THE BEL CANTO VOCAL TECHNIQUE FOR TENOR

As I briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, there is a fundamental episode in the History of the opera that upset the understanding and practise of vocal technique. In 1831, Rossini premiered in Lucca his Italian version of Guglielmo Tell, presented two years before in Paris. Paradoxically, the main tenor role – Arnold – was reserved for a French singer by the name of Gilbert-Louis Duprez (1806 – 1896). Duprez sang almost the entire performance using the full voice in the whole range of the voice: or what we now know as voce di petto (chest voice). This choice (which was especially challenging for an extremely complicated and high role like Arnold) impressed the audience so much, that the old way of singing in the high register (i.e. in pure falsetto) immediately fell out of favour. But this raises the question about what were the principal changes that affected vocal technique after this episode. In light of this, I wish to focus on two of the main characteristics of vocal technique that clearly changed during this period of music history, namely:

• The process of breathing began to be understood as a low-breathing, or as it is more formally known: abdominal-costal-diaphragmatic breathing. This stands in opposition to the earlier method of breathing that typically occurred in a higher region of the body and did not necessary involve the abdominal region.
• The singer had to find a strategy in order to ‘carry’ the chest voice into a higher tessitura. The technique for making this possible became known as the ‘covering of the voice’ and this involved modifying the vocal tract position after the passaggio region to allow the voice resonating in a dark and powerful way.

As a direct consequence of this, the voice had a bigger percent of chest voice in the medium and high regions than was present with the earlier technique. According to the ideas exposed on the previous chapter, this allowed composers to increase further the number of musicians in the orchestra, and to write vocal lines in a way that was more similar to the spoken voice. It is exactly at this moment of the music history when Donizetti and Bellini start to adapt some of their tenor roles to this new way of singing; consequently opening the door to Romantic opera and paving the way for Verdi, Wagner and the Veristi, which established the basis of our modern understanding of vocal technique. Ironically, anyone who is able to master these vocal techniques (such as being able to control their low breathing, and the ‘covering of the voice’ in and after the passaggio region in order to reach the high register in full voice) is now called a master of the bel canto technique.

But what happened before Duprez’s time? What was the technical idea used by the bel canto tenors of this time? To answer these questions it is necessary to understand one of the most representative texts that outlined what the bel canto technique consisted of; this can be found in Manuel García’s treatise titled, A complete treatise on the art of singing. The first part of this Spanish baritone’s treatise was originally published in Paris in 1840. His father, Manuel García Sr., was one of the most beloved tenors of Rossini. The senior García embodied a perfect example of the bel canto ideal, who also espoused this approach to singing to his son, who then wrote down this precious information into his treatise.

As it was mentioned before, one of the technical revolutions of the French tenor Duprez was his new understanding towards the overall breathing process. Utilizing the lower breath allowed him a more powerful and darker sound. However, García (son) wrote about something slightly different when he spoke about the inhalation process. He claims that “[t]o breathe easily: keep the head straight, the back upright and without tensions, free the breast. Then, with slow and regular movement, lift the breast and tuck inside the upper part of the stomach”[1]. For him, the breathing process does not begin in the lower part of the abdomen but occurs in the breast; much higher up. Obtained through this process was the leggerezza di fiato, which confirms the idea of clarity in vocal sound, fundamental quality of the bel canto style.

The second main technical change achieved by Duprez was the aforementioned ‘covering of the voice’ after the passaggio region. This new understanding of how to use natural resonators in the human body lead to the division of the voice into three registers. These are now commonly known to us as: chest voice, medium voice (including the passaggio region), and head voice. However, in his treatise García describes only two registers for the male voice, namely, chest (or voce di petto) and falsetto.

In his treatise, Agricola criticises the use of undeveloped falsetto as an acceptable singing technique, reinforcing the idea that the falsetto (just as it was described by García 100 years later) should be a well-supported and ‘strong’ voice; in fact, an idea that is closer to the previously described concept of falsettone. Although we can only make assumptions about this topic, it is safe to assume that bel canto singers never reached the high register (in other words, above the passaggio) with full chest voice.  To reinforce this idea, it is good to come back to the 1831 account of Duprez’s singing a high-C in full chest voice during a representation of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (described earlier in this chapter). When Rossini heard his opera performed this way, he said that the sound of the tenor reaching the high tones in full voice was like the “screeching of a slaughtered chicken”[7]. Furthermore, in 1858, in a letter written by the Belgian composer Edmond Michotte, it is possible to find the words said by Rossini after a musical soirée and transcribed by Michotte. According to the letter, Rossini affirmed that that the bel canto tradition was lost forever.[8]

But this is not the only episode in History that criticizes the singing technique that deviates from the old Italian singing principles. For instance, in 1778, in a letter to his father, Mozart wrote: “And their singing! Good Lord! Let me never hear a French woman singing Italian arias. I can forgive her if she screeches out her French trash, but not if she ruins good music. It is unbearable”[9]. Mozart and Agricola would have likely agreed, as the goal of Agricola, when he published his book, was to bring the Italian school of singing to the ‘undeveloped’ German singers. In total, these three separate accounts (Agricola’s, Mozart’s and Rossini’s), all disparage a more divergent way of singing found outside of Italy and often in France and Germany, and this underscores that Agricola was an advocate for the older Italian singing technique, which always was – and remains – the bel canto.

In this sense, what happened in 1831 was more than an anecdote. It was the beginning of a new vision of the voice. Even tenors who were familiar with the old singing technique (i.e the bel canto technique) were encouraged to change their singing style in order to perform in new roles. This is a fascinating moment in the history of opera, which leads to roles like Edgardo, from Donizzetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, a work written in 1835 specifically for Duprez on account of his new singing manner. Additionally, roles like Gualtiero or Arturo, were both written by Bellini for the Italian tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini (who was a famous bel canto tenor active throughout the first part of the 19^th century). The first role mentioned above, Edgardo, is a very dramatic one: written mainly in a medium tessitura; with a very large orchestral accompaniment; and stylistically on the cusp of the aesthetic of Romanticism. Conversely, the other two roles, were composed by Bellini in an extremely high tessitura (even featuring an F₅ in the part of Arturo) and clearly follow the precepts of the old bel canto school. The different styles of writing in these aforementioned roles, as well as the completely contrasting visions of the tenor voice composed by Donizzetti and Bellini, all help us to understand the change in paradigm that affected the voice at that historical moment. And there is no better story to explain this change of aesthetic than the figure of Adolphe Nourrit, a French tenor who was a serious artistic rival to Duprez and example of the pure bel canto technique

[Nourrit was unable] to accept any comparison or competition between [him and Duprez]. This lead him to attempt a journey to Italy in hopes of acquiring the technique that gave Duprez his success. Unfortunately, Nourrit’s attempt at acquiring an Italian technique was mostly unsuccessful. […] His subsequent failure to acquire an Italian technique of singing left him without a musical home. This along with chronic illness drove him mad to the point where he took his life at the age of thirty-seven.[10]

In this respect, Nourrit metaphorically represents the death of the bel canto and the birth of an entirely new musical era.

As García states in the first part of his treatise:

The common opinion of singers is that the falsetto voice is a specific register, different at the same time from the natural chest voice and from the head voice. But this is not so: the falsetto voice and the head voice are part of a same and unique register[2].

García’s above affirmation can be extremely confusing to modern singers, since today there is a difference between the falsetto register and the head voice. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that the idea and the concept falsetto is not the same now as it was two centuries before. What García most likely meant is that a type of vocal emission, similar to our idea of falsetto with respect to its physiology, was one that was different in terms of its overall sonority. To avoid misunderstandings, one should not forget that for Italian singers of that period, the transition between vocal registers had to be as smooth and as subtle as possible. This way of thinking has consequently led us to think that the only difference between the old and the modern idea of falsetto is in the amount of chest voice that is mixed into the process of vocalization. The modern understanding assumes that there is no chest voice mixed during the use of the falsetto technique, producing generally a weak and poor sound, not accepted as a legitimate sound on the stage for the bel canto singers of the past. It is then assumable that, in order to avoid that weakness, falsetto was probably a type of sound that resonated most in the head, but was not completely absent of chest voice. This idea is likely closer to the modern concept of falsettone, popularized by the Italian baritone Antonio Cotogni at the end of the 19^th century, and even described by the great tenor Franco Corelli in an interview made during the second half of the 20^th century: “The verismo tenor […] must have chiaroscuro, contrast. You can’t sing some notes in falsettone—no more of that!—you’ve got to sing with your real voice even when you sing softly”.[3] Surely here, Corelli understands the falsettone as the mix of falsetto and chest voice. This is an idea that should be kept in mind when we try to think about the words of García about falsetto.

However, García was not the first person that wrote about this issues. In 1757, 100 years before Garcia’s text, Johann Friedrich Agricola published his own treatise Anleitung zur Singekunst. Comparing García and Agricola thoughts on falsetto and the covering of the voice, we can see that many technical ideas remained roughly the same until the French tenor Duprez’s started ‘his’ voice technique revolution in 1831. Agricola also talks about falsetto, although he makes a distinction between this technique and the head voice. Additionally, he was critical of the division made by the Italians (e.g. of Francesco Tosi) which only recognized two registers: chest voice and falsetto voice.  Agricola defines the head voice as the region of the voice where “the opening of the windpipe is softer and thus less elastic; more narrow; and the lungs are not as expandable”[4] . For that reason he affirms that “the chest voice is generally stronger than the head voice”[5]. However, Agricola is less clear when he tries to define the production of the falsetto voice. He does though follow up this definition by extending the understanding of falsetto to being more specific to the quality of sound rather than being determined chiefly by register. According to him, “[t]he falsetto generally starts […] in the tenor with A₄ […]. In the head voice, however, the falsetto tones generally start [for tenors] with E₄ or F₄”[6]. Paradoxically, Agricola’s definition of falsetto is closer to the modern idea of falsetto and head voice than García’s. The next two audio examples will show that Agricola was exactly correct in describing precise regions of the tenor voice where the falsetto sound can be produced.

Example 1: Tenor voice from C₃ until C₅ with use of falsetto after F₄

                                                Figure 1. Division of the voice made by Manuel García

Example 2: Tenor voice from C₃ until C₅ without use of falsetto after F₄

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