Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

I Puritani
The Puritans

The Means and Ends of Arturo's High F

Gregory Bloch

There are many operas in the standard repertory that are known by a single aria, or even a single dramatic moment, at the expense of the rest of the work. But Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani is perhaps unique for being famous for a single note: the tenor Arturo's high F in the third act ensemble "Credeasi, misera." This note is exactly one octave lower than the soprano high F in Mozart's The Magic Flute, the highest note in the standard operatic repertory. But while other coloratura soprano roles approach this stratospheric limit (and some concert works surpass it), in the case of tenors this note is completely beyond the pale of any standard practice today. A modern textbook or dictionary will give the highest note possible for a tenor to produce at or around a high C. Rubini/Arturo's F, a full fourth higher, is simply an impossibility.

It is possible, then, to conclude that there was something unique about the tenor for whom Bellini wrote this note, Giovanni Battista Rubini. He was indeed an extraordinary singer, one of the most famous singers in Europe in the 1830s and 40s. Laying the blame for the high F on Rubini himself makes sense, considering how closely tailored early nineteenth-century operas were for individual singers; often the cast and the number of arias for each singer were decided before the plot or even the librettist was chosen. I puritani itself was rewritten by Bellini for an entirely different cast in Naples, with the role of Arturo to be taken by Gilbert-Louis Duprez. In this so-called "Naples" version of I puritani (which was not performed until long after the composer's death) almost every number involving Arturo is transposed lower, and the melody of "Credeasi, misera" is given to the soprano.

But simply to conclude that Rubini could do something that modern singers cannot is unsatisfying. First of all, although Rubini's talent must have been formidable, he was not unique. In fact, an influential singing treatise of the period names Rubini as, literally, the textbook example of the type of very high tenor called the tenor-contraltino in Italian (haut-contre in French), suggesting that Rubini's voice was more norm than anomaly. Do we then conclude that tenors of the 1830 were innately different from the tenors of today? Biologically speaking, there is no reason to think so. Unlike the castrated singers of the eighteenth century, the early nineteenth-century tenor had no different equipment at his disposal. Rather, the question is one of changing practices, both in styles of performing and in methods of training, and one of changing critical standards of sound, expression, and performance.

The techniques of a tenor today and a tenor of the 1830s differ most dramatically in the use of vocal registers-the "falsetto," "head voice," and "chest voice" which have been the subject of vigorous and acrimonious debate for centuries. But while the definitions of these concepts have always been contentious, the result singers aim for is straightforward: the ideal opera voice today exhibits a general evenness across its entire range, with no significant audible disjunctions. In other words, a modern tenor cultivates a timbre for his highest notes that minimizes the contrast with the rest of his range. But this evening-out of the sound is only possible, generally speaking, up to high B or C, and so the color of the Puritani high F, and the entire high falsetto range, cannot be made to conform to the color of lower notes. It is this disjunction, the illusion that the singer has two different voices, that caused this high range to fall out of use by the beginning of the twentieth century, not the incapacity of later singers to produce the pitches.

In the 1830s, evenness of sound was simply not a goal for singers. To the contrary, there is evidence that, within limits, flexibility and contrast within a voice were valued more than power and unity. In fact, it seems that register shifts were only one of a number of "disjunctions" that Rubini cultivated; critics of the time speak of sudden shifts in volume, constant melodic ornamentation of the written line, and especially sobs and sighs with which he would break up a phrase. These techniques, including the sobbing and sighing, are described in technical detail in singing treatises of the nineteenth century, where they are presented as essential for tasteful interpretation.

The musicologist Sylviane Falcinelli has connected such descriptions of singing to a broader "disorder" in the aural experience of opera of the time. The conductor in the modern sense, coordinating all the musical forces perfectly in time, was a role that did not yet exist, and many descriptions of performance paint a picture in which the lack of synchronization among the players in the pit, and between the orchestra and the singers, would be totally unacceptable today. Likewise there are numerous accounts of audiences talking among themselves during the opera, paying attention only during particularly important moments, and shouting their approval or disapproval during the flow of the music. Of course, many of these descriptions come from authors complaining about precisely these aspects-there was obviously a point at which distraction in the audience and disorder in the music became unacceptable. But this does not change the fact that in an opera house in 1835, the typical level of aural "impurity"- all that noise extraneous to the notes as they appear on the page, whether coming from the opera house as a whole or from a single singer-was drastically different from anything we can hear in a performance today.

At the same time, Arturo/Rubini's high notes were not simply an opportunity for variety for its own sake. Rather, high notes are used for very particular expressive ends, ends which are almost diametrically opposed to how we have come to think about tenor's high notes in opera in the twentieth century. The plot of I puritani hinges on Arturo's conflict between love and duty, and Arturo's time on stage can be roughly divided into moments of lyrical reflection (love) and moments of heroic action (duty). Without exception, Arturo's highest notes occur in the lyrical, reflective passages. Arturo's first aria, "A te, o cara," a straightforward declaration of love, incorporates a high C# into its second verse. In the third act, the troubadour song with which he calls Elvira reaches a high B-flat, and the ensuing love duet contains a B-natural in Arturo's opening passage, and a high D in the faster final section. Finally we reach "Credeasi misera," in which Arturo, despairing for his life, thinks only of his beloved and her sufferings, as he ascends from A-flat, to D-flat, to the high F.

By way of contrast, Arturo's "heroic" passages never reach these vocal heights. In act one, after realizing that the doomed prisoner is Queen Enrichetta, he swears, above an agitated orchestral accompaniment, that he will save her. This is Arturo's most heroic, most active moment, and it has the lowest range of any extended passage of his in the opera, entirely confined below G. When the queen reproaches him to think of his beloved, his reply ("non parlar di lei") displays an only slightly higher range. A little later in act one Arturo is threatened by his rival Riccardo, and Arturo's music during their dramatic confrontation likewise remains (with one exception, in an improvisatory cadenza) in this middle range.

Other roles written for Rubini confirm what the score for Puritani suggests: that his highest range was sweet and expressive, while the middle register was forceful and aggressive. With respect to twentieth-century norms of singing, this scheme is completely upside-down. Both singers and listeners today have been conditioned by the works that form the core of the modern operatic repertory-Verdi, Wagner, and especially Puccini. Speaking very generally, in operas from the later nineteenth century and after, tenor high B's and C's are deployed at the most extroverted, impassioned, heroic moments-Prince Timur's "Vinceró!" ("I shall conquer!") in Puccini's Turandot has become the iconic example. One recent musicologist has even stated categorically that B-flat is the highest a tenor can sing and still sound credibly in love.

What happens, then, when tenors trained to sing Puccini are given a score like I puritani? Over the course of several decades, a performance tradition has developed in which some very high passages are rewritten to avoid notes like the high F, and high notes which Rubini would have sung as off-hand melodic ornamentation are transformed into climaxes by making them loud and holding them many, many times their written value. A particularly good example of this is the high C# in "A te, o cara." Already in the first run-through of the melody, it has begun to accrue ornaments; we hear the first half of the tune, with repeated yearning upward leaps, and then, in the second half, those same leaps are filled in with faster notes. After the contrasting section with chorus and other soloists, Arturo continues this process in the second verse, adding still more faster notes in the first half, and the fastest notes of all (a 32nd-note run) in the second half. But it is the ornament added to the first half of the second verse that includes the high C#, in the middle of the word "rammento" ("I remember")-indeed in the middle of the syllable "men." A modern tenor, participating in a long tradition of interpreters including Nicolai Gedda, Giuseppe di Stefano, and Alfredo Kraus, will hold this high C#, a written 16th-note, for several seconds with climactic force. Even to a listener who knows nothing about early nineteenth-century performance practice this moment seems incongruous, coming at the wrong place in the word (the middle), the wrong place in the verse (the beginning), and accompanying the wrong sentiment (a tender declaration of love). The same can be said of similar manufactured climaxes in the delicate moments of the third act, including "Credeasi, misera" itself. Arturo seems, in these moments, to be heroic and intimate and the same time.

There are those who argue that such performing traditions should be stripped away, and we should aim at recreating the sound that Bellini heard. However, although experimentation with performance style leads to compelling innovation and should be encouraged, the goal of recreating the experience of I puritani's first audience is absurd. Our experiences, like our operas, are our own, and we have both gained and lost. Perhaps in Paris in 1835 the experience of listening to opera was a more varied, "impure" experience. But for us, in Baltimore in 2004, the experience of listening to I puritani is equally impure, for at the same moment that the tenor onstage is singing, we can hear other voices, not always in harmony with his, of Giovanni Battista Rubini and 170 years of operatic tradition.

Gregory Bloch is currently a doctoral candidate in the musicology program of the University of California at Berkeley. In 2004-2005 he will be a Research Fellow at the Institute for Historical Research of the University of London. He is writing a dissertation on operatic tenors in the 1830s and 40s.

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