A Contralto Era Is Upon Us

The Advent of a New Group of Singers, Headed by Gabriella Besanzoni

PITTS SANBORN

VOICES seem to flourish in cycles.

Now sopranos predominate, now baritones, now contraltos, There is no apparent reason why this should be so. Like the weather, it seems a matter of chance, or at the utmost, the consequence of causes so remote and so hidden that it is worth nobody's while to attempt to ferret them out. Financial panics have been blamed on the sun spots. Perhaps the annual crop of operatic voices derives range and quality from some equally disparate phenomenon. But, whatever the cause, the fact is undeniable that year may follow year rich in its product of singers dowered with one or other of the varieties of the human voice, and then, without warning, that variety may recede to second place or third, and another crowd to the front to supersede it.

A hundred years ago, when Rossini, most familiar to us as the composer of 'The Barber of Seville", reigned and ruled in Italian opera, there was a period prolific in contralto voices.

Today there seems to be another.

For the season of 1919-20 the Metropolitan Opera Company has hitched its superbly appointed petrol wagon to a new contralto star. Her euphonious name is Gabriella Besanzoni. She is Italian by birth. Latin America, never easv to please, has acclaimed her extensive contralto voice as the voice ot the century. Unlike some singing women who have reached New York with inflated reputations, she is young, handsome and of fiery temperament.

The Contralto Invasion

NOR will the Metropolitan present her alone in her low-voiced glory. Fourteen others of her kind have figured in the announcements of the house—among them luminaries of such recognized magnitude as Mines. Matzenauer. Claussen, Braslau, Lazzari, Howard, and Berat. Mine. Homer, though no longer at the Metropolitan, will be with us in concert, and so will Marguerite d'Alvarez and, doubtless. Mine. Schumann-Heink. Then the Chicago Opera Association boasts of Cyrena Van Gordon and other less prominent contraltos. What a contrast to the early nineties, when tor a manager to gather together as many as three contraltos for the Metropolitan opera told seemed like a labor of Hercules!

The dictionaries concisely define contralto as the lowest species of female voice. For the sake of convenience I shall in this paper include the mezzo-sopranos among the contraltos —a distinction between the two is often extremely difficult to draw; the female voice which is unmistakably neither a soprano nor a contralto is the rarest of rare birds; most socalled mezzo-sopranos are nothing but high contraltos.

Italian opera long ago dictated the classifications and the names for the several varieties of the human voice. The golden age of Italian singing was graced by four contralto singers whose fame still resounds in the halls of history, though their voices are long since still—Josephina Grassini, Benedetta Pisaroni, Marietta Brambilla, and Marietta Alboni.

To these four I would add two great women, sisters, who made their careers in both contralto and soprano parts—Marie and Pauline. the marvelously gifted daughters of the elder Manuel Garcia, generally known by their matrimonial surnames ot Malibran and Viardot. On the subject of these singers the literature is voluminous and rich. Moreover, there are any number of persons still living who remember the singing ot Alboni and ot \ iardot, and perhaps one or two who even heard Malibran, though she died in 1826.

Marietta Alboni

MARIETTA ALBONI is generally spoken of as the classic example of the contralto, the perfect specimen of the species as regards voice and vocal accomplishment. The historian, Chorley's, description of her is famous. He speaks of the "corn and wine and oil" in her looks. The voice he found in entire liarmony with the looks. "Hers was a rich, deep, real contralto, of two octavos from G to G—as sweet as honey—but not intensely expressive; and with that tremulous quality which reminds fanciful spectators of the quiver in the air oi the calm, blazing, summer's noon. I recollect no low Italian voice so luscious. . . .

Proving in the long run a somewhat indolent and monotonous singer, Alboni of the unvaried perfection did not interest the same audience, season after season. So she ultimatelv, and desperately, sought to "enlarge the circle of her attractions," by extending the voice upward. She then did as some recent contraltos have done; she attempted to sing soprano parts. "The required high notes", reports Chorley, "were forthcoming, but the entire texture of the voice was injured". It became not a soprano, but a "spoiled contralto.

Pisaroni's case is of special significance because, contrary to the contralto usage, she began her career as a soprano. A severe illness two years after her debut seems to have changed the nature of her voice. The gifted soprano reappeared as a contralto, to become shortly the foremost contralto of her time. Pisaroni is described as extremely ugly. "But the antipathetic, almost revolting features of the great contralto", says Chorley, "were forgotten as soon as she began to sing".

For that reason she. confined herself in London to the representation of male characters, of which Rossini wrote several tor contraltos or mezzo-sopranos. In tastidious Paris, however. she assumed the principal female part in Rossini's "LTtaliana in Algeri" with wonderful success. That fact has immediate interest for us today because that forgotten opera is being resuscitated at the Metropolitan this year for Gabriella Besanzoni. Marietta Brambilla had remarkable beauty as well as a lovely voice.

The Garcia Sisters

THE brilliant Garcia sisters (Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot) must be included in any consideration of the contraltos of the great period, for though more properly mezzo-sopranos of extraordinary range, they excelled in many deep contralto roles and \ iardot "created" Tides in "Le Prophete". Malibran's voice, according to authoritative writers, was not naturally of first rate quality; "it was a mezzo-soprano extended upward and downward . . . weakest in the tones between F

and F—a weakness audaciously and incomparably disguised by the forms of execution, modification, and ornament which she selected. Her topmost and deepest notes were perpetually used in connected contrast . . . On the

stage her flights and sallies told with electriceffect".

Malibran died in 1836, of the results of a fall from a horse, at the early age of eight and twenty. Her younger sister, Pauline Viardot, born in 1821, survived until 1910. Viardot, like Malibran, possessed a voice stretched bevond its natural limits to a compass approaching three octaves. She could sing the deepest of contralto roles, like Orfeo and Arsace, or such soprano parts as Norma, Valentine, and even the soaring Amina in "La Sonnambula". Her friendship with Tourguenieff is almost as well known as her voice.

What were the parts these women sang? They were many, but the six that stand out as the great contralto parts of the period were surely Orfeo (in Gluck's opera), the title role in Rossini's "La Cenerentola" (Cinderella), Arsace in the same master's "Semiramide", Leonora in "La Favorita", Fides in "Le Prophete", and Azucena in "Il Trovatore". Of course all of the women mentioned above did not sing all six of these parts (Grassini was dead before Azucena was even written).

But Gabriella Besanzoni certainly can sing all of these roles. She is not to sing "La Cenerentola" or Arsace here this season, but the woman who is able to sing the equally florid role of Isabella in Rossini's "L Italiana in Algeri" might well do "La Cenerentola" and Arsace in seasons to come. Orfeo, Fides and Azucena are all members of the official operatic household of the year, and nothing is more likely for another year than a revival of "La Favorita".

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What Do Contraltos Sing

AND what do the contraltos sing now, besides occasional roles from the palmy days of yore? Since that golden age composers have written a few big parts for contraltos and mezzo-sopranos —conspicuously the Philistine heroine in "Samson et Dalila", Carmen (which sopranos also sing), and Amneris in "Aida". There are other good contralto parts in "Don Carlos", "Falstaff", and "La Gioconda"; in operas by Massenet and by Richard Strauss, and in more than one Russian opera. Nor should the mothers in "Louise" and "Pelleas et Melisande" be forgotten. Several Wagner parts the contraltos have also appropriated, though losing to the sopranos Rosina in "The Barber of Seville". But the only outstanding Wagner part the composer seems really to have intended for the contralto voice is Erda in "Siegfried".

Still, aside from the varied rolts occasionally revived from the Rossinian period, the contraltos must usually jm_ personate aged mothers, wicked temptresses, or women scorned. Why have the composers so largely neglected her beautiful voice ? It is hard to say, save that that voice is the exceptional woman's voice and a composer is surer of getting his opera repeatedly performed if he makes his heroine a soprano.

One may well be curious as to whether or not Gabriella Besanzoni, destined by previous report to set America ablaze with the fire of her voice and beauty, will fully restore the. contralto to her Rossinian estate of splendor.