Dear John, sjdr? and co vocalisters,
First: I put two examples on our site: one of Fritz Wunderlich and one of Hans-Peter Blochwitz (Harnoncourt) both doing 'Dalla sua pace'. Strange is, that the Wunderlich recording is a half tone lower. Maybe one of the first authentic recordings? On the other hand: it is a low quality cd, made from a LP, so everything is possible. I'll try to find out, because I know the guy from the record company, he is - like me - a member of the Dutch Fritz Wunderlich society. One thing is for sure: Wunderlich did not need to sing it lower. If you use good speakers to listen to them (no pc-speakers of course), you'll hear that they do cover, but only slightly.
John wrote: '[...]Wiser heads than I should weigh in here, but: I would caution against doing too many things with an open "A", though I've noticed the same modifications in singers. Just my opinion, but: I think "Dalla sua pace" is a tremendously hard piece for a tenor, because you have to have that sense of tenderness, but also vulnerability - and you won't sound vulnerable if you have too much cover. Don Ottavio is the opposite of Don Giovanni - he actually cares about others, and at the same time is part of, instead of apart from his society and its mores. My own feeling is that the p dynamic really should mean "as quiet as you can get it and still have the tenorial ring". I don't want to sit and listen to a tenor only to hear him cover his glory notes! Leave that to baritones![...]
I don't want to suggest I am a wiser head, but as a tenor who did sing the above mentioned Mozart aria's, although of course not as good as Wunderlich and Blochwitz, I do have some experience.
As I wrote above, both singer do some vowel modifications But in my experience, if you just sing the words tender, you'll do all the covering you need.
I cover (hardly, or maybe even not audible) towards O, and that is what Mozart had in mind, I think: AmOrOsA. To be more precise: when singing Mozart, I seldom think about covering, the man was a genius, and put the right words on the right notes to begin with. If you sing the word 'Pace' tender, you will not open your mouth as explosive as you would otherwise, so you will pass the u, then the o and arrive at an a which is slightly modified towards o. I think that is all it needs ... at least for a singer who's passagio is not too low. But in that case you should not be singing Mozart, i.m.o.
I think it is more a matter of a good head/chest mix, than of covering. But some modification of the vowels you should do, because if you make the vowels very pure, you cannot sing the legato line Mozart asks for, e.g. in the word amorosa. If you are a spinto or heavier, you may have to modify the vowels too strongly for other reasons, and then it is not Mozart anymore either.
So I do agree with John on the general idea of the role and on how to sing it, but I don't agree on the difficulty of the aria: for a Mozart tenor, Mozart is not that difficult, but for a spinto it might be a lot of trouble already. And of course the other way around for Verdi, but everybody knows that.
P.S. There is no written pianissimo, so you do have some freedom, as long as you can sing it tender.
Best greetings,
Dré
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