GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW) | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
16:13 Jun 25, 2018 |
Spanish to English translations [PRO] Music / Opera | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| ||||||
| Selected response from: Charles Davis Spain Local time: 08:29 | ||||||
Grading comment
|
Summary of answers provided | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
4 +3 | mezzo carattere tenor |
|
Summary of reference entries provided | |||
---|---|---|---|
Vocal category (tenor) fwiw/hth |
|
mezzo carattere tenor Explanation: As is so often the case with Italian musical terms, Spanish translates it and English leaves it in Italian. "Mezzo carattere should really go in italics; some people put it in quotation marks. This refers to a tenor who is midway between "serio" and "buffo" (comic). It refers in the first instance to a type of role, and also to a type of voice suited to that type of role. In opera, casting is largely by voice type: people are naturally endowed with a certain type of voice that suits them for the vocal requirements of certain types of parts. This tripartite classification of operatic roles as serious, comic and in-between goes back to eighteenth-century Italian opera and was very much current in Rossini's day. This is from a PhD on tenors in Mozart: "This dichotomy helps to define Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte as drammi giocosi, a hybrid operatic genre that mixes elements of opera seria and opera buffa, and features interactions between three distinct strata of characters: high (parti serie), middle (di mezzo carattere) and low (parti buffi). […] Goldoni combined character types from serious operas (parti serie), usually a pair of noble lovers, with the ragtag of servants, peasants and others (parti buffi) who populated his unalloyed comic librettos. Sometimes he also added roles that were halfway between the two in character (di mezzo carattere). His name for such an amalgam, applied fairly consistently from 1748 on, was dramma giocoso). […]” It doesn’t just apply to tenors; it refers to the dramatic nature of the character: “The middle characters (di mezzo carattere) of the opera are Don Giovanni and Donna Elvira.” https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Hinson_uncg_0154D_10297.pd... "That said, though, identifying a typical Rossinian triangle is far from straightforward [...] The prima donna's pre-eminence established and undisputed [...], in comic opera the corresponding love rôle was usually in the tenor range, and 'mezzo carattere' (that is, neither completely serious nor completely comic). The antagonist was a 'buffo', a male character of low vocal register, and a comic part [...] This vocal triangle is exemplified clearly by Isabella, Lindoro and Taddeo in L'Italiana in Algeri..." Emanuele Senici, The Cambridge Companion to Rossini, p. 100 https://books.google.es/books?id=aWTxdSgkDTwC&pg=PA100&lpg=P... So Lindoro is a mezzo carattere tenor role. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2018-06-25 17:50:21 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- "Yet critical appraisals of Baglioni by his contemporaries were mixed; and he never seems to have reached the highest rank in his profession, either as a mezzo carattere tenor--the singer who typically portrayed the serious young lover in comic operas--or as a tenor in opera seria" https://www.scribd.com/document/215229959/Antonio-Baglioni-M... From a review of a critical edition of L’Italiana in Algeri: "it is not always easy to find a bass with sufficient fluidity for Mustafà or a tenor di mezzo carattere for Lindoro who can patter and take in high C’s without effort" https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/66/1/73/1155077... However, Toni is right, and I should go back on what I said about English not translating it. Actually people do refer to "half-character" tenors: " a versatile singer who could play in half-character and buflo roles" The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera, p. 97 https://books.google.es/books?id=Oq7a19TDlAcC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA... " His is a big voice with that bronze quality that makes him perfect for these half character roles." https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.music.opera/2bA8... So you can put either half-character tenor or mezzo carattere tenor. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 4 hrs (2018-06-25 20:48:35 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- (Mind you, "half character" is not really a very good translation of "mezzo carattere"; "mixed character" or "middling character" would be more accurate. But for better or worse "half character" is what people say. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2018-06-26 08:23:54 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Just to clarify: when I said that "medio carácter" refers in the first instance to a type of role, and also to a type of voice suited to that type of role, I meant that it refers by extension to a type of voice; "tenor de medio carácter" is not actually a type of voice in itself. To describe someone as having "la vocalidad típica del tenor de medio carácter" means that he has a type of voice suited to mezzo carattere/"half-character" tenor roles and typical of those who sing such roles. That type of voice will generally be what is known as a "light" or "graceful" tenor, as Serafino Gentile was. The supreme example currently active is Juan Diego Flórez, who has sung Lindoro, needless to say. Alfredo Krauss was also a great tenore di grazia. |
| |