HINSON, DANIEL ROSS, DMA Are You Serious? - The University of ...

eighteenth century, roles that embodied some of the characteristics of an opera seria hero
were now often given to the tenor, the highest natural male voice. Thus, the highest-
voiced character would usually represent the noblest character on stage in operas that mix
the opera seria and opera buffa tradition.
The decline in favor of the castrato voice was an important factor that led to the
rise of the tenor voice being featured as the romantic lead. It was also a trend that
Mozart, in his later operatic compositions, would help to perpetuate. In his early operas,
many of which were written for Italian performances in the opera seria style, he wrote
extensively for the castrato. However, when he relocated to Vienna and found opera
seria out of vogue, he began to write almost exclusively for the tenor voice, and only
nominally for the castrato in his later operas. For example, the character of Idamante in
Mozart’s Idomeneo was originally written for a castrato when it was premiered in
Munich in 1781. However, when he prepared the opera for presentation in Vienna in
1786, he rewrote the role of Idamante for a tenor. 11 This revision itself is emblematic of
the swiftly changing musical tides in Vienna in the 1780s, which can be best understood
through an examination of the rise and fall of the operatic form of the Singspiel.
The German Singspiel has the youngest genesis of the three operatic genres in
which Mozart composed. Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804) wrote the first Singspiel,
which premiered in 1766 in Leipzig and was a re-composition of the British “ballad
opera” The Devil to Pay by Charles Coffey (?-1745). This opera was, as were other early
Singspiele, a spoken comedy with some simplistic musical numbers added. The relative
11 Heartz, 203.
11