Everything you need to know about the Tenor Voice | Operatic Voices #7
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
- Welcome to the 7th part in this series on the operatic voice (although feel free to watch these videos in any order without losing the full effect).
Chapters:
00:00 Pre-Title 'Hello' etc.
00:05 Opening Titles
00:11 Introduction to the Tenor Voice
01:13 The Tenor Voice: character-type & sub-categories
01:51 vocal characteristics & range
02:01 existing repertoire
02:58 famous tenor voices
03:28 Leggiero Tenor
04:22 Tenore Contraltino
05:57 Tenore di Grazia or Leggero Tenor
09:54 Lyric Tenor
10:39 Spinto Tenor
12:41 Dramatic Tenor
14:46 Heldentenor
16:18 Baritenor
16:51 Summary
17:21 outtakes
17:41 Closing Titles
List of Musical Examples (in order of appearance):
'Nessun Dorma' from Turandot (1924) by Giacomo Puccini
'Che gelida manina' from La Bohème (1895) by Giacomo Puccini
Forging Song from Der Ring des Nibelungen (1857[?]), by Richard Wagner
'Dovunqe al mondo' from Madama Butterfly (1904) by Giacomo Puccini
'Languir per una bella'from L'italiana in Algeri (1813) by Gioachino Rossini
The duo of Don Ramiro and Cenerentola from La Cenerentola (1817) by
Gualtiero's Aria from Il pirata (1827) by Vincenzo Bellini
'Perdona...' from La sonnambula (1831) by Vincenzo Bellini
(Nemorino): L'elisir d'amore (1832) by Gaetano Donizetti
(Ernesto): Don Pasquale (1842) by Gaetano Donizetti
'Quoi? Vous M'aimez?' from La fille du régiment (1839) by Gaetano Donizetti
(Hoffman): Les Contes d'Hoffmann (1881) by Jacques Offenbach
(Radamès): Aida (1870) by Giuseppe Verdi
‘Celeste Aida’ from Aida (1870) by Giuseppe Verdi
‘Vesti la giubba’ from Pagliacci (1892) by Ruggero Leoncavallo
(Georges Brown): La dame blanche (1825) by François-Adrien Boieldieu
'Mes amis, écoutez l'histoire' from Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) by Adolphe Adam
(Nadir): Les Pêcheurs de Perles (1863) by Georges Bizet
'Anges du paradis' from Mireille (1864) by Charles Gounod
'Prendre le dessin d'un bijou' from Lakmé (1883) by Léo Delibes
'Amfortas! Die Wunde!' from Parsifal (1882) by Richard Wagner
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Very informative, thank you.
No mention of how long it actually takes to become a proficient "any" tenor? Probably essential information (especially after almost a receiving a decade of training!) As long as your disseminating this info to the younger gens, then I'm all for gen z'rs delivering this content... good onya mate
Well there’s no set amount of time for that. Everyone is different and their voices develop differently.
@@AlannahMarie No there certainly isn’t… just though it may have been worth a mention of one of the maestros of the past so all your followers could get an idea the mammoth amount of time for development involved 🙃 And thus why the tenor voice is one of the most”revered” so to speak.
Anyhow , I commend you on your channel . I myself am subscribed to the old school of singing and training, with my mentor who trained in Italy 🇮🇹
All the elements to build this instrument are paramount and without having each one in place , you just cannot classified a “real tenor” as Maestro Pavarotti put it 😉
Why do people over emphasise the heavy chest voice in tenors? Personally I find that sound to be quite annoying so I'm confused to why many commenters under tenor videos praise it so highly. In fact some of them are so strict with what a tenor should sound like, I wonder who made all these rules? I'm new to opera and would love to listen to what tenor purists consider to be bad technique. I wonder who are some light and smooth tenors that I can listen to?
Thanks for your comment, regarding the chest voice, it’s because the extension in the modal voice is part of what defines a tenor. A bass singer could sing high using falsetto, for example, but this is not tenor. Also, it traditionally had to be powerful to carry over an orchestra and reach the back of an audience, therefore a powerful chest voice is required. This tradition has remained in classical training today. Of course, today we can use microphone etc. but when Classical singing techniques were being developed, this was not an option. In terms of examples of tenor singers, I have included many in this video that demonstrate the different types of tenor voice.
Most of the popular tenor roles was written to be sung with chest voice. The chest voice was basically "discovered" around 1850, that really changed the role of the tenor in opera. Before that tenors used to sing high notes in falsetto. By using covering or mixed voice in contemporary music, a singer can carry their more powerful chest voice to higher notes. As a result, roles have been written for these types of tenors. Orchestras also became bigger and bigger, and brass instruments started to be used. Verdi was the first one who started writing really heroic roles for these new breeds of tenors. Before that the tenor voice was not very popular. Falsetto would be too soft for these orchestras.
These days basically everyone is singing in the tenor range (within popular music men and women both sing in the tenor and alto range), so it is a very popular range to sing in.
The voices in opera represents the characters. Lyric tenors are usually young men, they are poets such as Rodolfo in la Boheme. Spinto and dramatic tenors plays roles with authority. They play younger men who are princes, warlords or fighters. Or very often, extremely mentally unstable characters. Or revolutionaries such as Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca, it is a spinto part because there are some dramatic passages and Mario Cavaradossi is a fighter. So the voice has to reflect that personality. Or you get the Duke in Rigoletto, he is a witty, rich playboy, so he is sung by a lyric tenor.
Every single tenor wants to sing Nessun Dorma, but the role is really meant for a dramatic tenor. Pavarotti sang the role live only 5 times; he quickly saw that the role was too big for him. Even Pavarotti did not have much business singing Nessun Dorma. It is a dramatic role because Calaf is a prince, the orchestra in Turandot is also a 90 piece orchestra set, it is as big as a Wagnerian orchestra. You sing alongside a very powerful dramatic soprano. These are the considerations for why or how voices are used in opera.
What is the correct technique? A tenor needs balance, yes even dramatic tenors. A tenor needs a chiaroscuro sound. That means dark and bright. The chest voice does have dak sound, that is why it must be balanced with a light or bright sound on the high notes of the tenors. Most importantly tenors needs squillo. Squillo creates a bright sound to balance the dark sound.
This is the problem these days. I don't know to which tenors you have been listening to.
But most well known tenors today don't have squillo, that balances out the sound. This is especially jarring in the spinto and dramatic repertoire. There hasn't been any real spinto or dramatic tenors for the past 40 years. Opera houses pay lyric tenors a lot of money to sing these heavy roles. Because the heavy roles are very every popular.
This practice creates a bad sound, because the singer has to push his voice beyond its limits, many light tenor voices have been destroyed in the process. That might perhaps be the reason why you have not enjoyed the sound of the heavier tenors, there have not been any for the past 40 years, in the big opera houses or popular media.
Here is the perfect example of a dramatic tenor, yes, he does have a dark bronze sounding voice, but his high notes are very bright and full of squillo. In fact the heavier tenors needs to have much more squillo then the lighter tenors, to balance out the sound and simply because they have much bigger voices. Mario Del Monaco:
czcams.com/video/RzX7s_Ygm0g/video.html
(He is playing a Roman Commander, that is the sound that a Roman Commander needs to have.)
The more dramatic singers can deliver emotion that light singers are not able to achieve, check out the desperation here:
czcams.com/video/vw6L0jFseUI/video.html
And here a touch of aggression and madness (you need lot of aggression to end up killing your wife even if she did cheat), a light voice just doesn't really work here:
czcams.com/video/PY6Cq7gPSxA/video.html
If a tenor with a light voice tried to sing in this manner constantly, they would completely destroy their voice, and this happens a lot. But this is an example of a balanced dramatic/ spinto sound with bright high notes full of squillo.
As for great leggero tenors, Alfredo Kaus was one of the best, you cannot go wrong with him. One of my personal favourites is Joseph Scmidt he does colouratira and even trills. Extremely flexible voice. Jerry Hadley had great technique and sang leggero roles very well. Ferrucio Tagliavini is somewhat forgotten but he was quite good in the light repertoire. Old legends such as Tito Schipa. Di Stefano had a very nice light voice in his early years. Fritz Wunderlich was great in German repertoire.
What do you think about what voice type Dimash Qudaibergen is?
In case if you don't know him, check this video him singing Ogni Pietra.
czcams.com/video/8k1AHMxq-0g/video.html&ab_channel=Dimash48%E5%A4%AA%E5%90%8E%E9%A9%BE%E5%88%B0
Hi, thanks for this. I’ve read he has a wide range; however on first listening to him sing Ogni Pietra, his tessitura and timbre are like that of a light baritone. But he could feasibly extend his range into the tenor. I’d say tenor to be safe. I have a video coming out on different types of baritone voice so there’ll be lots more information in that.
He is a leggero tenor. It is really not difficult to understand his voice type. He has a very light voice.
@@ZENOBlAmusic agree! just because timbre change from mix voice, so many people think he sing falsetto
@@ZENOBlAmusic Bingo! Why are we even watching this? lol
@jonartand4754 Well you clearly aren’t. That comment was about an earlier comment (now deleted I notice). Not my video. I don’t talk about that singer in this video.
For what it’s worth it’s not actually THAT easy to define a voice according to a predefined system. Just because you say it is doesn’t make it so.