Dream Roles and Fach Expectations

Question:

And more musically: what are your dream roles with your current fFach? Do you have any expectation/desires about what might continue to develop with your voice?

I realize this patron only asked what my dream roles in my current Fach were, but because I love opera I wanna share some of my favorites.

Regardless of gender, Fach, or whether I’d even do it well: Zerbinetta from Ariadne auf Naxos

• Zerbinetta is without a doubt one of the most fabulous and simultaneously earnest coloratura soprano characters that exist in opera. She is super virtuosic and has a lot more emotional complexity than you usually see in these types of characters. She’s also incredibly camp and has four male lovers who faun over her constantly.

From when I was a mezzo: Octavian from ‘Der Rosenkavalier’

• Octavian is one of the best pants roles ever written. He is a young man having a love affair with an older woman and he is absolutely head over heels. Their relationship is incredibly beautiful and he gets to sing one of the most moving finales of an opera, in my opinion, that has ever been written.

Tenor roles in general: Lenski from ‘Eugene Onegin’

• Lenski is yet another heart-breakingly earnest character (I’m sensing a theme…) who has the tragic role of being Onegin’s best friend. He is a sensitive poet type, has some of the best music in the whole show, and also gets an unforgettable death. I’d also like to take this moment to confess that Lenski was the only tenor role I ever gave a shit about as a mezzo.

Current fach: Tanzmeister from ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’, Valzacchi from ‘Der Rosenkavalier’, The Weird Peasant in ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District’, Mime in ‘The Ring Cycle’

• Since this was the base of the original question, I thought I’d share a handful of roles. I won’t go into why I love all of them, but let’s just say they’re all fucking crazy. Although I’ve sung Valzacchi and Mime in orchestral workshops, I’d love to actually stage them and get the chance to really get it in my body.
• The Shabby Peasant (which amazingly is the official title of this character) is a dream role from when I saw it at the Deutsche Oper with Burkhard Ulrich in the role. It encompasses a major plot point and is virtuosic both dramatically and vocally in its own Stravinskian way.
• Tanzmeister I haven’t yet sung, but if I ever get a crack at it, the world will probably never let me do anything else.

My current Fach is a Character Tenor or Spieltenor in German. A character tenor is generally defined as being a tenor who can act and dance very well and who has a high level of musicianship. Character Tenors do not need to necessarily sound pretty, but they need to be useful, interesting, and good story tellers. From my experience, a character tenor often has small but difficult roles which require good timing, good counting skills, multi-tasking mastery, and a high awareness of the other players on the stage. They are almost exclusively supporting characters, except for a few famous exceptions, like Nemorino in ‘L’elisir d’amore’.

I fit this Fach very well for all of the above reasons and my expectations are that my voice will only become more stable and more useful over time to include a huge amount of small, useful tenor roles which no one else wants to do. This may sound slightly fatalist in some way, depending on your opinion of character tenor roles, but I find this particular Fach fascinating because the roles are very important, but not at all glorious.

Let’s take Valzacchi for example: I sang this last year in an orchestra workshop with Fulham Opera (delete,) and it fit like a glove. The first part of the role is literally 45 seconds long but is fast, furious, and sung in German with an Italian-Viennese accent. I can’t say it sounded pretty, but I did get all the fucking words at at the right time, on the right pitches, and was hella entertaining to watch, which is basically the job of a character tenor. Mime from ‘The Ring Cycle’ is another solid (and vocally huge) example of an interesting character tenor role. In ‘Das Rheingold’, Mime is crying and screaming on stage for about 10 minutes, changing motivations and ideas every other line, and eventually runs screaming at the end of his 10 minutes of glory.

Sometimes I tell people that I don’t want to sound pretty and that I want to sing the ugly things. This is only half true. I do want to sound pretty if I’m honest. I want to be enjoyable to listen to and I also want to sing beautiful music. Most character roles don’t really afford one that opportunity, which means that I will need to supplement my development with other repertoire to make sure I’m balancing myself. That said, I also do love to sing ugly roles. No shame in being the hilarious, useful person on stage.

Something I’ve talked about with a few people is that I should never close off my options. For most tenors this usually means thinking about doing character roles rather than just auditioning for lyric roles, but for me it’s sort of the opposite. I never think, “Oh, maybe I’ll sing Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte someday!” But it could happen. It’s completely possible because everything up to this point in my career wasn’t possible until I did it and now it is.

Do you think I can do it? What’s your experience?

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