The perceived obstacles to playability were two—first, that these operas were undramatic (Dent, rev. ed., 1949: ” . . . it is difficult to pick out a single opera in which he [Handel] shows a consistent and continuous sense of drama . . . Handel’s audiences did not want real drama; they wanted fine singing. Burney analyzes every one of the operas, but he never even comes near telling us what they are about.”), and second, that so many of the principal roles were written for castrati, necessitating that they now be taken by women (dramatically implausible, especially with heroic figures) or by male singers, requiring octave transpositions and so altering harmonic and vocal balances. (Lang confronted this problem—see below—but Dent avoided it, at least in the cited volume. Another book of many virtues, Michael F. Robinson’s Opera Before Mozart, published in 1966, managed to discuss nearly every aspect of the Baroques of several nations without so much as mentioning it.)  Performance-practice research, directorial innovation, and shifting notions on vocal aesthetics have taken us a long distance from the attitudes described above, but the concerns about playability and vocality are by no means frivolous. The former, I think, is best discussed in the context of the two videos evaluated below. The latter merits some preparatory argumentation.

To start, I’ll concede that neither female singers in male roles nor transposition for male voices is ideal. But their drawbacks are often exaggerated. If we can accept the “pants role” tradition of later styles (and not only for adolescent supporting characters, but for Donizetti’s Orsini or Rossini’s Tancredi), we can certainly accommodate it in Handel’s. Its success depends on the performer. As for transposition, it can in theory be troublesome in ensembles and true duets (i. e., people actually singing together, not merely in alternation). But these are rare in Handel and most opera seria, and can surely be managed through sensitive casting and control of dynamics—the modern ear, in fact, will usually appreciate the relief from pervasive head-voice timbres, and a filling-in of the lower range. Lang joins battle with Dent and other scholars of the time on this topic (op. cit., pp. 169-73), and in my judgment his arguments retain validity.

Lang, however, though certainly aware of the male falsetto as a vocality in use in church and other settings (male altos like Russell Oberlin, for instance, were occasionally to be heard in Messiah performances, the Pro Musica’s Play of Daniel, and other early-music events), was not obliged to account for the “countertenor” as the default “solution” to the castrato casting problem. This is another subject discussed in Opera as Opera (pp. 315-318), but perhaps I can refine it here with pertinence to Agrippina. The male falsetto is of very marginal use in opera of any kind, and of scant value as a substitute for castrato vocalism. The problem is not so much range at the high end (the better falsettists du jour have acquired the notes needed for alto, mezzo, and some soprano writing) or floridity (some of them do very well). It lies, rather, in an insufficiency of strength and timbral interest of tone throughout the range, but especially in the lower octave, and the lack of vibrancy that attaches to well-developed adult voices of either sex. If the visual/aural contradictions inherent in brutal rulers or great generals or knightly heroes being represented by women’s voices and bodies can cause some titters, that of the same figures pretended to by buff males in falsetto elicits guffaws. It requires a willful blind-and-deafness to feign otherwise.