Everyone who loves opera has a number of
favourite singers. There are favourites
for each fach and era, and preferred interpreters of different roles, but there
is only one singer who tops your desert island list, whose voice you want to be
the final sound you hear. And anyone who
doesn't pick Tatiana Troyanos must be deaf.
Ha, ha, just kidding. It's a matter of personal taste. I like rich, round, lush voices, with power,
warmth, and depth, that don't thin out on top – or anywhere else. The voice alone, without visual cues or histrionics,
must convey every nuance of emotion for the character. Both the voice and the singer must radiate
gravitas and dignity, and the singer must remain the consummate professional
both on- and off-stage, no diva antics.
The voice must be by turns playful, sexy, regal, seductive, anguished,
overjoyed, despairing, and all with equal conviction, each note spinning out
with perfect technique, dynamics, and control.
So, of course we're talking mezzo. Heh, heh, sorry the truth hurts. I was once a soprano, or thought I was. I sang in a church choir for nine years, then
went off to college and studied voice with dreams of singing all the melodramatic
(Tosca) and consumptive (Mimi, Violetta) heroines. I wanted to play the lead, have the show-stopper
arias and duets, and get the tenor in the end (or die trying, depending on the
opera). But biology is destiny and at
the tender age of 20 I was given an ultimatum by a new teacher: You study with me as a mezzo, or not at
all. This felt like devastating news at
the time. "What operas have a mezzo
in the lead?", I wondered. Well,
let's see, there's Carmen. And
Carmen. Um, and, I guess Carmen. That's about it. Opera composers almost universally relegated
mezzos to supporting roles, such as the maid (who mostly stands around and
looks sympathetic as she listens to the soprano sing about her troubles with
the tenor); the stepmother (who is usually trying to have the soprano or the
tenor killed, sometimes both, occasionally well-deserved); the (losing)
competition for the tenor; and, most commonly, trouser roles in operas that,
back in the day, would have featured castrati.
The triumvirate of mezzo role types is known in the biz as
"witches, bitches, and britches".
We are the BAMFs of the opera world.
We don't take anyone's shit, least of all the goddamned tenor's. (We may occasionally fuck the baritone (or
the soprano, see trouser roles, above) but, hey, sopranos and tenors can't have
all the fun. Just pity the poor bass,
who never gets anyone.)
After a suitable period mourning that I'd
never utter a vitriolic "Scarpia, avanti a Dio!" as Tosca jumping off
the parapet, I embraced my mezzo-ness.
Sopranos, I rationalised, are a dime a dozen. Mezzos are rare and my type, dramatic, rarest
of all. We don't have many roles but, by
gods, you don't forget us.
You certainly don't forget Troyanos. I was lucky enough to see her perform at Lyric
Opera in Chicago as Romeo in Bellini's I
Capuleti and as Fricka in Das
Rheingold. She was booked to sing Carmen during my senior year of college
when I was spending Field Work Term as a backstage intern at the Lyric. That would have been heaven on earth but she
cancelled due to illness. When I moved
to NYC in August 1993, I was looking forward to seeing the many performances
she was scheduled to sing at the Met, but she died that month from breast
cancer, after having kept her illness a complete secret from everyone. She performed through treatments, and sang
for the patients in Lenox Hill Hospital the day she died.
So, the first performance I ended up seeing
at the Met was a memorial concert. In
tribute, I wore a sexy dress that I call my "Carmen dress". I sat in the audience and heard
a host of the luminaries of the opera world speak about their experiences working
with her, and then sing in her honour. At the
start, Maestro James Levine stood up and choked, "The idea that we are
gathered here to pay memorial tribute to Tatiana Troyanos is incomprehensible." I lost it at that point. I know life isn't fair, but Troyanos dies
young and Donald Trump is still alive -- really, universe?
I don't know that I can adequately
articulate what makes her voice stand out to me. One reviewer described it as, "larger than life yet intensely human, brilliant
yet warm, lyric yet dramatic." What
distinguishes a soprano from a mezzo is not range – a
soprano should have low notes, and a mezzo high ones. The difference comprises two factors:
tessitura and colour. The tessitura is
the range in which most of the notes in a piece fall. A soprano is more comfortable, and the voice
sounds more brilliant, in a higher tessitura.
A soprano singing a mezzo piece will sound dull, the voice will not be
shown off at its best in the lower tessitura.
A mezzo struggling to maintain the higher soprano tessitura will damage her
voice – as I did, luckily not permanently.
Colour refers to a darkness in the tone that is especially audible in
the lower register. A mezzo has this rich,
dark colour; a soprano doesn't. To
paraphrase a quote about pornography, you know it when you hear it.
An unfortunate-for-posterity side effect of
Troyanos' performance schedule (over 270 appearances in more than 22 roles at the
Met alone) was that she did not record nearly enough of her repertoire. I specialise in early music. She didn't, but she sang a few notable
roles. The tessitura of early music is
low enough that some parts shift between sopranos and mezzos at the director's
whim. The preference today is
almost always for a soprano in the female lead role, with a mezzo in drag as
the male lead. I think these directors
should be the first up against the wall, but that's a rant for another post. Few people know that before Troyanos sang the
titular role in Handel's Guilio Cesare in
Egitto, she recorded it as Cleopatra, in 1969. This was before authentic early music
performances came into vogue, so the lack of ornamentation on the da capos is
jarring to modern ears, but the odd simplicity also allows the clear tone and
astonishing beauty of Troyanos' voice to stand out in Cleopatra's arias:
Piangero la sorte mia
Da tempeste
Tu la mia stella sei
In 1975, she sang my most coveted opera
role (Poppea), in my very favourite opera (L'Incoronazione
di Poppea) in her San Francisco Opera debut, opposite Eric Tappy as Nerone. My aunt and uncle not only saw this
performance, they taped the broadcast off the radio on reel-to-reel tape. Many years later, they provided me with a
cassette tape of it. When I wore it out,
they made me another one. By the time I
wore that out, technology had marched on and they were able to make me a
CD. The perfection of Troyanos' voice in
this role is unmatched (and today's directors who cast Poppea as a soprano
should be required to listen to it at gunpoint). The best parts are not available on YouTube
so I can't share them in this post. The
seductiveness of her entrance duet with Nerone, as he reluctantly departs her
bed, is terrifying. A far better man than
he would have refused her nothing. Her
assurance to her worried old nurse that the fickle gods are on her side
features the strongest, clearest, most powerful high G's ever sung. I wish SFO had videoed this production but
that wasn't common back then. Someone
has posted the final duet, so you can at least hear the most beautiful duet in
all of opera sung by its greatest interpreter:
Pur ti miro
Listen to the glorious spin on "io son
tua". There isn't a singer alive
who can do that. (Believe me, I've
tried.)
You'd think that "Mon Coeur"
would be the safest go-to dramatic mezzo showpiece. It's lyrical and melodic, it's in French, it
lies in a comfortable tessitura, it highlights the darkness in the lower range,
and it doesn't even go up to a high G. If
you've got a big enough voice for it, how can you go wrong? Well, two ways, actually: The melisma requires stellar legato, and most
singers seem to misinterpret it as a love song.
It's a seduction song, not at all the same animal. Nine out of ten renditions of this aria are
unlistenably awful. (And don't get me
started on the sopranos who attempt it.)
I cringe to recall that I sang it, at 22, in my senior concert in
college. Why? Because I was young and stupid and no-one
told me not to. Troyanos, as you might
expect, gets it. She knows it's a
pull-out-all-the-stops seduction aria, and Samson doesn't stand a chance
against her Delilah:
Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix
My opera fantasy was always to win the Met
Council auditions with a jaw-dropping, standing-ovation-from-the-judges "O Don Fatale". Never mind that the cut-off age for the
competition is 30 and no-one under that age has any business touching that
aria. As will surprise no-one at this
point, I don't think any other singer can hold a candle to Troyanos'
Eboli. The first section is both
strident and anguished; the middle lyrical; and the final section brings the
fucking house down:
O Don Fatale
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