SALUTING THE CONTRALTO

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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Sir Thomas Beecham quipped that the imposing sound of Dame Clara Butt could be heard on the other side of the English Channel (https://youtu.be/ZvbsOiENM34 ) She is heard here in the drinking song from Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. Alright, she is indisputably an acquired taste – one that I have. Get past all the jokes about steroids and do listen to Madame Butt’s agility, unabashed use of the registers, including some very nice above the staff embellishments.

 Richard Strauss joked with the orchestra during the dress rehearsal of the premiere of Elektra: “Lauter! Lauter! Ich kann die Stimme von Frau Schumann-Heink noch hören!“

 And then Gilbert and Sullivan wrote cartoonish battleax parts like Buttercup and Katisha for the contraltos of their day. Here’s D’Oily Carte stalwart Bertha Lewis in the HMS Pinafore Little Buttercup ditty: https://youtu.be/if8TGnc6cAo

Whatever happened to the great tradition of contralto singing that goes back to Handel’s London female stars and then culminates with Rossini’s prima donnas? Should we blame Verdi and Wagner for largely ignoring the maternal, deep velvety quality of the contralto voice?

Thank goodness for Meyerbeer in France, who contributed the part of Fidès to the canon. Listen to Ernestine Schumann Heink tear fiercely into the air O, Prêtres de Baal in Le prophète with its two octaves mine field: https://youtu.be/qDH5BLiomBE

Maybe Gounod’s Siebel in Faust should always be sung by a contralto, certainly as sung here by Karin Branzel: https://youtu.be/eTqGQCkV6KQ?list=PLAsXkNcwABnbGrOk70JfmlQy5EaymhmlA)

 Russia? All those nannies in the operas of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky are written for contraltos. Here’s a spectacular Bolshoi star, Varvara Gargarina in a 1948 recording of the Princess‘ aria from Dargomishky‘s The Mermaid.    https://youtu.be/-5MXFOEDkjI

 Listen to Lili Chookasian’s in the Verdi Requiem and celebrate what a good contralto can accomplish. For my money, no mezzo-soprano I can think of, maybe Marilyn Horne excepted, can begin to bring to the Liber Scriptus the take no prisoners sound that Chookasian summons:

https://youtu.be/d-j8gDzY75c?list=PLGXCAUe7KcDPGCovOdwCqbsAlXLdP6ZOG (go to 14:00)

 Many contraltos have voiced complaints about how their voice teachers less thna gently coaxed their voices upwards to conquer the mezzo-soprano repertory. But, in fact, a great contralto in her prime – take Sigrid Onégin’s O don fatale – can sing the living daylights out of Eboli, (https://youtu.be/LyGUYF4idpc), high B’s and all, and still remain at the core a true contralto.

 Ewa Podleś has recorded and sung Rosina’s and Cenerentola’s arias time and again with flawless flexibility and an easy top voice. Here she is in Una voce poco fa (https://youtu.be/vYfvO3z998Y)

 But range is not the issue. Tessitura is.  Color is. Contraltos can reach the soprano High B and even top C  without breaking a sweat, but they do not like to live up there. Look at the music of Rossini’s Arbace or Isabella, written for the great Marietta Marcolini, and you will see that 90% of the notes lie between the C below the treble staff and the C in the middle of it. Occasional ascents to the top of the contralto’s high middle voice abound, but home sweet home lies between C and C.

Perhaps the problem with the absence of contraltos lies with the way music began to be orchestrated by Verdi and Wagner in mid-19th century. Whereas Rossini accompanied the busy vocal line with a small pit orchestra – rarely over forty – that strummed along as the singer pirouetted her way into vocal heights, Verdi and Wagner augmented the number of players in the pit, and began to have the orchestra double the vocal line. The only way that the agile contraltos of the Bel Canto era could keep up with these changes was by singing higher into an area where their voices, now at the top of their range could begin to cut through the mass of sound that separated them from the audience. And thus the mezzo-soprano came of age.

 We learn to be happy with our lot in life. If all the contralto singing we can get these days is from superb artists who choose to specialize in the Bach and Handel repertory, then so be it. Bring us more Nathalie Stutzmann and may she sing to us like this (https://youtu.be/DB44ehylkbk ) for a long time.

 

And then, let us not ever forget how those legendary recordings of Marian Anderson (https://youtu.be/xPGEiWAPm1M) and Kathleen Ferrier (https://youtu.be/1Npe-EabNBY)bring listening pleasure and spiritual comfort to all of us contralto-deprived ears.

Rafael de Acha

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”