Questions about ranges of "Don Giovanni"
Slrdsyj
"La ci darem la mano" (Don Giovanni) with a soprano. Whenever I've heard this
duet performed - on CD or on an opera stage - it has usually been a bass or a
baritone who sings the role of Don Giovanni. Has a tenor ever performed the
role of Don Giovanni?
Thanking you in advance.
Drakejake
>role of Don Giovanni?
This is a bass or baritone role but I am sure that tenors have sung it. This
they can do quite easily. But then the part wouldn't have the weight and color
that Mozart intended.
JD
Premiereopera
>From: drak...@aol.com (Drakejake)
>Date: 6/28/03 9:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20030628211756...@mb-m12.aol.com>
>
>>Has a tenor ever performed the
>>role of Don Giovanni?
>
>This is a bass or baritone role but I am sure that tenors have sung it.
Name one.
Ed
Elizabeth Hubbell
I recall reading somewhere that the tenor Adolf Nourrit did some serious
study of the part, but I wish I could be sure that he actually performed
it.
Candidly, this posting of mine is driven more by simple curiosity as to
whether or not Nourrit ever performed it. I wish I could provide
definitive information here instead. But I'm hoping someone else here
can tell us what the facts are, now that the question's been raised.
Incorrigibly,
Geoffrey Riggs
www.operacast.com
Premiereopera
>Message-id: <3EFE498D...@verizon.net>
Thanks, Geoffrey.
Would you give me your opinion of a tenor singing Don Giovanni? I always value
your opinions.
My feeling is- WHY? The role is too low lying for any tenor to do it well, and
it would just be a gimick, IMHO.
Best,
Ed
Elizabeth Hubbell
Thanks for your kind thoughts.
Well, it would sure be _odd_, IMO.
Sorry to give you here pretty much thoughts in progress only. I'd still
have to sort it all out with those superannuated ushers and absentee
men's-room attendants first;-)
I suppose it would depend on the tenor, but I really feel it needs an
edge of darker authority to make the proper effect in that last scene.
The Don must seem to be some sort of match, after all, to the "fatale"
tones of the basso Commendatore.
Now, Nourrit was renowned for the richness and sonorousness of his lower
tones. In fact, his upper tones were purely head, and one suspects that
listeners today might very well peg him as a baritone! Sometimes, I
think that the baritonal tessitura of some of Wagner's tenor writing was
a partly unconscious homage to what Wagner recalled of Nourrit and some
of his roles in Paris.
Of course, not all of Nourrit's roles were relatively low-lying, but a
few were.
In addition, Wagner brings us to Melchior. A tenor with a
Melchior-style map to his voice -- of which there are veeeeeeeeeeery
few, of course -- might be able to sustain the requisite authority for
the Don in the Act II finale. Who knows?
So, in a vacuum, I'd run from the idea in a combination of hilarity and
horror. But if Melchior, say, were to come back and do it, I know I'd
be the first on line for tickets. Exceptions to every rule, after all.
And if the middle of Nourrit's voice was possibly similar to Melchior's
(_NOT_ in the top notes, of course!!!!), then maybe Nourrit
too...........................tantalizing.
I will say I've always hoped to hear some day a Don who combines the
rolling qualities of a bass-baritone with the keen and hard top of a
brighter-voiced Russian-style baritone like Yuri Mazurok, say. There
are built-in contrasts in this role that, far from making it
artistically flawed, are just waiting there to be exploited in a
meaningful way, IMO. I felt this past season that Peter Mattei came
awfully close to encompassing its many contrasts. Hopefully, his Don
will become a mainstay of future seasons. Now, can a tenor do all
that?...................
Cheers,
Geoffrey Riggs
www.operacast.com
REG
Of course, in the case of Garcia (if I'm right) and Nourrit, we have no idea
what transpositions and cuts may have been made, so it's a difficult
comparison to contemporary performance practice.
"Elizabeth Hubbell" <elizabet...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:3EFE498D...@verizon.net...
Mike Richter
There were two tenors who assumed the role, but the only one I can think
of offhand is Manuel Garcia. No modern tenor has sung the role, but the
duet would not pose a problem. Baritones sing "Vesti la giubba" and
"Winterstuerme"; why not let a tenor join in "La ci darem la mano".
It is a bass role in Mozart's terms and is suitable for basso cantante,
bass-baritone or baritone in ours.
J.D.G.
'It happened in Brooklyn'.
Mike Richter wrote:There were two tenors who assumed the role, but the only one I
Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)
letters to be typed in news:3EFE67A4...@cpl.net:
For one of his slumming-to-raise-money-for-charity concerts, Pavarotti
recorded it with a folk singer named Sheryl Crow. It's dreadful.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Mark Coy tossed off eBay? http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2B734C02
RMCR's most pointless, dumb and laughable chowderhead: Mark Coy.
Leonard Tillman
>sings the role of Don Giovanni. Has a tenor
> ever performed the role of Don Giovanni?
Not that I know of, at least in recent decades.
- A bit ironic, with the character's original being Don Juan
(Giovanni) TENORio of Seville.
Best,
LT
"That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the
whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it." -- Rabbi
Hillel
susurrus
"Matthew B. Tepper (posts from uswest.net are forged)" <oy兀earthlink.net>
wrote
> For one of his slumming-to-raise-money-for-charity concerts, Pavarotti
> recorded it with a folk singer named Sheryl Crow. It's dreadful.
>
You refer to an effort to raise money for children who were orphaned by the
war in Bosnia as "slumming"? That is not slumming. Slumming is what people
do when they read your posts. And Sheryl Crow is a rock singer.
susurrus the disgusted
dtritter
jeezis, he can't even spell "disgusting." fortunately, everyone knew
what he meant ... and agreed.
dft
parterre box
Manuel Garcia did sing DON GIOVANNI, sometimes opposite his daughter
Maria Malibran as Zerlina! Though of course during the early 19th
century period, the work would likely have been heavily adapted,
transposed, with cuts and interpolations.
A middle-voice tenor like Domingo could sing all the notes in Don
Giovanni, though in the correct keys I don't know that the music would
sound all that interesting or exciting in any tenor's voice.
Little Jimmy Olsen
"parterre box" <parte...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:11c52029.03062...@posting.google.com...
> Ed
>
> Manuel Garcia did sing DON GIOVANNI, sometimes opposite his daughter
> Maria Malibran as Zerlina! >
What does it mean to sing "opposite" another singer? Do all singers in a
performance sing opposite all the other singers, or do some of them sing on
sides? This opera terminology is driving me insane.
LJO, SCR
Andante teneramente
In the case of "La ci darem" "opposite" means something like
"Dancing cheek to cheek".
(With Donna Anna and Don Giovanni it's more like
"Hit the road, Jack".)
SCNR, Regards
Valfer
Spanish composer Ramon Carnicer, ca. 1840. It was billed as an
"improved" version of the Mozart, with an new overture! Perhaps he
gave the title role to a tenor.
The opera Don Giovanni survived into the 19th century, but saw many ad
hoc alterations, mainly because Mozart did not have the adoring
following which developed late in the century. In ther Gayarre museum
there is a letter of the tenor to a friend describing the audience's
response to his high Bb in "Il mio Tesoro." The letter doesn't say
whether he transposed the whole aria, or he interpolated the high
note. The tenor role was renamed "Conte Ottavio" and the tenor had a
higher billing than the baritone singing the title role.
Valfer
tapef...@webtv.net (Leonard Tillman) wrote in message news:<7222-3EF...@storefull-2273.public.lawson.webtv.net>...