Top C's

[Mashinka]

I enjoyed reading this article about modern day tenors and their struggles with top C’s

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre...icle2259485.ece

I Don’t think Alvarez, wonderful though he is, can rival the memory of Pavarotti. He really strained with 'Di quella pira', and never had the soaring quality I expect from that aria. It was the American Azucena Stephanie Blythe who wowed the audience on the first night at Covent Garden the other week in Il Trovatore not Alvarez, in fact Ms Blythe looked astonished at the response she received when she took her bow. But the Covent Garden opera buffs recognize a great voice when they hear one and she really was fantastic.

It’s not just at La Scala where they boo as I’ve witnessed a Manrico being booed off stage in London before now. Zeffirelli makes a good point though; perhaps it is better to shelve an opera than have it under-performed.

Florez is very much my favourite these days, but on the night I saw him in La Fille du Regiment he did not sing nine top C’s, but five b flats instead, though I’ve heard him sing the nine in concert. Perhaps top C’s are the operatic equivalent of those fouettés being discussed on another thread, virtuosic but not always necessary?

[richard53dog]

I enjoyed reading this article about modern day tenors and their struggles with top C’s

Florez is very much my favourite these days, but on the night I saw him in La Fille du Regiment he did not sing nine top C’s, but five b flats instead, though I’ve heard him sing the nine in concert. Perhaps top C’s are the operatic equivalent of those fouettés being discussed on another thread, virtuosic but not always necessary?

Well, opera singers have an easier "out" from high notes that are difficult than dancers do with difficult steps. They can use transpositions, or lowering the key of an aria or a section of it. To all in the audience except those with the keenest sense of pitch

(either absolute or relative), it's hard to tell the difference.

So much of the time, if not most of the time, Manrico's will sing Di Quella Pira in a downward transposition,

resulting in them singing a climactic High B rather than a C. Rodolfo and Mimi will end Act 1 of La Boheme

on a B rather than a C. Most of the audience won't notice, which is very different than Odile not doing her fouettes. Maybe an equivalent for her would be substituting 24 or 16 turns (to me 16 is the bottom limit, if you can't do 16, do another step)

Pavarotti did make a huge splash with Fille 40 years ago in London and then about 5 years later in NYC.

He was dubbed "the King of the High C's" here and on a later LP , but this was a bit ironic. From the mid 70's

on, Pav eliminated many, many High C's in performance. Ironically when returned to Fille at the Met many years later, he transposed Mes Ami down so the high notes, like Florez's, were just Bflats.

[dirac]

I recall that Verdi didn't write the high C in "Di quella pira" but he did consent to the interpolation - with the proviso that the C be a good one.

richard53dog writes:

He was dubbed "the King of the High C's" here and on a later LP

One of the first opera LPs I ever owned. As a kid, I was most impressed.

[Klavier]

I recall that Verdi didn't write the high C in "Di quella pira" but he did consent to the interpolation - with the proviso that the C be a good one.

That is correct. As written, the last tenor note in Dqp is a G, which makes a perfect harmonization to the C and E's held by the chorus. Elsewhere in the opera, Manrico never goes above an A, except for a couple of optional B flats. Fact is that tenor voices were generally lighter in the early Italian ottocento, and the belted high C one hears at the end of Act Three in Trovatore really distorts Verdi's intent, even if he eventually gave in on the one occasion dirac quotes.

[dirac]

I recall that Verdi didn't write the high C in "Di quella pira" but he did consent to the interpolation - with the proviso that the C be a good one.

That is correct. As written, the last tenor note in Dqp is a G, which makes a perfect harmonization to the C and E's held by the chorus. Elsewhere in the opera, Manrico never goes above an A, except for a couple of optional B flats. Fact is that tenor voices were generally lighter in the early Italian ottocento, and the belted high C one hears at the end of Act Three in Trovatore really distorts Verdi's intent, even if he eventually gave in on the one occasion dirac quotes.

Thank you for the further details, Klavier.

[Klavier]

Rodolfo and Mimi will end Act 1 of La Boheme on a B rather than a C.

Another, even more vulgar distortion of the composer's intent. As written, Mimi soars from high A to high C, and Rodolfo from F (not very high for a tenor) down to E. Both pianissimo! More often than not, what one hears is a fortissimo belt-fest for both singers in unison, completely destroying the poetry of that ending.

[dirac]

Rodolfo and Mimi will end Act 1 of La Boheme on a B rather than a C.

Another, even more vulgar distortion of the composer's intent. As written, Mimi soars from high A to high C, and Rodolfo from F (not very high for a tenor) down to E. Both pianissimo! More often than not, what one hears is a fortissimo belt-fest for both singers in unison, completely destroying the poetry of that ending.

Most of the audience doesn't care, so long as it's loud.

[Anthony_NYC]

Another, even more vulgar distortion of the composer's intent. As written, Mimi soars from high A to high C, and Rodolfo from F (not very high for a tenor) down to E. Both pianissimo! More often than not, what one hears is a fortissimo belt-fest for both singers in unison, completely destroying the poetry of that ending.

Bless you for saying that. I don't recall *ever* hearing it sung as written on stage, only on recordings. It's so much more touching.

[bart]

The last few posts remind me of the following from the Independent article under discussion.

It's a little ironic that, while the top notes get the top ovations, for the singers who really have the voice for them they're not the hardest part of the show - nor even the most rewarding. "When I sang my very first Manrico in Parma last season, I had a wonderful response after 'Di quella pira' and I was very pleased to hear an enthusiastic reaction from this difficult audience," Alvarez recounts. "What gave me even more satisfaction, though, was what happened in the opera's final scene." During a particularly impassioned phrase in the last duet, Alvarez took the volume down instead of up. "Someone in the audience shouted 'grazie'. This one expression of thanks meant more to me than the whole audience screaming 'bravo' at the end of 'Di quella pira'. It meant so much to me to know that they had understood what I was trying to communicate.

"Later, people actually thanked me for 'helping them discover the fourth act' of Il trovatore, in which the duet between Manrico and Azucena is perhaps the best music in the opera. Too often they hadn't looked beyond the big note in 'Di quella pira', although it arrives at a rather emotionally silly moment in the story. When you know that the audience has 'got' what you are trying to achieve, it makes it all worth it," he says. "I guess that's what singing is really all about."

[Mashinka]

Juan Diego Florez appears to have won over the audience at La Scala. Although I was a little disappointed when he sang five b flats instead of nine C's, he is wonderful in this role and I can't imagine the Milanese reacting any differently.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle1421347.ece