(from Lat. tenere: ‘to hold’).
In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the structurally fundamental (or ‘holding’) voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that sang such parts, and later it was applied not only to singers covering roughly c (called Tenor C) to a' but also instrumental parts occupying approximately that register (see Tenor violin, for example). In some 18th-century sources ‘tenor’ means ‘viola’. In Change ringing, the ‘tenor’ is the largest and deepest bell in a peal.
2. The word in early polyphony.
DAVID FALLOWS (1), DAVID FALLOWS (with OWEN JANDER) (2–3), ELIZABETH FORBES, OWEN JANDER, J.B. STEANE/ELLEN T. HARRIS (with GERALD WALDMAN) (4–6)
The word is found only once in Cicero but more often in Virgil, Livy and later writers, with the meaning of ‘a holding fast’ and thence of ‘an uninterrupted course’ or ‘a career’. Nor do its earlier musical uses have any particular consistency. But with the exception of Cassiodorus, who used it for string tension or pitch, and Guido, whose several uses include one where it apparently means the duration of a note, most of the early music theorists used the word only in discussions of chant modality.
Even there, however, usage varied from writer to writer and even from passage to passage. For Jacobus of Liège, tenor was the final or key note of a mode, whereas for Aurelian of Réôme 400 years earlier it seems to have been one reciting-note, more commonly called tuba and in modern discussions of modality often called the dominant. Yet another meaning, rather more common, is that of ‘melodic formula’: Aurelian, again, seems to have used tenor for a psalm tone, and many theorists up to the 16th century used it for the termination formula of a psalm tone. Indeed, as late as 1701, T.B. Janovka began his definition of tenor: ‘in musica alicuius melodiae (ut Ariae, Sarabandae &c) significat processum, & quendam fluxum’ (‘in melodious music it means [melodic] progression or turn of phrase’); he then proceeded to define the word in terms of the high male voice.
In medieval and Renaissance polyphony the counterpoint in all other voices was normally calculated in relation to the structurally fundamental tenor: if one voice was to proceed in longer note values that voice would be the tenor; if one voice was to carry a borrowed Cantus firmus that voice would nearly always be the tenor before 1400 and often thereafter; all writings about counterpoint were concerned primarily with the relation of the discanting voice (discantus) to the tenor; and during the 15th century nearly all polyphony retained that firm ‘discant’ relationship between discantus and tenor even when there were several other voices, both above and below them.
Before 1300 such voices were labelled ‘tenor’ in the sources only when they were not taken from chants or when the chant was not known; and about 1300 Johannes de Grocheio specifically described tenors as those fundamental voices in polyphony that had not been taken from chant. But in 14th-century sources any such voice could be labelled ‘tenor’, and in the 15th century practically all such voices could be so labelled. In the 16th century the hegemony of the tenor-discant pair broke down as fully imitative polyphony developed its own requirements and rules; but it was still common to give the name ‘tenor’ to any voice carrying a cantus firmus, and there were several forms in which the old rules continued to hold sway.
The long-held assumption that 13th-century musicians called the bottom line of polyphony a ‘tenor’ (from Lat. tenere: ‘to hold’) because it ‘held’ the pre-existing chant melody has been called in question (Hoffmann-Axthelm, §II, 1). It was based on a passage in Johannes de Garlandia’s De mensurabili musica (second quarter of the 13th century), where in reference to the two lines of polyphony, ‘primus cantus’ and ‘secundus cantus’, it is said that the ‘tenor’ part is the one called ‘primus cantus’ (‘a parte tenoris, qui dicitur primus cantus’). The true meaning of this is probably that the first line the composer wrote in polyphony was called the tenor because it ‘held up’ or supported the harmonic structure of the counterpoint. Such is the meaning conveyed by two later treatises, Franco of Cologne’s Ars cantus mensurabilis (c1250) and an anonymous treatise of about 30 years later from St Emmeram; the latter equates ‘tenor’ with the concept of a foundation, or ‘fundamentum’. In view of the fact that almost all names for the voices in early polyphony derive from the actual process of composing music (cf the early 14th-century contra-tenor, a line composed against a tenor; or the late 15th-century basis-tenor, a tenor that acts as a foundation), this explanation of the original meaning of the word ‘tenor’ is entirely plausible.
In the late 14th and early 15th centuries any tenor line in polyphony was almost invariably paired with a Contratenor part. These two lines, overlapping in range, shared the functions of providing both a harmonic foundation and a harmonizing part. (The contratenor, in fact, was occasionally called a ‘concordans’, a word that lingered in French usage well into the 19th century as a term for the baritone voice.) With the late 15th-century progression from three- to four-voice composition a contratenor bassus was introduced, which assumed the role of providing a harmonic foundation. Tenor and contratenor then became more clearly distinguished from one another, and the old contratenor became known as the Contratenor altus. It tended to lie slightly higher in range than the tenor – with the result that the word ‘tenor’ came more and more to refer to a vocal range.
In the late 14th and 15th centuries the French word ‘tenoriste’, or ‘tenoristre’, and the Italian ‘tenorista’ were used for a highly skilled singer able to perform the lower lines of polyphony, contratenor as well as tenor. The word tended to be reserved, however, as a title for the most eminent singers, some of whom appear to have functioned also as choir directors. In the late 15th century, as four-voice polyphony became the norm, some singers were given such titles as ‘tenorista basso’, ‘controriste’, ‘contro alto’ or simply ‘contro’. From this confusion of terminology, however, there gradually emerged the word ‘tenore’, and this term became clearly fixed with the publication of partbooks.
Nothing certain can be said about the voice ranges of early monophonic music since the available notation is not related to a fixed pitch. For sacred polyphony of the 15th century, however, there are features that make it possible to guess at the normal performing pitch. The arguments can be summarized as follows. Three-voice sacred polyphony before 1450 almost always has two voices in the same range (called tenor and contratenor) with one voice in a range roughly a 5th higher. Sometimes the written range goes down only to f but it varies and can go as low as G. But the relative ranges of the voices remain the same, the three voices covering a total range of just over two octaves. From this Bowers and others (see Boorman, 1983) have drawn the conclusion that the music, like plainchant, was not notated at a fixed pitch-standard and that all such pieces would normally have sounded in the same range. Evidently this music was sung only by grown men, so the difficult question is whether that range was low (with two bass-baritones and a tenor) or higher (with two tenors and a falsettist or at least a man singing in a very high range). Two considerations favour the latter conclusion: first, that when four-voice music became routine for sacred polyphony the fourth voice seems to have been added to the bottom of the texture, the other three retaining the relationship they had in three-voice music (Bowers in Boorman, 1983); second, there are three pieces from the middle years of the 15th century that specify the alternation of boys with men on the top line and, moreover, there is documentation from 1470–1530 of the choirmaster apparently doubling the boys' lines (Fallows in Boorman, 1983). It therefore seems very likely that most polyphony before about 1450 operated in a range an octave above and below middle C, thus that the top line was sung in a falsetto or haute-contre voice and that the other lines were sung by what we would call tenors (though this is to avoid the question of voice production techniques). That also means that a very large proportion of polyphonic singers in the Middle Ages used the tenor register. Projecting those hypotheses backwards, they would seem to suggest that the earliest substantial polyphonic repertories of the 12th and 13th centuries, with a range of about a 12th, would have been sung in the tenor register, surely a suitably exciting sound for the florid lines of early organum.
In the 16th century, when pitch-standards are slightly easier to establish, there seems clearer evidence that the tenor voice continued in favour. The solo vocal repertory with instrumental accompaniment was published with the voice part mostly in either the treble or the soprano clef. Although these clefs were the common property of all high voices, male or female (the tenor clef being reserved for tenor voice in ensembles), the texts suggest that the bulk of the Renaissance lute-song repertory was most appropriate for male singers (tenors). In the second half of the century the art of vocal ornamentation was cultivated to a high degree. Although treatises make it clear that ornamentation was not limited to any particular voice range, most of the important writers were themselves tenors. Perhaps the most influential was Giulio Caccini, whose Le nuove musiche (1601/2) contained the most elaborate description of this virtuoso art ‘which admits of no mediocrity’; ornamentation is even more explicitly notated in his Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (1614). Caccini became the first tenor to enjoy an international reputation as a soloist.
The leading male roles in the earliest operas were also written for tenor: the role of Orpheus in the Euridice operas (1600) of Peri and Caccini is for tenor, as is Monteverdi's in his Orfeo (1607), where the role was probably sung by Francesco Rasi, tenor, composer, and student of Caccini.
The title role in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1639–40) is also for tenor, but the principal male part of his L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643), that of Nero, is for castrato, as are other secondary roles. Several operas by Francesco Cavalli have principal parts for tenors (Egisto, 1643, and Ormindo, 1644, for example), but during the remainder of the century heroic roles and those of lovers were increasingly assigned to castratos, and tenors came to be allotted only small or comic roles, as servants, grotesques (for example, Irus in Il ritorno d'Ulisse) or even, in travesty, old women, especially nurses, which roles tenors often interchanged with contraltos (see Travesty). By and large, Italian cantata traditions followed the lead set by opera; of Carissimi's approximately 150 cantatas for voice and continuo, none are for tenor solo, and of those for more than one voice, only three include tenor.
With the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti, the tenor voice begins to see a revival. Scarlatti's early pastoral Gli equivoci nel sembiante (1679) has only four characters, two pairs of lovers, played by two sopranos and two tenors, but that is unusual. In most of Scarlatti's operas, the tenor remains subordinate to the castrato, but plays a serious role portraying a neighbouring or opposing king, a prince or a military commander. In Tigrane (1715), for example, the tenor plays Doraspe, king of Damascus (sung by Gaetano Borghi in 1715 and Gaetano Mossi in 1716); this part is assigned four arias in comparison with 11 for the castrato title role. In Marco Attilio Regolo (1719), the tenor part of Santippo, a Spartan commander, was played by Annibale Pio Fabri, one of the most renowned tenors of the period; Burney wrote of him that ‘the merit of this tenor was often sufficient in Italy to supply the want of it in the principal soprano’. Fabri sang for two seasons with Handel in London, 1729–31.
Handel wrote for several tenors of distinction. Francesco Borosini, the son of an Italian tenor who had performed in operas by Steffani and Caldara, went to London in 1724 and sang Handel's first important operatic tenor role, Bajazet in Tamerlano (1724), a role he had earlier sung in a setting of the same story by Francesco Gasparini; he also created Grimoaldo (Rodelinda, 1725). Fabri created the roles of Berengario (Lotario, 1729), Emilio (Partenope, 1730) and Alexander (Poro, 1731). The English tenor John Beard sang in ten Handel operas, creating roles in several of them, including Lurcanio in Ariodante and Oronte in Alcina (both 1735); he later appeared in English operas, notably in works by J.C. Smith and in Arne's Artaxerxes (1762). Handel also adapted a number of roles in revivals for tenor.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the music of France, Germany and England was strongly influenced by Italian traditions. In winter and spring 1604–5, Caccini, residing at the French court, inspired a vogue for Italian singing that can be traced through the French tenor and singing teacher Pierre de Niert to his student, the tenor Bénigne de Bacilly, whose treatise Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter (1668) remains, with Caccini's, one of the most important sources on singing in the period. The five-part French motets of the late 17th and 18th centuries typically contained three tenor parts (haute-taille, Taille, and Basse-taille) between the soprano (Dessus) and the bass. With the development of French opera under Lully, however, the solo tenor voice was little valued. Nor did the French ever favour the castrato; they developed instead the Haute-contre, a very high tenor voice similar in range to the English Countertenor or the alto castrato. Although Rousseau (Dictionnaire, 1768) states that the tenor voice (‘taille’) ‘is most convenient to the common voice of man’, he allows that ‘we hardly make use of any tenor in French operas’. The contrary assertion of Le Cerf de la Viéville (Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise, 1704–6), that ‘a third of the leading roles in the Operas of Lully are those of ordinary tenors’ [‘simple tailles’], is not supported by examination of the scores themselves (unless he includes the haute-contre as a subspecies of tenor). In Lully's Atys (1676), the title role and three others are assigned to haute-contre, five to bass or baritone and only one (Phantase, one of three sons of the god of Sleep) to tenor. Similarly, in Rameau's Hippolyte et Araicie (1733), the role of Hippolytus and three others are for haute-contre and three for bass or baritone; only the solo role of Mercury and one of a trio of voices representing the three fates are assigned to tenor. When Gluck's Viennese operas calling for castrato soloists were arranged for Paris he rewrote these parts for haute-contre.
In Germany, the tenor voice fared better, especially as a solo voice in sacred music. Of the 20 solo motets in Schütz's Symphoniae sacrae op.6 (1629), the tenor is soloist, or part of a duet or trio with other male voices, in eight, although the tenor voice is less prominent in his second and especially his third volume of solo motets (1647, 1650). Of Buxtehude's 114 sacred cantatas, three are for tenor solo, but 19 are for soprano (two are for soprano or tenor). Bach's only sacred cantata for tenor solo is Ich armer Mensch (1726). However, these dwindling numbers tell only part of the story. Schütz, Buxtehude and Bach all continued to write for tenor solo in larger concerted works, such as in Bach's cantatas and B minor Mass, and in Passion music the tenor voice became identified with the important role of the testa or Evangelist, a function still evident in the solo tenor part of Handel's Messiah.
German opera also embraced the tenor voice. Johann Mattheson, theorist and composer, was himself a tenor who sang more than 60 principal roles. He wrote leading roles for himself, such as Antony in Cleopatra (1704), and Handel composed the leading male roles in his first two Hamburg operas for Mattheson (Fernando in Almira, 1704, and the title role of Nero, 1705). Of the five male roles in Handel's Almira, three are for tenor and two for bass. Telemann's comic opera Der geduldige Socrates (1721) has nine male roles, six for tenor.
In England, the solo tenor voice was regularly used in sacred music, court odes and theatre music, as Purcell's compositions demonstrate. Handel inherited this tradition. In one of his first compositions for the English court, the Ode for the birthday of Queen Anne (1713), Handel wrote solo parts for Richard Elford, a tenor for whom John Blow and John Eccles had written. For an early English patron, James Brydges (later Duke of Chandos), Handel composed a set of anthems (1716–17) for soprano, three tenors and bass, to use the forces available at Brydges’ residence. His first English dramatic work, Acis and Galatea, and his first English oratorio, Esther, both for Brydges (1718), use the same set of voices.
In Handel's late oratorios, the tenor assumed the title role in Samson (1743), Belshazzar (1745), Judas Maccabaeus (1747) and Jephtha (1752). These roles, and many other leading parts, were created by John Beard, who had sung in Handel's late operas; he also appeared in English opera and ballad opera (one of his most popular roles was Macheath in The Beggar's Opera). His competitor was Thomas Lowe, said by Burney to have ‘the finest tenor voice I ever heard’; Lowe's lack of application, however, made him a lesser singer overall. Handel wrote the title role in Joshua (1748) for him.
Mozart's use of tenors follows previous traditions: the castrato played the romantic hero in his serious Italian operas and the tenor took the secondary male role, of a king or military commander (even when the title role, as in Mitridate, Lucio Silla, Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito); in German Singspiels he wrote romantic leading roles for tenor. These conventions are followed not only in Mozart's earliest but also his latest operas: in the Singspiel Bastien und Bastienne (1768), the young lovers are tenor and soprano, as they are in Die Zauberflöte (1791); and in Lucio Silla (1772) the leading male role, Cecilius, is a castrato while the usurping dictator, Silla, is a tenor, a pattern that still applies in La clemenza di Tito (1791), where the youthful romantic part (Sextus) is for castrato and the emperor (Titus) is tenor. In his mature Italian comic operas, the leading roles are largely for baritone (Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva) while the tenor roles are comic (Basilio) or distinctly secondary (Ottavio); the tenor role of Ferrando in Così fan tutte (1790) is an exception, although the outrageous disguise he and the bass Guglielmo adopt for most of the opera while deliberately wooing the other's betrothed moves both roles a good way from the serious lover (like the tenors Tamino and Ottavio) towards the older comic tenor and bass roles.
The most famous tenor for whom Mozart composed was his first Idomeneus, Anton Raaff, who in 1781 was close to the end of his career; he had been a pupil of the famous castrato Bernacchi in Bologna and had sung widely across Europe, and was probably the foremost tenor in serious opera in the age of Hasse, Jommelli and J.C. Bach. A Mozart singer of a different stripe was the Irish tenor Michael Kelly; he studied with the castrato Rauzzini, who had earlier created the leading role in Mozart's Lucio Silla (1772) and for whom Mozart wrote the motet Exsultate, jubilate (1773). Kelly went on to create the roles of Basilio and Curzio, and his Reminiscences (1826) provide a first-hand account of his working relationship with Mozart. The leading Viennese tenor in Mozart's time was the German, Valentin Adamberger, who created Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and sang in a number of Gluck revivals. Most of Mozart's tenor roles in his Viennese years were created by singers of no great reputation: Antonio Baglioni (Ottavio and Titus), Vincenzo Calvesi (Ferrando) and Benedikt Schack (Tamino).
Until the late 18th century and even the early 19th, most tenors in the Italian tradition emphasized the lyrical quality of their top range and, when required, carried their voices with ease into the ‘head voice’ or Falsetto register. As Joseph de Lalande wrote (Voyage d’un françois en Italie, 2/1786), ‘the tenor goes from C to g' in full voice and to d'' in falzetto or fausset’. During the first half of the 19th century, however, this traditional manner fell into disuse as tenors began to pull the full weight of their middle voice into the highest registers. The new dramatic potential of the tenor voice led to its increasing dominance over the castrato or musico for leading roles and the development of specific tenor voice types, including the lyric, the lyric coloratura, the Heldentenor, the spinto and the robusto.
Early in the 19th century, Rossini and his contemporaries required a high degree of accomplishment in florid work and in many of their operas, as in some of Bellini's, great demands are made on the upper range of the voice. Rossini's Semiramide and Bellini's I puritani, for instance, show that the ready availability of notes above the staff was taken for granted, and in I puritani ‘Credeasi misera’ notoriously rises to an f''. These roles were undoubtedly sung with head voice (Voce di testa) or some form of fortified falsetto. Rossini's great tenors included Giovanni Davide, Andrea Nozzari, Manuel García and Giovanni Rubini.
In 1814, Rossini wrote Narciso in Il turco in Italia at La Scala for Davide, then 23, the first of his six Rossini premières. At Naples, Davide found Nozzari already installed, but the two complemented one another perfectly: Davide's voice was very flexible, with a three-octave compass, strong at the top, while the main strength of Nozzari's voice lay in the middle register. Nozzari sang Leicester in Elisabetta, and took the title role of Otello with Davide as Rodrigo; both sang in Ricciardo e Zoraide, Ermione and Zelmira as well as La donna del lago, in which Nozzari sang Roderick Dhu and Davide was James. Nozzari also took part in the premières of Armida (as Rinaldo), Mosè in Egitto and Maometto II and later created the title role of Donizetti's Alfredo il grande (1823).
García created Norfolk in Elisabetta and Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816) at Rome; he was greatly admired for his Otello, which he sang at the London première. Rubini also scored many triumphs as Otello: his voice, with a powerful falsetto extension up to f'' or g'', inspired several composers, in particular Donizetti and Bellini. Between 1822 and 1835 he sang in eight Donizetti premières and four Bellini, including Elvino (La sonnambula) and Arturo (I puritani). These roles, with their very high tessitura and long, flowing lines, were tailored to his special talents. A comparison with his roles for other tenors – Arturo (La straniera, 1829) for Domenico Reina, Pollione (Norma, 1831) for Domenico Donzelli (earlier the creator of two Rossini roles), Orombello (Beatrice di Tenda, 1833) for Alberico Curioni, all with heavier and lower voices – shows the care Bellini took in writing for individual singers.
During the 1820s and 30s many roles were written for the leading tenor at the Opéra-Comique, Jean Baptiste Chollet, including Auber's Fra Diavolo (1830); his most popular creation was Chapelou in Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836), in which he was able to display his magnificently strong and secure d''. The tenor roles in Rossini's works for the Opéra (1826–9) were all adapted to the voice of Adolphe Nourrit, who combined Davide's flexibility, range and tonal brilliance with Nozzari's strength. Particularly successful as Arnold in Guillaume Tell, he had no difficulty with the high tessitura; he also created the title role in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable and Raoul in Les Huguenots.
Nourrit was replaced as principal tenor at the Opéra by Gilbert Duprez. Although French by birth, Duprez studied in Italy and sang there for several years, creating Ugo in Donizetti's Parisina (1833), Henry II in Rosmonda d'Inghilterra (1834) and Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). His voice, though less trumpet-toned, was similar in quality and range to that of Nourrit, many of whose roles he took over at the Opéra. He created the title role of Benvenuto Cellini (1838), sang in the premières of three of Donizetti's French operas, and created Gaston in Verdi's Jérusalem (1847). He famously caused a sensation in 1837 by singing a c'' in Guillaume Tell with the full weight of the chest voice: not because of the quality of the note (which some, including Rossini himself, considered highly disagreeable) but simply by showing that it could be sung in this way. Other singers strove to emulate him, and composers began to demand this bigger sound in the highest registers.
By 1850, tenors at the Italian Opera in London were required to take on roles of very varied weight and character. After Rubini’s retirement, Giovanni Matteo Mario, a lyric tenor who had created Ernesto in Don Pasquale (1843), added a falsetto extension to his voice to allow him to sing Rubini’s roles; at the same time he embarked on the heavier Verdi repertory, singing Oronte (I Lombardi) and Jacopo Foscari (Verdi wrote a new cabaletta rising to f'' for him) and later the Duke, Alfredo, Riccardo (Un ballo in maschera) and Manrico. Manrico was first sung in London by Enrico Tamberlik, a tenor more robust in voice and much admired as a forceful exponent of Rossini's Otello. Tamberlik created Don Alvaro in La forza del destino at St Petersburg (1862) and was an early exponent of carrying the chest voice up to c''.
Among Russian tenors, Nicola Ivanoff, a protégé of Glinka, passed his whole career in Western Europe, and the tenor roles in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) fell to Leon Leonov, whose basically lyrical voice could encompass roles as different as Mozart's Count and Meyerbeer's Robert le diable. The roles of Don Juan in Dargomïzhsky's The Stone Guest (1872) and Grigory in Boris Godunov (1874) were created by Fyodor Komissarzhevsky, a lyrical but stronger singer. Nikolay Figner, after singing in Italy and at Covent Garden (Ernani, Elvino in La sonnambula and the Duke), returned to Russia to create two Tchaikovsky roles: Hermann in The Queen of Spades (1890) and Vaudèmont in Iolanta (1892); later he became a powerful Radames and Otello. Dmitry Smirnov, the finest of all Russian tenors heard in Western Europe before the Revolution, sang Grigory in the Paris première of Boris Godunov, the Prince in Dargomïzhsky's Rusalka at Monte Carlo and Lefko in the British première of Rimsky-Korsakov's May Night.
During the 1870s and 80s the presence again of several fine tenors at the Opéra-Comique encouraged composers to write interesting roles. Paul Lhérie, who created tenor roles in works by Massenet and Delibes, was the first Don José in Carmen (1875); he later became a baritone. Jean-Alexandre Talazac created Offenbach's Hoffmann (1881) and Massenet's Des Grieux (1884), and was the first Paris Samson. The finest tenor in the French repertory at the end of the century was the Polish-born Jean de Reszke, who had begun his career as a baritone. Massenet persuaded him to pursue a career as a tenor and sing John the Baptist in the Paris première of Hérodiade; he went on to create Rodrigue in Le Cid (1885) and became an outstanding Des Grieux and Werther, as well as Faust, Romeo, Raoul and Don José.
At this period the outstanding Italian dramatic tenor was Francesco Tamagno, who created roles in two Ponchielli operas and, at La Scala, sang Gabriele Adorno in the 1881 revision of Simon Boccanegra and the title role of Don Carlos in the première of its revised Italian version (1884). Verdi chose him to create the title role of Otello, which he repeated at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan, the Opéra and elsewhere; the very high natural placement and limitless power of his voice have caused problems ever since for singers of the role.
The light, lyric tenor continued to hold the stage in operetta. Offenbach relied on the sweet, clear voice of José Dupuis, who created many of the leading tenor roles in his opéras bouffes: Paris in La belle Hélène (1864), the title role of Barbe-bleue (1866) and Piquillo in La Périchole (1868). In Sullivan operettas at the Savoy after 1888, Courtice Pounds succeeded George Power and Durward Lely as the principal tenor, creating Fairfax (The Yeoman of the Guard, 1888) and Marco (The Gondoliers, 1889); he later turned to musical theatre and became particularly renowned for his creation of Ali Baba in Chu Chin Chow (1916).
The specialization that affected tenor roles from about 1850 was not apparent at the beginning of the century. Joseph Demmer, Florestan at the première of the first version of Fidelio (1805) in Vienna, was a lyric tenor. So was Heinrich Stümer, who created Max in Der Freischütz (1821); his repertory included Belmonte and the Count as well as Florestan and Gluck's Pylades, Achilles, Admetus, Renaud (Armide) and Orpheus. Anton Haizinger, the Austrian tenor who first sang Adolar in Euryanthe (1823), was a notable Ottavio; later he became the first Paris Florestan, Max and Huon (Oberon).
Even Wagner's early operas did not necessitate a special kind of tenor: Joseph Tichatschek, the Bohemian who created Rienzi and Tannhäuser, had earlier sung Tamino at Dresden: when he had difficulty in singing a passage in the Act 2 finale of Tannhäuser Wagner obligingly cut it before the première (1845). Aloys Ander, who sang Lohengrin when Wagner first heard his opera (1861), had previously introduced the roles of Raoul, John of Leyden, Faust and Arnold to Vienna; when Tristan und Isolde was under consideration there it was proposed that Ander should sing Tristan, but he lost his voice and his nerve and stood down, despite Wagner's offer to shorten Act 3. When the Paris version of Tannhäuser was given at the Opéra in 1861, Albert Niemann, having often sung the title role, as well as that of Rienzi and Lohengrin, in Germany, refused Wagner's suggestions on performance or interpretation. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who created Tristan at Munich in 1865, considered it an honour to work with the composer and Wagner in turn admired his Lohengrin, Tannhäuser (in which he restored the cut made for Tichatschek) and Tristan. Schnorr died, aged 29, five weeks after the Tristan première.
The search for singers in general and tenors in particular continued to preoccupy Wagner. Max Schlosser, an actor and singer of operetta, was engaged as David for the première of Die Meistersinger in Munich (1868) and, when he proved successful, as Mime in the première of Das Rheingold (1869). Schlosser also sang Mime in Siegfried in the first complete Ring at Bayreuth (1876). The first Walther and Froh in Munich was Franz Nachbaur, also a fine Lohengrin, much admired by King Ludwig II; he sang Loge, Siegmund and Tannhäuser during his long career in Munich. Heinrich Vogl, who created Loge and Siegmund there, sang that role as well as Tristan and Parsifal at Bayreuth.
Wagner's main casting difficulty before the first Bayreuth Ring was to find a Siegfried. He refused Niemann, ostensibly because he did not want the same singer as Siegmund and Siegfried, or Vogl, for reasons more obscure, and chose Georg Unger, who was no great success; Niemann and Vogl became legendary interpreters of the role. Ferdinand Jäger, another of Wagner's protégés and one of three tenors who sang Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882, was also a disappointment, though he sang Siegfried in Berlin and Vienna; the two others, Hermann Winkelmann and Heinrich Gudehus, proved successful as interpreters of Tristan and Walther. Other admired Wagner tenors at the close of the century were Max Alvary (who sang the four main roles under Mahler in the first Covent Garden Ring) and Ernest Van Dyck (also a specialist in the French repertory).
Tenors have increasingly been categorized by voice type and repertory; these factors have superseded national differences. Four main types may be delineated: the dramatic tenor voice, continuing late 19th-century traditions; the lyric tenor voice, particularly valued in song as well as a range of operatic roles; the lyric coloratura tenor, specializing in the bel canto repertory and earlier music; and the theatre and popular singer.
Richard Strauss, following the Heldentenor tradition, demanded extraordinary stamina and power from his tenors, who were also the leading Wagnerians of their day. In Guntram, the title role was created by Heinrich Zeller, who must have found Tannhäuser (which he later sang at Bayreuth) easy by comparison. Herod was originally entrusted to Karel Burian (1905), who also sang it at the Metropolitan in the American première of Salome. Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos, 1912) was first sung by the Latvian Hermann Jadlowker, who had created the King's Son, also calling for lyricism and dramatic strength, in Humperdinck's Königskinder at the Metropolitan (1910): he sang Raoul and other florid roles but was more often heard as Florestan, Lohengrin and Parsifal.
The Austrian-Czech tenor Leo Slezak made his début in 1896 as Lohengrin, a role he continued singing for 30 years, and to which he added Tannhäuser and Walther as well as Verdi's Manrico, Radames and Otello; his singing combined robust power and beauty of tone. The relation of the Heldentenor voice to a high baritone is clear from the number of tenors who began their careers as baritones; among them was Lauritz Melchior who, after several years as a baritone in Copenhagen, made his tenor début there as Tannhäuser in 1918. His international fame dates from 1924, with Siegmund at Covent Garden and Parsifal at Bayreuth; he gradually acquired almost all the major Wagner roles and for 25 years lavished his large, resplendent voice on them at the Metropolitan.
Wagnerian tenors were in short supply when Bayreuth reopened after World War II. For some seasons Wolfgang Windgassen held the fort virtually alone, singing every tenor role from Erik to Siegfried; his Tristan was especially memorable. Then a new generation of heroic tenors, mostly from the Americas, began to appear: the Chilean Ramón Vinay (initially a baritone); the American Jean Cox; the Canadian Jon Vickers (superb as Parsifal and Siegmund), and the Americans Jess Thomas and James King, one of the best interpreters of Strauss's Bacchus, who also sang the high-lying role of Apollo in Daphne, revived in 1964, on Strauss's centenary. Richard Cassilly (who also sang Florestan, Otello and Radames with enormous involvement and intensity) and in the 1990s the Canadian Ben Heppner have stepped into this repertory with striking success.
If Tamagno was the major tenore robusto of the last decades of the 19th century, in the first two of the 20th the field was dominated by Enrico Caruso, who caused a sensation at Covent Garden in 1902 with the beauty and power of his voice. Early in his career Caruso sang such lyrical roles as Edgardo, Nemorino and Nadir; later he took on heavier ones, mainly French, including Samson (Saint-Saëns), Don José and Eléazar (La Juive). Canio, Radames and Enzo (La Gioconda) headed the list of parts he sang most often, but the backbone of his repertory was Puccini; only one part, Dick Johnson, was written for him, but Puccini's major tenor roles fitted Caruso's voice perfectly.
Giovanni Zenatello took on these heavier tenor roles at Covent Garden when Caruso did not sing there for six years; he had made his début as a baritone. Noted for his rich and powerful voice, he sang Otello more than 300 times. After Caruso's death in 1921, Giovanni Martinelli assumed his heroic roles; he first appeared as Dick Johnson at Rome, Naples, La Scala and other Italian centres, and sang at the Metropolitan for 32 seasons in a repertory that ranged from Gérald in Lakme to Otello, but was based on Radames, Don José, Manrico and Canio.
In the posthumous première of Puccini's Turandot (1926) at La Scala, Calaf was sung by Miguel Fleta, the Spanish tenor who also created Romeo in Zandonai's Giulietta e Romeo (1922); his voice was lighter than that of Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, the first Calaf at the Metropolitan, who was admired for his trumpet-like top notes. The first Calaf at the Opéra was Georges Thill; although he sang other Italian parts, including Radames, and the lighter Wagner roles (Lohengrin, Parsifal and Walther), he was above all a superb exponent of French style, with a repertory from Gluck to Massenet, and at his best as Aeneas in Les Troyens à Carthage where his eloquent diction was allied to a firm, even voice.
The tenore robusto parts in Italian opera of the postwar period were dominated by Mario del Monaco, a heroic tenor with a voice of unlimited power who was a formidable Otello, and Giuseppe di Stefano, who began his career as a lyric tenor (Nemorino, Edgardo, Almaviva and Alfredo) before moving on to a heavier repertory (Cavaradossi, Radames). In the same period, Franco Corelli was the leading exponent of spinto roles, especially Calaf, Radames and Manrico as well as Don José. The American tenor Richard Tucker sang for over three decades at the Metropolitan in similar repertory. The Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo began his career as a baritone, developed from a lyric to a dramatic tenor admired in the French repertory as well as in Puccini and Verdi. He has also sung Siegmund and Parsifal; Otello is among his finest roles.
After Caruso stepped down, his lyrical roles devolved on Beniamino Gigli, distinguished for his golden beauty of tone if apt to be lachrymose in style. Many of Caruso's Metropolitan roles were inherited by the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling; a notable interpreter of Verdi, he was an elegant singer and an implacable stylist, greatly admired in French roles. Among this generation the most notable tenore di grazia was Tito Schipa, who in a long career at Chicago and the Metropolitan shone in lyrical Italian roles and in French opera.
Lyric tenors from mid-century include Nicolai Gedda, of Swedish-Russian parentage, whose wide-ranging repertory included several high-lying roles; he created Anatol in Barber's Vanessa at the Metropolitan (1958), made a spectacular Cellini at Covent Garden and was especially admired for his elegant singing in French opera. Carlo Bergonzi began his career as a baritone; as a tenor, he became an exceptionally stylish Verdi specialist, who could sing heroic roles (though not Otello) as easily as the more lyrical ones. José Carreras, a lyric tenor by nature, has also taken on such heavier roles as Manrico and Don Carlos with success, and his Don José has been particularly acclaimed.
Britten composed roles in nine operas (12 including the church parables) for Peter Pears, a lyric tenor whose highly placed, flexible voice had a peculiar individuality of timbre: they include between 1945 and 1973 Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, Captain Vere (Billy Budd), Quint (Turn of the Screw) and Aschenbach (Death in Venice). Richard Lewis, a fine Grimes and an even finer Vere, was vocally heavier than Pears but lighter than Vickers; he created roles in two Tippett operas, Mark (The Midsummer Marriage, 1955) and Achilles (King Priam, 1962), and sang Aaron in the British stage première of Schoenberg's opera (1965) and Alwa (Lulu): he was admired in Mozart and in Handel oratorios.
Outside opera, lyric tenors have continued to be prized in other repertory. Specialists in song repertory include the Danish tenor Aksel Schiøtz, whose elegant voice was particularly well suited to lieder as well as Mozart operatic roles. Racial prejudice prevented black American tenor Roland Hayes from performing opera on stage; he concentrated on concerts and recitals where his beautiful voice and excellent musicianship found a welcome repertory in German and French songs and American spirituals. Ernst Haefliger, especially noted for Schubert song cycles, made his début in 1942 as the Evangelist in Bach's St John Passion, and his performance of Bach tenor parts remained central in his repertory. More recently, the English tenor Ian Bostridge has combined beautiful tone and phrasing with distinctive interpretations of lieder by Schumann and Schubert and of Britten's music for tenor.
The internationalization of singing has been especially apparent in the expanded cohort of lyrical Mozart tenors, the ranks of which include the Irish tenor John McCormack, who also excelled in Handel, Donizetti and lieder; the English tenor Heddle Nash, whose elegant voice was particularly praised in Mozart and Handel; the Austrian Richard Tauber, for whom Lehár composed roles in his operettas; the Canadian Léopold Simoneau, greatly admired in French and Italian repertory; and the Italian Cesare Valletti, successor to Schipa, whose repertory included Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini and Verdi. Among German tenors, Fritz Wunderlich, whose refined and mellifluous voice, deployed with perfect control, was silenced by his early death in 1966, and Peter Schreier, who became the main representative of the Mozart tradition in the 1970s and 80s, stand out.
The revival of interest in early 19th-century opera demanded agile voices that could handle the high tessitura. Gianni Raimondi's warm timbre, flexibility and brilliance in his top register led to great success in revivals of such operas as Armida, Guillaume Tell and Lucia di Lammermoor. The American tenor John Alexander was also admired for his versatility in bel canto roles, including Pollione (Norma) as well as in Mozart and French repertory. The Spanish singer Alfredo Kraus was an elegant stylist whose well-placed voice lasted over 35 years; he excelled in bel canto roles such as Arturo (I puritani) as well as in French opera (Werther, Des Grieux and Hoffmann). Luciano Pavarotti also began his career in bel canto repertory, where his roles included Bellini's Elvino (La sonnambula) and Donizetti's Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor); later he moved on to heavier Verdi and Puccini roles, including Manrico (Il trovatore), Radames and Otello (in concert performance): sheer beauty of tone and suppleness of phrasing served amply to overcome any dramatic limitations.
Three American tenors have made this repertory a speciality: Chris Merritt, a Rossini specialist with a powerful voice and upper extension; Rockwell Blake, who has also sung Mozart, Donizetti and Bellini as well as Rossini, with a voice extending to f'' and remarkable flexibility; and John Aler, who has a clear and light voice, used to good effect in earlier music. Among other singers suited to the needs of the early music movement, with use of head voice at the top of the range, is Anthony Rolfe Johnson, who has sung Ulysses (Monteverdi), Jupiter (Handel's Semele) and Mozart's Idomeneus as well as Aschenbach (Britten's Death in Venice).
Classical tenors frequently cross over into popular repertory, especially lyric tenors who are well suited to operetta and musical theatre. Tauber is one example. Another is Carreras, who recorded both West Side Story (in an unhappy collaboration with Bernstein) and South Pacific. A good example is Jan Peerce, who after singing standard repertory and performing with many ensembles, appeared in such films as Tonight We Sing and Goodbye, Columbus, sang as a cantor and recorded Jewish liturgical music, and in 1971 made his Broadway début as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Mario Lanza, by contrast, was a popular singer in the operatic tradition, best known for his films and recordings, among them songs from The Student Prince and ‘Arrivederci, Roma’.
The tenor phenomenon at the end of the 20th century has been ‘The Three Tenors’, Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti, who first appeared together at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1990 during the football World Cup and then in other arenas of similar gargantuan size, performing repertory from opera to popular love songs. Classical artists are not generally able to adopt a popular singing style easily (and The Three Tenors are no exception), any more than classical style transfers easily to popular singers; but among popular singers in the tenor range who performed popular repertory with ease and natural delivery, Tony Martin and Johnny Mathis stand out as exquisite balladeers.
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