On 23 Jul 2005 at 18:13, John Howell wrote: > At 2:26 PM -0700 7/23/05, Mark D Lew wrote: > > >Castrati sang minor roles, too. Most of the Handel operas have > >multiple castrato roles. In Rinaldo, for instance, in addition to > >the title role, Eustazio was also a castrato originally. (I think > >the part is cut altogether in later edition.) > > I think the typical cast in the 27 Metestasian libretti was 2 female > sopranos (prima donna and seconda donna), 2 male sopranos (primo uomo > and secondo uomo, presumeably castrati), a tenor, and 1 to 3 other > characters. Small casts, and pretty darned soprano-heavy! (The opera > ain't over 'til the fat castrato sings??) Whether Mozart followed > that tradition in his Italian operas I don't know, but it was > definitely the Italian tradition.
Well, by "Italian operas" I think you mean his seria operas. Mozart probably had little say in the casting of those (with the exceptions of, perhaps, Idomeneo and, probably, Titus), since he was just a kid, fulfilling commissions for, mostly, pre-chosen libretti that already had a relatively fixed set of roles (though each time, a librettist was making revisions). The rules for opera buffa, are, of course, entirely different. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
