Arias for baritenor
polli...@yahoo.com
upcoming audition. I have already looked at these arias:
-Ah! per sempre io ti perdei (I Puritani)
-Recitar!...Vesti la giubba (I Pagliacci)
-Pari siamo! (Rigoletto)
-Cortigiani, vil razza dannata (Rigoletto)
-La donna e mobile (Rigoletto)
-Bella siccome un angelo (Don Pasquale)
-O Lola (Cavalleria Rusticana)
-Il cavallo scalpita (Cavalleria Rusticana)
-Tre sbirri, una carrozza (Tosca)
-Nulla, silenzio (Il Tabarro)
-Questo amor, vergogna mia (Edgar)
-Ah! Pescator (La Gioconda)
-Di Provenza (La Traviata)
-Zaza, piccola zingara (Zaza)
-Minnie, dalla mia casa son partito (La Fanciulla Del West)
I have a voice much like Jon Vickers's. I'm also a tragedian (I express
anger, sadness, and madness best), and I excel in both bel canto
(floated pianissimo, messa di voce, fioratura, etc...) and verismo
operas. Your thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.
Dan
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Mark D. Lew
> I am looking for more interesting baritone/tenor arias to sing for an
> upcoming audition. I have already looked at these arias:
>
> <snip>
>
> I have a voice much like Jon Vickers's. I'm also a tragedian (I express
> anger, sadness, and madness best), and I excel in both bel canto
> (floated pianissimo, messa di voce, fioratura, etc...) and verismo
> operas. Your thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.
Gee, sounds like you do a little bit of everything. That's great, but it's
hard to recommend an aria when you're so unspecific. The list of arias for
lyric OR dramatic tenor OR baritone could go on forever.
For high tragedy in the high baritone range, I suggest Francesco's mad
scene from act four of Verdi's _I Masnadieri_ and "Nulla! Silenzio!" from
Puccini's _Il Tabarro_ (ie, the replacement aria found in most scores, NOT
the original aria discussed here recently).
Among the standards missing from your list is "Eri tu" from _Ballo_ and
Iago's Credo from _Otello_, both by Verdi.
mdl
mari...@mindspring.com
I'm impressed with your description of your voice (sure would love to hear
you!), but confused by your range of arias. You describe pieces that go
from rather light/high spinto tenor (La donna e mobile; Turiddu's Siciliana)
to big Verdi, and heavier, baritone stuff. I have 2 suggestions for you:
1) Have you considered the possibility that you might be a heldentenor?
Maybe Siegmund would be interesting for you to look at ("Wintersturme" makes
a terrific audition aria), or Walther in Meistersinger (if you can sing the
Preislied really beautifully, I daresay ANYBODY would hire you on the
spot!).
2) If you think your voice is intrinsically more lyric than a heldentenor,
and if your tragedian's temperament and musical interests could turn in this
direction, you might look at the less vocally "impressive", but musically
and intellectually fascinating "baryton martin" repertoire in French opera.
You could probably easily handle the tessitura (and the Romantic tenderness
and elan) for Debussy's Pelleas. . . if this idea intrigues you, maybe
somebody else in our NG knows this masterpiece well enough to suggest an
appropriate audition excerpt from the role.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
best, Erda Schmerda
polli...@yahoo.com wrote in message <7jjv2l$vtq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>I am looking for more interesting baritone/tenor arias to sing for an
>upcoming audition. I have already looked at these arias:
>
>-Ah! per sempre io ti perdei (I Puritani)
>-Recitar!...Vesti la giubba (I Pagliacci)
>-Pari siamo! (Rigoletto)
>-Cortigiani, vil razza dannata (Rigoletto)
>-La donna e mobile (Rigoletto)
>-Bella siccome un angelo (Don Pasquale)
>-O Lola (Cavalleria Rusticana). . .etc.
can...@webtv.net
for the first time, it goes something like "Deep in your lovely eyes,
all of enchantment lies,,,".
and the "Prize Song" from Meistersinger is also a favorite of mine.
regards
jon
polli...@yahoo.com
>Gee, sounds like you do a little bit of everything. That's great, but
it's hard to recommend an aria when you're so unspecific. The list of
arias for lyric OR dramatic tenor OR baritone could go on forever.
>For high tragedy in the high baritone range, I suggest Francesco's mad
scene from act four of Verdi's _I Masnadieri_ and "Nulla! Silenzio!"
from Puccini's _Il Tabarro_ (ie, the replacement aria found in most
scores, NOT the original aria discussed here recently).
>Among the standards missing from your list is "Eri tu" from _Ballo_ and
Iago's Credo from _Otello_, both by Verdi.
I was very lucky when it came to choosing good teachers. My first voice
teacher and I developed my voice into a very large and dramatic
instrument, and the voice teacher that I have been with for 3 years now
emphasizes a mastery of the voice and of all the vocal arts. It's
really hard to be specific when I choose to do a little more than the
average singer. I really prefer to perform very emotionally complicated
roles though. I detest frivolous characterizations and fireworks if
that helps. I want to earn my applause legitimately by creating an
authentic theatrical experience.
For my audition I would like to display a broad variety of emotions,
characterizations, a broad variety of singing styles, tempi...I
basically want to show what I can do. I'd like to sing
everything from bel canto to verismo, and express all the great
emotions...love, hate, anger, fear, sadness, and madness.
About Francesco's mad scene...is it dramatically comparable to Lucia's,
or Elvira's, or Nabucco's? What causes his madness? Which emotions does
he express? Would you say that his aria could be the perfect vehicle
for a singing actor?
Thank you for your time,
polli...@yahoo.com
and arias that you've mentioned.
Thanks,
Mark D. Lew
> About Francesco's mad scene...is it dramatically comparable to Lucia's,
> or Elvira's, or Nabucco's? What causes his madness? Which emotions does
> he express? Would you say that his aria could be the perfect vehicle
> for a singing actor?
Answering the last question first, yes I do, and that's exactly why I
mentioned it. I know Masnadieri only from Donald Pippin's English
translation, which Pocket Opera produced last year (I was in the cast) and
reprised for a single show this year. What I really remember about the
piece is the dramatic intensity, not the musical content, and I have
neither score nor recording with which to check musical details. Our
baritone commented to me once that he loves the role because it's the only
really good operatic mad scene for a baritone.
Francesco Moor is one of Verdi's great villains. His evil lies not so much
in his immorality, but in his amorality. The story derives from Schiller's
_Die Räuber_, and Franz Moor is the "modern man" of German romanticism. In
an quasi-Nietzschean sort of way, he rejects God and the notion of good and
evil as superstitions which a man of will should rise above. In the course
of the story he rises to power through a treacherous scheme which entails
(he believes) murdering his father and his brother.
By act four, although Francesco has declared that he rejects the notion of
guilt, it appears that guilt gets the better of him anyway. He is haunted
by dreams in which he vividly experiences his day of judgment in which he
is condemned and dragged down to hell. It is in the course of relating the
dream to his henchman that he goes crazy. I'm not sure how much of that
comes across in the libretto and music alone. I imagine part of the reason
it was so effective is that the actor in our production invested so much
into the character throughout the opera and really went all out in the
final scene.
mdl
Mark D. Lew
> For my audition I would like to display a broad variety of emotions,
> characterizations, a broad variety of singing styles, tempi...I
> basically want to show what I can do. I'd like to sing
> everything from bel canto to verismo, and express all the great
> emotions...love, hate, anger, fear, sadness, and madness.
It's hard to pack so many different things into a single piece, but I must
again recommend "Eri tu" from _Ballo_.. Aside from being a simply fabulous
aria (I would, in fact, rate it as the single best aria Verdi wrote for any
voice, though there are several other worthy contenders) it exhibits an
unusually wide variety of emotions, and an equally wide variety of vocal
styles.
If you're trying to show everything you've got in just one song, I don't
think you'll find anything better. Going through your list, I'm afraid
"fear" is missing, and "madness" is only hinted at ... but it's definitely
got love, hate, anger, shame and sadness, with declamatory verismo as well
as nicely ornamented bel canto lines, a two-octave range (almost), and a
perfect opportunity (if you can pull it off) to finish the piece with a
messa di voce on high F.
If you've got the dramatic intensity to pull it off, I recommend you have
the accompanist start by playing the last two bars of Amelia's preceding
aria, and then on the fermata just stand there silently seething for about
ten seconds before you start singing.
mdl