Talk:Mezzo-soprano

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[edit] Welcome to the :Mezzo-soprano discussion page

Constructive suggestions and discussion welcome! The contents of this page are for ongoing discussions. For past discussions please see the archives.

[edit] Rossini and Baroque

I've been told the the composer Rossini, who gave most of his leading female roles to mezzos, effectively discovered this voice (perhaps along with the baritone voice), both of which were not known before his time, in the Baroque period and before. In the baroque, mezzo singer apparently sang alto parts in choral, secular or operaic works. Baritones worked as basses. This article should definitely mention this. This deserves a section.

Did Rossini really mentioned "mezzo-soprano" in his scores? As far as I know he described Rosina and Angelina as altos. Moreover, it should be mentioned in the article that Verdi hasn't distinguished altos from mezzos in his solo parts - only mezzo appears as a solo part. AdamChapman 13:24, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
The use of more specific terms for voice types was just beginning to emerge during the time of Rossini and the other earlier bel canto composers. It really wasn't until the mid nineteenth century that more defined descriptions of voice types began to emerge. Although Rossini may have used the terms mezzo-soprano and baritone he didn't use them consistantly and may not have meant the same thing that we mean today by those terms today. Also, classical composers did make use of women with mezzo ranges. Several of the soubrette roles in Mozart's operas for example, may have been sung by mezzos. And the role of Dorabella from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, was definitely written for a mezzo. Nrswanson (talk) 07:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Are Dugazon and Galli-Marié Really Mezzo-Sopranos?

It is my understanding that these are rare tyes of voices that are intermediate voices between the mezzo-soprano and soprano voices. Check out the section on intermediate voices on the soprano page. I know for sure that dark-colored soprano leggero are often refered to as having Dugazon voices. Also what about the Falcon voice.Nrswanson (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I've corrected the link in the heading - and yes, the books all call them mezzos. -- Kleinzach (talk) 04:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Galli-Marie's most famous role is Carmen, which is definitely a mezzo role AdamChapman (talk) 11:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Including a list of musical roles

I invite everyone to join this discussion on the voice type talk page. Past consensus has been to not include a list of such roles but perhaps this topic should be re-adressed. This topic involves all voice types as there has been a strong attempt to try and make each voice type page similar in content and formatNrswanson (talk) 22:34, 9 February 2008 (UTC)