Arias for a Voiceless Singer: What Can They Teach Us about Eighteenth-Century Opera?

• This paper introduces my ongoing joint collaboration with Magnus Tessing Schneider on a vocal-score edition of fourteen of Luigi Bassi’s arias by other composers than Mozart. Covering the period 1780–1820, nine of the arias were specifically written for the singer by such little-known composers as Pietro Morandi, Angelo Tarchi, Peter Winter, Giovanni Liverati, Johann Joseph Rösler, and Francesco Morlacchi, while five of them come from some of his most popular roles in operas by Giovanni Paisiello, Antonio Salieri, Joseph Weigl, and Ferdinando Paer. As the common denominator in the aria collection, and as a singer whose voice was, somewhat paradoxically, not his most important calling card, Bassi provides an instructive example of how these arias may have been adapted in order to reach an audience. Together, the arias document what might be called Bassi’s ‘dramatic profile:' his preferred aria types as well as the types of characters, emotions, and dramatic situations that he excelled at portraying. I suggest that in reviving these arias today, performers are not always well-served by the 'urtext' culture that grew up in the twentieth century, largely in the service of the music of so-called ‘master composers’. Their scores often contain sufficient information for the needs of today’s performers, many of whom follow relatively recently established and successful codes of performance. But for the arias of lesser-known composers, the challenge lies in assessing what kind of performative flexibilities may have been applied by Bassi and harnessing them to reach an audiences today. I provide examples of how far performers may need to deviate from composers’ scores to achieve this aim and demonstrate that this is one way of developing the practices of historically informed performance. This is to use Bassi's unusual vocal profile as a stimulus for both historical speculation and practical experimentation.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Scenkonst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Performing Arts (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Music (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Teatervetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Performing Art Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musikvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Musicology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Luigi Bassi

vocal acting

performance practice

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)