Talk:Tenore contraltino

Altino: Is this a real term?
Of the many terms for countertenors I have come across, this one is new to me. That doesn't mean of course that it doesn't exist but my suspicion is that this page may be a product of original research or a hoax. I am going to place a tag accordingly.Nrswanson (talk) 03:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Astrologer in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerel is designated as a tenor altino in the score book (Russian: тенор-альтино). The score of the opera is here: https://imslp.org/wiki/The_Golden_Cockerel_(opera)_(Rimsky-Korsakov,_Nikolay). The singer is expect to sing an E5 in section 249.Xjian77 (talk) 19:07, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion
After waiting three weeks for a response I have gone ahead with nominating this page for a speedy delete as a hoax.Nrswanson (talk) 23:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

A countertenor uses falsetto (ie alfred deller) a haute contre is a tenor with a very strong upper register, but who still has a tenoral timbre. A tenor altino is a very rare voice that has the genuine quality and tessiutura of a female contralto, and does not use falsetto. The best example is Russel Oberlin, and I believe Jon Anderson of Yes would also fit this catagorie.

Comment by Jeanambr
Moved by permission from Kleinzach's talk page:

I do completely agree with Old Mr. Grove and friends, that terms like soprano di coloratura, tenore di grazia, soubrette, contralto di agilità, and so on, are always much more a matter of the morale than of the physique or, as we say in Italy, they leave the weather as they’ve found it. That’s why I am not interested in such kinds of classifications at all, for their meaning depends unavoidably on personal opinions or, sometimes, even on personal tastes.

I am much more interested in history however highly disputed it may be as well. At least, anyway, it tries, it is meant to deal with facts and not with tastes or words.

Well then, apropos of the history of the tenor voice, I should like that Voceditenore or somebody else would refute me about these actual facts:

1. During the whole Baroque epoch, apart from hautes-contre in France, only one general kind of tenors used to sing on the stages of opera, and mainly of Italian opera; the range of this kind of singers was sensibly lower than the modern tenor’s one and usually (not always) they were employed in second or third leading parts, and, anyway, never in (young)lover’s roles; if it is true, whatever Celletti may have thought or written,  you can call such type of tenors as you like best, baritenors, bari-tenors, baritonal tenors or simply tenors, it will not however change the actual fact which lies below names and which Wikipedia would be supposed to deal with.

2. As castrati were luckily disappearing, composers began to replace them as “primi uomini” by the (then) so called “contralto musico” or, in contraltos’ absence, by the traditional tenor promoted lover-singer; it can only be either true or false, whatever Celletti may have thought or written about it.

3. Meanwhile, Rossini evolved a new kind of tenor (similar to the haute-contre, but not derived from it) whose features were: a slightly wider range and a considerably higher tessitura than the traditional tenor’s and acrobatic virtuosity; no similar tenors were on the stage, in Italy, either in the early ten years of the XIX century or beforehand; if that is true, whatever Celletti may have thought or written, the name one will give to this kind of tenor interests me a very tiny bit.

4. Within the first half of the XIX century, this kind of tenor had nearly disappeared from the stages, no more roles were ordinarily written for it, and  correctly performing the roles written beforehand grew thenceforwards harder and harder, getting up to real disasters, such as Rodrigo’s role being performed in the second modern revival of Otello by a otherwise refined musician as Herbert Handt (since an article concerning him does not exist yet, one can look for it on Old Mr. Grove).

5. This kind of tenor has nothing to deal with what was later called “tenore di grazia”: whatever Celletti may have thought or written about it, they are two different historical phenomena; the former is tied to a specific period, has had a beginning and has got to an end; the latter belongs to the modern, more or less arbitrary, classification of the tenor voice and is connected to the former only by the fact that so-called tenori di grazia have usually been employed to sing contraltino tenor parts, especially in comic and serio-comic operas (not too differently from how light sopranos have often  been substituted for contraltos in the same operas); to conceive how different phenomena they are, suffice it to say that one of the paragons of the tenore di grazia category, Tito Schipa, had a baritenor compass that did not even enable him to reach up to high C.

I sincerely apologize to you for my English which I try to improve as much as can, and I could also, if it may be considered useful, abstain from writing any more in the English Wikipedia, but articles are often so poor (tenor altino was three lines long) that I believed a bad linguistic editing was better than nothing and, in fact, I often tried to entice some of you into copy-editing my articles, as well. Sincerely.Jeanambr (talk) 00:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

What precedes is a reply to some comments by Voceditenore which can be found in Kleinzach's talk page, as well as Voceditenore's further reply, which, in my opinion, refuses to stick fast to the facts and only shifts the accent to the linguistic problems (actually so haevy?) caused by my bad English. I do very much hope some Wikipedia user would do a good English editing of the article and I will be pleased to check myself its correspondence to my opinions. I will be out for several days. Thank you very much in advance.Jeanambr (talk) 06:44, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Response For the record, the exchange can be found here. I was not focusing my comments on your English expression in this article, nor was I "refusing to stick fast to the facts". As I said there, I found it better to read the original Italian WP article, so I could be sure what you were intending to say in the English one. At the moment, it's a little difficult and I've listed it over at Translated pages that could still use some cleanup to see if we can get expert help in this respect. I explicitly said that I was not necessarily disputing the various assertions by Celletti, I was merely pointing out that this article is rather different from the various other opera terms articles, and there is a potential for confusing the reader who follows the links in it and finds what appears to be contradictory or confusing information, say in articles like Tenore di grazia. I think the article needs to make clear what the relationship is between tenore contraltino and tenore di grazia. This article has several other areas which need improvement as well:
 * 1. The referencing is unclear. When referring to various pages in Salvatore Caruselli (ed), Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., Roma, vol 4, it is far more useful to the reader to know the name of the article being referred to, not simply the page number, especially since this book is available only in hard copy. In other words, is it an actual article titled "Tenore", "Tenore contraltino", "Tenore di grazia", etc.? Or are they biographical articles on particular singers or operas? Note also that the use of op. cit. and ibid in footnotes is strongly discouraged. See this guide for more
 * 2. The article is based almost entirely on Celletti's views and use of the term. It needs balance from other musicologists who have written on this issue.
 * 3. There is potential here for synthesis and original research, e.g.. drawing conclusions from the names of singers listed in libretti and/or encyclopedia articles about the singers or the operas, unless these are used by Celletti himself in support of his arguments. At the moment the referencing fails to make that clear.
 * 4. The article still refers to tenor altino in places and currently appears to be using the terms interchangeably, which is also confusing to the reader. Even in English, the term has variation in uses: as a tenor who can sing in treble range without falsetto, as a virtual synonym for countertenor, and most often to refer the voice type for The Astrologer in The Golden Cockerel.
 * - Voceditenore (talk) 09:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Here I am back again. I had hoped to be confuted or to be anyhow answered about the matters of historical facts that I had pointed out and that might be held to be either true or false or what else, provided that reasoning was as well founded upon historical facts. On the contrary, the accent seems me to have been shifted again elsewhere. Anyway, I insist on not being interested in the modern classification of voice types, since it is quite a vain discussion, ‘aria fritta’ (fried air) as we say in Italian, or, as Old Mr. Grove would say (and I must here repeat, once more, Voceditenore’s quotation, so pregnant as it is), since the terms used ‘are somewhat fantastic, and the different qualifications that have called them forth are not infrequently as much part of the morale as of the physique’. What I think about the question I had already explained taking part in a previous discussion about ‘Voice types of Operatic Roles’ which can be found on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 78 of the year 2009 (very sorry, but I am not able to link) and which can very well show how much used WikiProjectOpera is to the same kind of contradictions and confusion Voceditenore now fears my article may cause. Still trying to stick fast to the historical facts, I would only propose these further observations.
 * Some further observations

1. The various opera terms for the tenor voice are a modern creation and are referred to the post-Romantic situation, when, differently from what used to happen beforehand, a singer is ordinarily called upon to perform a lot of music which was not especially written for him.

2. The classifications which have been commonly in use for more than a century, are basically confusing, partly because they depend very much upon the tastes and the opinions of individuals, but, first of all, because it is not firmly established a priori whether they refer to roles or to singers; thus, when I say, for instance, ‘tenore di grazia’ I may refer either to a role (e g Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff) or to a singer (e g Tito Schipa), which is hardly ever the same thing. 3. The category ‘tenore contraltino’ (as well as haute-contre, taille or baritenor) does not belong to such classifications, because it refers to a peculiar historical phenomenon which must be set against its historical period and which must not be intermingled with a later classification referring to a different kind of reality, the modern post-Romantic tenor (who will sing after the modern patterns of singing and who will have to confront the music written in different times for different types of interpreters); so, singers like Rockwell Blake or Juan Diego Flórez (or even Salvatore Fisichella or Franco Bonisolli) can surely perform (or have performed) ‘tenore contraltino’ parts (which is to say, parts originally written for this historical kind of voice), but they perform them as modern tenors in a modern way  and scarcely anybody will normally venture to call them ‘tenori contraltini’, for this type of voice belongs to days of yore; whether, then, they are to be called “tenori di grazia” or ‘di coloratura’ or ‘lirico-leggeri’ or ‘drammatici di coloratura’,  I could not care less, for nothing more arbitrary is given in the world of opera.

4. In the Italian Wikipedia nobody so patient was ever found as to spend (or waste) one’s time in writing articles about the various terms used to classify the tenor voice: the only article existing (three lines long) is, error excepted, ‘heldentenor’.

5. I do not believe the article tenore contraltino’s referencing is ‘unclear’; I have, nevertheless, specified the article of Caruselli’s encyclopedia whence my quotations had been drawn: I fear (nay, am nearly sure) that it will not help any English reader to do any kind of checking, whether one owns a copy of the book or not. If it is Voceditenore that would check (and I should be awfully glad of it), I renew the offer I had already made while discussing the article ‘baritenor’, to e-mail to her/him Caruselli’s encyclopedia article (which I had already scanned), if only he or she will let me know  the address. The offer is valid for anybody else.

6. I do not believe that 'the article is based almost entirely on Celletti's "views" and use of the term': it is based on historical facts, mainly reported by Celletti, and never on his personal 'views', and, as for the term, the article had already been nominated for deletion on 14 August 2008 and the result of the discussion had been: keep; if there are any authors I do not know, who used it in a different meaning from the one assumed in the article, before (accordind to Nrswanson's edition of 20 August 2008, which had replaced 'dubious uncited info ... with currently avalaible sources') and after my intervention (which has only expanded its previous contents), let their statements be added to the article itself; if they do not exist or if their existence is not kwown, it does not seem correct to doubt a priori the article's very trustworthiness.

7. I do not know anything about the voice type requested for the Astrologer in The Golden Cockerel, but, being a falsettist in a Russian opera of the XX century, by no means can it have anything to deal with the historical phenomenon of the tenore contraltino in the Italian opera of the early XIX century.

Best. Jeanambr (talk) 08:42, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement
Jeanambr, no one is trying to "confute" you or challenge the facts, as I have stated numerous times before. What I suggested were ways to improve the article, and it really is not helpful to characterize suggestions for improvement as personal challenges and respond to editors who make them in the way that you have.


 * Firstly, all articles in Wikipedia, should have multiple sources and perspectives, rather than relying on a single author as the source, no matter who he or she is. I'm not saying you have to provide them, but future editors may be able to do this. I list below various publications that deal with or mention the tenore contraltino:
 * Gregory W. Bloch, "The pathological voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez", Cambridge Opera Journal (2007), 19:11-31 Cambridge University Press
 * Richard Osborne, Rossini: his life and works, Oxford University Press US, 2007
 * Enrico Stinchelli, "The Rossini Renaissance and the Search for the Tenore Contraltino" in Greatest Stars of the Opera: The Lives and Voices of Two Hundred Golden Years (also published in Italian as Le stelle della lirica: i grandi cantanti della storia dell'opera, Gremese Editore, 2002)
 * Charles Alexander Guilmette, Vocal physiology; a practical treatise, Pearson, 1877.
 * William Ashbrook, Donizetti and His Operas, Cambridge University Press, 1983
 * Sergio Martinotti, La musica a Milano, in Lombardia e oltre, Vita e Pensiero, 2000

- Voceditenore (talk) 09:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Secondly, my suggestion that it was confusing to continue to use tenor altino in the article as if it were interchageable with tenore contraltino, has indeed been acted on by another editor. Similarly, I suggested that the relationship between tenore contraltino and terms like tenore di grazia and haute-contre, should be clarified. This is especially important because the latter two terms both have Wikipedia articles and all three should be cross-checked for consistency. Again, I'm not saying that you have to do this, but future editors will want to consider this. To a large extent this has now been done in the tenore contraltino article, although there is still room for improvement, via copy-editing for idiomatic English.
 * Thirdly, I suggested improvements in the footnotes and referencing, requirements which apply to all Wikipedia articles, not simply this one. To say that providing the name of the article "will not help any English reader to do any kind of checking", is not the point. It is useful to know the name of the article (and the author if given). This is simply good practice. It can be seen in the references for Polly Young, Opéra bouffe, and Adelina Stehle, for example, and is something all articles should eventually aim for. To some extent this has been done in Tenore contraltino by providing the name of the article in the Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, although the use of op. cit. remains. See Footnotes for more about this, and why its use is discouraged.


 * Voceditenore, given your last point of view (which, however, still seems to me somewhat different from above), I cannot but agree with you and hope that the article will be soon improved as much as possible. Best. Jeanambr (talk) 16:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)