Now, I can hear your complaints before I even begin to say anything: “It’s not a voice type, it’s a type of stage role!” – You are absolutely correct. The travesti mezzo isn’t a voice type, but the roles require on the whole true lyric mezzo-sopranos, and they form such an important part of a lyric mezzo’s repertoire that they are worthy of discussion.
For those of you still wondering what I am talking about, it is the large group of roles known as “trouser” roles – mainly found in Mozart and Strauss operas – which require the mezzo to play the character of either a young man, or, before the rise of the counter-tenor, play a male role in Baroque opera that had originally been sung by castrati (castrato: a male singer who was castrated before his voice broke and therefore retained the purity of sound; a common practise between the 15th and 19th centuries, particularly in the Catholic Church.)
There are plenty of roles to choose from here, but the special ones which concern us will be the two roles of Cherubino from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Octavian from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Both present the mezzo with music of sublime artistic merit and characters that leave an audience in confusion over which sex they might be. In both cases, we have this strange scenario of a woman playing a boy who pretends to be a girl during the course of the opera. Although written over a hundred years apart, these roles are surprisingly similar, not necessarily in their stylistic approach, but in the type of voice they require and the type of character they present us with.
|
Let’s first look at the characters: both teenage boys, somewhere between 14 and19 years old. Both are in love with women generally (they are discovering their own sexuality), and both specifically in love with an older, higher-ranking lady (i.e. the Countess for Cherubino and the Marschallin for Octavian). By the end of the operas, both will have come to realise that such love, however strong, cannot hold them, and they will move on to younger women nearer their own age.
In Octavian’s case, it is this realisation that moves the plot forward and leads us to the beautifully tragic trio at the end of Act Three, where the Marschallin finally lets go of him so he can fulfil his love for Sophie, to whom he presented a silver rose on behalf of Marschallin’s brother, Baron Ochs.
Cherubino is of course so enamoured of anything female, that while singing the aria “Voi che sapete” to the Countess, flirts outrageously with Susanna, having already been caught by the Count in flagrante with Barbarina only the evening before!
Musically, both roles require a lyric mezzo-soprano capable of long phrasing and beauty of tone. Although the character of a boy is what they present, we must remember that these roles in particular were written especially for the female voice. Unlike the other “trouser” roles from Baroque opera which utilise a female voice because few male voices are capable of singing them, these two roles are the epitome of the “trouser” role which was especially written for the lyric mezzo-soprano.
Ian Wilson-Pope
|
