Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Five Handel operas

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/em/caq131

1741-7260

E. Roche,

Diverse Musicological Studies

How do you solve a problem like Senesino—or any of the other star castrato singers who took the chief male roles in late Baroque Italian opera? This is not a frivolous question, but one that encapsulates the dilemma that must be addressed by any modern revival of a Handel opera that aims to achieve the greatest possible degree of authenticity. Baroque-era instruments can be reproduced, 18th-century performance practices reconstructed, but the uniquely glorious sound which was not only an essential ingredient in any operatic performance—and certainly one of its greatest attractions for the opera-going public—is gone beyond recall. Despite the wealth of contemporary evidence suggesting that no substitute will do, therefore, all that can be done is to decide which of the possible modern substitutes is most plausible both musically and in facilitating the willing suspension of disbelief that enables the listener to accept that characters singing high soprano roles...