Sembrich was Polish and Tetrazzini Italian, and as with Pinkert and Barrientos, we can note the difference, despite which their technical arrangements and expressive choices are similar. In my book I offer little lists of great singers of each vocal type that fall on either side of an imaginary line  between the bright/lean/taut and dark/plump/loose contingents, noting that while we can hear the contrasts, great singers of either persuasion fall close to the midline. In the high soprano category, I place Tetrazzini on one side and Joan Sutherland on the other—two singers about as far apart in functional terms as possible while remaining great singers. For Sutherland there was neither precedent nor successor. There have been sopranos of lesser format who have sung in the looser, more “relaxed” postwar manner,^(I)) but none have approached Sutherland’s size and timbral span of voice, or her exuberant, full-throated sweep into the sopracuti regions. In Tetrazzini’s case, though, we can recognize in her singing the same technical framework we’ve heard in the sopranos already considered, which was in fact held in common among nearly all the prominent soprano voices (both lyric and dramatic) of the fin de siècle and the two or three decades following. And since Tetrazzini was thirteen years younger than Sembrich, we are able to hear her at a younger age and on many more recordings, of increasingly improved technical quality. Among the many, there doesn’t seem to have been a “Qui la voce,” though there are plenty of arias of similar demands (e.g., the “Regnava” or “Ah, non credea“). But she did record the “Vien, diletto,” with a strength of engagement comparable only to Sembrich’s—in fact, the burst of rapid high staccati toward the end, punched through as with an ice pick, have no comparison I know of—and with her Italian openness of pronuncia that lends bite and sassiness to the tone, as well as the capacity for incising words into the line (e.g.,”Vien, ti posa sul mio cor” in a fashion not open to a warmer, looser engagement. And on all her recordings, we hear the voce di petto kicking in, on the upper edge of the passaggio at forte, a half- to full step lower at piano or on quickly passing notes.

All four of these sopranos, it is true, represent an era when virtuosity for its own sake was more highly valued than it is now. It is not necessary to “like” all their choices of ornamentation or melodic variation, their frequent rewritings of the written score amid which we can lose track of the musical destination or the connection to any necessity of expression. We would often have their strengths differently applied. But we do not have those strengths to deploy.

˜ ˜ ˜

There’s a clip, floating about in the virtual ether, of Riccardo Muti preaching his gospel of fidelity to the written note, in which he offers an entertaining version of a modern tenor “feeling” the music in the opening phrases of Arturo’s “A te, o cara.” Never mind “how I feel it,” he urges, sing the phrase as the composer has set it down “scientificamente,” and trust that that will carry the day. I wonder exactly how “scientifically” Bellini actually arrived at some of his decisions amid the preparation practices of the opera houses of his day,^(II) and I’ve never heard a tenor approach “A te, o cara” in quite the fashion Muti is sending up, but he’s making a valid point with respect to the misapplication of notions of emotional expression to music whose style doesn’t call for them. Presumably, he would also disapprove of much of the embellishment of Bellini’s music we hear from the sopranos I’ve just discussed, and of the casting of tenors whose principal qualification is an ability to attain to the F above high C that Giovanni Battista Rubini scaled back in 1835. The Arturo of the Met’s production is Lawrence Brownlee, as he has been for similar assignments over the past eighteen years. In fact, given the profusion of Bellini/Donizetti happy-ending operas^(III) proffered over the first half of this season (Fille du Régiment, Sonnambula, and now Puritani), we can safely declare him the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera. In a way, he is so on merit. His voice can sustain a legato and decently navigate fiorature, and he has acquired a good acquaintance with the stylistic requirements of this repertory, at least in their 21st Century modifications. He can also reach that high F. (There is a single one in the score, held solo and unaccompanied for one beat, and thus popping out from the movement of the Act 3 ensemble following the announcement of Arturo’s condemnation.) But at what cost? In a few notes on Idomeneo (see the post of 8/10/22 and, for more on the subject, Tenors: Bari- and Not, 11/22/23) I mentioned the distorted squeal produced by Michael Spyres at the end of his last-act aria. But that note was an outlier; Spyres sang everything else in the role in his normal, attractive baritenor adjustment. Brownlee, on the other hand, has stretched out the tone throughout his range, as if trying out progressively less resistant exercise bands, in order to access his own sopracuti, an octave below the sopranos’, along with the florid demands; with the result that his entire compass yields a small, thin-sounding voice with little-to-no variety of color save that ordained by the pitches themselves. After a very short time, it nags at the ear. ^(IV)