no mere mortal was ever worthy to use it again!” Besides the Beethoven works previously mentioned, Sontag was famous for her performances of the Bel Canto composers, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, as well as Mozart and Weber. Her technique was very secure. On several occasions, when money was short, she sang Donizetti’s La fille du régiment (Daughter of the Regiment) in the afternoon and Lucrezia Borgia the same night. She married a Sardinian Count and lived a happy life, which was cut short by an outbreak of cholera in Mexico City in 1854.
Jenny Lind (1820–1887)
Thanks to P.T. Barnum, whose spirit still lives on in contemporary attempts to “popularize” classical music, Jenny Lind is probably the best known of the nineteenth century’s nightingales today. In contrast to the radiant Sontag, Jenny Lind disguised her cold and calculating Nordic temperament by a humble and saintly public face. Nevertheless, she was a wonderful singer and her success helped to establish Manuel Garcia II’s reputation as one of the greatest teachers of all time.
Jenny Lind was already a seasoned performer at the time she made her operatic debut at the age of fifteen as Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz. By the time she was twenty-one, she had sung many major roles in Stockholm, including such dramatic ones as Donna Anna, Norma, and Giulia in Spontini’s La vestale. (Henriette Sontag’s contracts always stipulated that she was never to be required to sing the music of Spontini!) As a result of all this success, the young singer was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and appointed court singer. As can be imagined, at her tender age, her voice began to show signs of wear and tear and she journeyed to Paris to Garcia, who repaired the damage and built her voice into the formidable instrument that it became.
Her voice, which then at its very best showed some signs of early wear, was a soprano of bright, thrilling, and remarkably sympathetic quality from B-flat to G’ ”. The upper part of her register was rich and brilliant, and superior both in strength and beauty to the lower. These two portions she managed, however, to unite in the most skillful way, moderating the power of the upper notes so as not to outshine the lower. She had also a wonderfully developed “length of breath,” which enabled her to perform long and difficult passages with ease, and to fine down her tones to the softest pianissimo while still maintaining the quality unvaried. Her execution was very great, her shake true and brilliant, her taste in ornament altogether original, and she usually invented her own cadenze.4
Besides the parts already mentioned, Jenny Lind sang Marie in La fille du régiment, Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula, Lucia, Susanna, and Adina. She was the favorite soprano of Meyerbeer, who wrote Feldlager in Schlesien for her (afterwards revised as L’Etoile du nord). She also appeared in his Robert le Diable and Les Huguenots and created the part of Amalia in Verdi’s I Masnadieri. During this time, there was much turmoil off the stage and Mlle. Lind showed herself to be a master of the kind of public relations stunts that would have made a Hollywood press agent blush:
This character [her unpretentiousness], though true to life, was, however, belied by the management of the London Theater, both before and after her arrival. It is curious now to look back on the artifices employed, the stories of broken contracts (this not without some foundation), of long diplomatic pourparlers, special messengers, persuasion, hesitation and vacillations, kept up during many months—all in order to excite the interest of the operatic public. Not a stone was left unturned, not a trait of the young singer’s character, public or private, unexploited, by which sympathy, admiration, or even curiosity, might be aroused.5
Jenny Lind, a theatrical child, always expressed disdain for the stage, and sang her last operatic performance at the age of only twenty-nine. Thereafter, the concert stage was her arena. She made a two-year concert tour of America in 1850 under the aegis of Barnum and made £20,000, or over $2.8 million in today’s dollars, in the process. Lind sang in concerts and oratorios until 1883, when she began a new career of teaching. She had earned a large fortune and gave a significant portion of it to charities in her native Sweden.
Adelina Patti (1843–1919)
In this constellation of brilliant stars, the name of the one that shone most brightly was Adelina Patti. Patti’s name was synonymous with Bel Canto. She summed up an era in her mastery of improvisation, vocal technique, and the ability to captivate an audience with her charm. Patti’s voice was that of a soubrette but much warmer than so many of her contemporaries who sang with the voce infantile. Her trill was a thing of beauty and should be studied by anyone who aspires to mastery of this essential but elusive grace.
Figure 4.3. Adelina Patti as Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust.
Patti also anticipated the modern era in comprehending the importance of the phonograph in the promulgation and promotion of the career of the singer. When the phonograph was first invented, her voice was the one the public most wanted to hear. The series of recordings made by her 1905–1906, along with those of Fernando de Lucia and Mattia Battistini are the best evidence on records of just what the vocal standards of the Age of Grand Opera were like. To be sure, these selections were made by an elderly lady in semi-retirement and the technology was primitive, but they contain many beautiful things and are invaluable documents of a brilliant career that spanned fifty-six years.
To imagine what Patti must have been like at the zenith of her fame we can quote a very stern critic—Giuseppe Verdi:
[She was] perfectly organised (with) perfect equilibrium between singer and actress, a bom artist in every sense of the word. . . . I was struck dumb not only by her marvelous technique but by certain dramatic traits in which she revealed herself as a great actress. I remember the chaste and modest demeanour with which, in La Sonnambula, she lay on the soldier’s bed, and how, in Don Giovanni, she left the libertine’s room corrupted. I remember a certain reaction of hers during Don Bartolo’s aria in Il Barbiere and, above all, in the recitative preceding the quartet in Rigoletto, when her father points out her lover in the tavern and says “And you still love him?”, and she replies “I love him.” I cannot describe the sublime effect of those words as she sang them.”6
Adelina Patti was born Adela Juana Maria in Madrid, the youngest daughter in a family of singers. She was trained by her half-brother Ettore Barili and coached and managed by Maurice Strakosch, her older brother-in-law, who had been accompanist to Giuditta Pasta. Her first performance was singing “Casta Diva” at the age of seven, standing on a table because she was so tiny. Strakosch protected the future “Queen of Song” from any unpleasantness throughout most of her career and taught her all the traditional graces of Bel Canto. She learned them effortlessly and always sang with perfect grace and spontaneity. Her voice in its great days easily ascended to F’ ”, perfectly even in scale, with great rhythmic variety, infinite coloration, and immense emotional appeal. She was famous for her brilliant staccati, which were emulated with great success by Marcella Sembrich a generation later. Unfortunately, no recorded example of Patti’s staccato survives.
Patti is most often portrayed as a child of nature and unconscious of technique. She is reported to have asked: “What is a diaphragm? In all my career I have never heard of it!”
Nature had not only given her a lovely voice [. . .]. She could surmount without labour difficulties that took others hours and hours of study and hard striving. By the time Maurice Strakosch took her in hand at the age of seven, her mastery of vocal technique was well on the way to completion. Correct breathing, scales, trills, ornaments, fioritura of every kind, all came naturally to her and required only the finishing touches. She had just to be shown the various roulades, and cadenzas to put them into her voice.7
This issue is clouded with twentieth-century mechanistic thinking, and Ettore Barili has never been given sufficient credit for a good job of teaching. I am sure that Farinelli or Pacchierotti had never heard of a diaphragm either. Patti’s training exactly parallels that given to the great castrati, and no one ever attributed their greatness to being “children of nature.” All this seems, to me, to be press agentry intended to foster the Patti legend. Adelina Patti made her operatic debut when she was sixteen and in that first season sang sixteen different roles, including Lucia, Leonora in Il trovatore, Norina, Elvira in Ernani, Adina, Violetta, and Zerlina. Any experienced singer would say that if she were unconscious of technique she would never have gotten through such a season at sixteen. The mix of roles in that debut season and the fact that Patti also later attempted Valentine in Les Huguenots, Verdi’s Giovanna d’ Arco, Aida, and even Carmen, suggests that singers of her era were not fully conscious of the inexorable division of operatic singing into special categories that is so prevalent today.
Patti’s voice was best suited to the lyric repertoire: Marguerite in Faust, sung with a voice that suggests youthful innocence as the composer no doubt intended, instead of the spintos of today; La traviata, Lucia, and the “ina” roles—Zerlina, Adina, Amina, and, especially, Rosina. Rossini himself arranged the part for her high soprano, so ever since we have had two versions, depending on which kind of voice is cast. Patti was also a master of song. She often sang Home, Sweet Home during the lesson scene, and it is included among the items recorded. I enthusiastically recommend it to all those who wish to learn how to “put a song over.”
Figure 4.4. Nellie Melba as Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust.
Adelina Patti became possibly the wealthiest singer of all time. She built a castle called Craig y Nos in Wales, where she reigned in splendor and where the 1905–1906 recordings were made. Patti received $5,000 per concert in a tour of America in the 1880s. That’s equivalent to $92,753 in 2002! When a reporter asked if she knew that she made more in a single night than the president of the United States made in a year, she retorted: “Fine! Then let him sing!” echoing the remarks of Caterina Gabrielli to Catherine the Great and Caffarelli to Louis XV a hundred years earlier.
Nellie Melba (1861–1931)
The line of the great coloratura sopranos continued through the studio of Mathilde Marchesi (1821–1913), a disciple of Garcia and the most successful teacher of female singers of all time. Marchesi’s star pupil was Helen Porter Armstrong, née Mitchell, better known as Nellie Melba—an Australian soprano whose voice had a star-like brilliance and astounding coloratura fireworks. Melba’s career spanned forty years and, like Giulia Grisi (1811–1869) and Patti, who also had long careers on the top of the profession, she defended her position of prima donna assoluta with brilliant vocalism and a decided taste for intrigue. Melba sang the brilliant coloratura repertoire such as Lucia, Gilda, Violetta, Marguerite, and Ophélie, but also essayed more substantial parts such as Nedda, Mimi, and Desdemona when she felt that they suited her. She also bowed to the probable influence of such pro-Wagner critics as Herman Klein and Shaw by taking on Elsa and Eva, as Pleasants says, “not well nor for long. In 1896 at the Met, she attempted the Siegfried Brünnhilde for one performance, wrecked her voice, and crawled off to Paris, where Marchesi repaired the damage. She made her farewell performance in 1926 at the age of 67 in Covent Garden, with the royal family in attendance. The event was recorded, including her farewell speech, which is a grand performance in itself. The next time you are in the grocery store, you might look up Melba Toast and Melba Sauce (a raspberry dessert topping for Pêche Melba)—souvenirs of a time when the general public recognized the names of prima donnas and, presumably, could be sold merchandise from their endorsements.
Luisa Tetrazzini (1871–1940)
Chicken Tetrazzini and Victor Herbert’s amusing song “Art Is Calling for Me” have one thing in common—they both use the name of the next coloratura soprano in the great line, Luisa Tetrazzini. Tetrazzini and Amelita Galli-Curci carried on the art of fioritura and made no attempt to branch out into more dramatic fare, even though the Bel Canto repertoire took a back seat to Verdi, Wagner, and the Verismo composers during their time. Galli-Curci’s art was based on a light youthful quality and extraordinary facility; Tetrazzini had the flexibility and a top voice unmatched in its exuberance and swagger by anyone else on records. Lily Pons (1904–1976), Joan Sutherland, and Beverly Sills have all since worn the mantle of “The Queen of the Nightingales.”
Figure 4.5. Luisa Tetrazzini.
TRUTHFUL OPERA
The Italians of the late nineteenth century were largely unconcerned with the impact of the colossus of the North, Richard Wagner, on the operatic world. Verdi had answered the challenge with Otello in 1887. Most Italians felt secure in the vocal traditions that had ensured the primacy of Italian opera for three hundred years. However, in the 1890s, there was a development in Italian opera that did have an impact on our study of singing—Verismo. Some observers feel that La traviata was really the first opera in this genre, but most credit Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) and I pagliacci by Ruggierio Leoncavallo (1858–1919) as the seminal works. The manifesto of this movement was to represent the realistic, melodramatic, and violent side of life. This was no doubt shocking to audiences of the belle epoque, but to witnesses of the horrors of the twentieth century, these operas have lost much of their impact. Neither these composers nor their imitators were able to duplicate their initial successes, and the movement ran its course by the turn of the century. However, the baneful effect on vocalism of Verismo can be felt to this very day and could be considered the Italian counterpart to Sprechgesang. Artists were encouraged to “feel” or “become” their parts, a notion irresistible to present day stage directors, but a baccio di morte to the voice. It was especially harmful to the female voice and several famous verismo artists—like Gemma Bellincioni (1864–1950), the first Santuzza; Rosina Storchio (1876–1945), the first Butterfly; Cesira Ferrani (1863–1943), the first Mimi and Manon Lescaut; and Angelica Pandolfini (1871–1959), the first Adriana Lecouvreur—all lost their voices at an early age. All this hysteria often resulted in screaming contests among the singers and between them and the orchestra. For all his greatness as a composer, Verdi also wrote much of his music in the upper fifth of the voice because it projects well over the large orchestra:
In Italy the classical Italian method, that taught by Garcia and exemplified still in the art of Patti, was irrevocably compromised by the changing repertory. Though Verdi still gave the singer his head, his principal concern had been to write vocal music that was dramatically effective. Unlike his predecessors, Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, he had not bothered himself with whether it was gratefully written; the singer’s vocal comfort and health were beside the point. Boito and Ponchielli went a stage further, putting the singer in the front line in direct combat with the orchestra, which inevitably led to a more vehement and dramatic vocal style. These developments culminated in the verismo school with its exaggerated and often unmusical pathos. The effect of it all can be heard readily enough on any number of records made in the first two decades of this [twentieth] century: impure tone, obtrusive vibrato, crude attack and rough execution, all too familiar features that are not only unlovely, but, in the interpretation of music of earlier periods, unstylish as well.8
Mattia Battistini (1857–1928)
But there were artists (mostly male) that were able to handle both styles very well. Recordings of Mattia Battistini and Fernando de Lucia are models of elegant vocalism combined with smoldering passion when required. Battistini, who was often called La Gloria d’Italia, made many records while still in his prime, which are models of a splendid legato, mastery of the breath, and equalized registration. No one on records equals him in the portamento style and control of the dynamics of the voice. Only the bottom voice was weak. The placement of the voice was always “forward” and he was said to have “a splendid snarl.”
Battistini’s great career was achieved in spite of the fact that he never sang in the United States—he didn’t like sea voyages and he did not visit Paris or London very often. He sang in Italy extensively, as well as in Central Europe, and was a great favorite in St. Petersburg, where he appeared annually from 1888 to 1914. Battistini sang for fifty years, his art largely unimpaired, until his death in 1928 from an attack of asthma. In 1926, he appeared as Rodrigo in Don Carlo in Vienna:
This septuagenarian is an incomprehensible miracle whose splendid voice is almost wholly untouched by age. He can compete as to brilliance and power of singing, with the youngest vocal celebrities whom, however, he surpasses in musical culture, artistic mixture of registers and technical perfection. Physically too, this incomparable artist has preserved his freshness and elasticity, whilst histrionically he always fascinates and moves his audiences.9
When asked about why he did not teach, Battistini replied, “My school is in my records.” He had only one student (as far as I know)—Paola Novikova, Coffin’s teacher, whom he presumably taught during his visits to St. Petersburg.
Figure 4.6. Mattia Battistini as Prince Yeletsky in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.
Figure 4.7 Titta Ruffo as Neri Chiaramontes in Giordano’s La cena delle beffe.
Titta Ruffo (1877–1953)
Battistini’s teacher was Venceslao Persichini (1827–1897), who also taught Giuseppe de Luca (1876–1950), and Titta Ruffo. These three baritones are counted among the greatest in history. De Luca has always been considered the model for Bel Canto style and refinement. Other baritones, such as Thomas Hampson especially, revere his legacy. Ruffo (who was born Ruffo Titta), on the other hand, was a force of nature. His big resonant baritone voice is the greatest on records and called “The Voice of the Lion.” Ruffo did not get along with Persichini, left his studio and could be said to be largely self-taught. He is unjustly accused of only bawling and shouting, for his career lasted thirty-seven years; he had a good sense of legato and could sing a fine pianissimo when he wanted to. Ruffo’s 1914 recording of the duet “Si, pel ciel” from Otello, with Caruso, is the greatest operatic recording of all time, in my estimation, and pointed in the direction male operatic singing was to take in the future. Like Caruso, Ruffo had a deprived childhood and little education, but he was a well-read intellectual and did extensive research for his roles. An enduring monument to Ruffo is the fact that, although he spent the war years in Rome, unlike Beniamino Gigli, he never acquiesced to the Fascist regime of Mussolini and was in constant conflict with the authorities.
Figure 4.8 Fernando de Lucia.
Fernando de Lucia (1860–1925)
The singing of Fernando de Lucia is an acquired taste. There are violently opposed opinions about his singing from critics and record collectors. De Lucia, like Caruso, studied with Vincenzo Lombardi. He was the tenor star of the San Carlo Theater for thirty years and was able to excel in such widely disparate works as Il barbiere di Siviglia, Cavalleria rusticana, and I pagliacci. There is no one on record who can match De Lucia in spontaneity of expression (some would say license), canto spianato (spinning out the tone), bubbling coloratura, a miraculous messa di voce, and chiaroscuro effects or variations of timbre. But then, there is his maddening (to Anglo-Saxon ears) habit of changing vowels in the top of the voice to an ear-splitting [i], and his constant use of the tremolando, which is not a technical fault but a device that many Italian singers such as Rubini, Bonci, and Pertile used (and abused) to convey the idea of extreme emotion. De Lucia’s reputation has also suffered from the fact that many of his records were played at the wrong speed for a long time. For many years, De Lucia himself owned his own record label, Phonotype and, if he did not feel in voice on recording day, he would transpose the selection down, sometimes as far as a minor third. When played at a speed that would be the correct original pitch, the voice sounds tinny and more like a whinny than a singing tone. At the correct speed, De Lucia’s voice sounds rich and resonant. One can then understand why he became famous for the verismo repertoire and was sought after by Mascagni, Giordano, and Puccini to create roles in their new operas.
Pol Plançon (1854–1914)
Another artist whose technique was solidly based upon Bel Canto virtues was the great French basso, Pol Plançon. Plançon was a student of Duprez and later Jean-Baptiste (Giovanni) Sbriglia (1832–1916), who numbered the de Reszke brothers and Lillian Nordica among his other students. Plançon appeared in a wide variety of roles that ranged from suave, resonant elegance to astonishing virtuosity. His recording of the Drum Major’s song from Le Caïd by Massenet shows how flexible a well-schooled bass voice can be.
Figure 4.9. Pol Plançon as Saint-Bris in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
NOTES
1. Camille Saint-Saëns, Harmonie et melodie, pp. 88–96, quoted in Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1933–1946), vol. 4, 490.
2. Newman, The Life of Wagner vol. 4, 453.
3. Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966) 223.
4. Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1935) 201.
5. Grove vol. 3 201. (Based on Lumley’s Reminiscences, 1847.)
6. Michael Scott, The Record of Singing to 1914 (New York: Scribner, 1977) 21.
7. Scott, The Record of Singing 21. Quoting Herman Klein in Great Women Singers of My Time (London, 1931).
8. Scott, The Record of Singing 103.
9. The Record Collector VIII 248, quoted in Scott, The Record of Singing 103.