Theatrical productions integrated with music and songs have gone on for thousands of

years. Certainly the ancient Greeks included music with their plays, and it was as an
attempt to recreate the Greek drama by a group of Florentine scholars and noblemen
called the Camerata that the strange hybrid called opera was born. It is generally agreed
that the first opera was Daftie by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621), with music by Jacopo
Peri (1561-1633) and Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602) in 1598. In these early operas the
contralto voice, like the tenor and bass, was mostly assigned to character roles. In Dafne
(1608), on the same libretto with music by Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643), the
performer receiving the highest praise was Antonio Brandi (fl. 1600-1610), an alto
castrato (Burney calls him a counter-tenor), as the shepherd-messenger Tirsi. Venice was
the most important center for opera in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and its
influence spread to all the major European cities. The first theater fully devoted to opera
production, the Teatro San Cassiano, opened in Venice in 1737. The castrati, both alto
and soprano, were "the stars of the show." A visitor to Venice who reflected the French
distaste for the castrati had this to say: There is also one Thing that charms them, which I
believe would not please you; I mean those unhappy Men who basely suffer themselves
to be maimed, that they may have finer Voices. The silly Figure! which, in my Opinion,
such a mutilated Fellow makes, who sometimes acts the Bully and sometimes the
Passion-ate Lover, with his Effeminate Voice and wither'd Chin is such a thing to be
endured?'
Because Roman ecclesiastical authorities did not permit women to appear on stage in a
public theater, many fine women singers were forced to emigrate from there and the
Venetian opera was born. The Roman contralto Giulia Saus Paolelli (fl. 1633-1653)) who
was Penelope in Monteverdi's II ritorno d'Ulisse in patria in Bologna and Venice in 1641,
was one of the first "divas" in oper-atic history. The high soprano that we equate with this
title was unknown during this time and well into the eighteenth century. As regards
women's voices, in exactly the same way as both his con-temporaries and his
predecessors, Monteverdi uses two: the con-tralto or male alto, and a type of voice which
is soprano in name but never sings in very high tessituras or over a very wide range, and
in any event simply coincides with the mezzo-soprano voice.2
In L'incoronazione di Poppea, one of the most beautiful arias, "Oblivion soave" is sung
by Poppea's nurse Arnalta, a contralto. In keeping with the confusion about this voice,
this role and others portraying a lusty old woman have alternated between a contralto and
a countertenor (falsettist). Santa Marchesina (fl. 1706-1739) was a famous contralto who
specialized in this kind of role, often serving as a foil between two buffo basses. In
modern editions of these works, these roles are often designated as mezzo-soprano.
Comic characters (often sung by contraltos) were regularly inserted into serious operas of
the seventeenth century in much the same way that clowns give comic relief to
Shakespeare's dramas. This practice died out in the eighteenth century, however, and
Handel only had one such episode in all his operas—that of the character Elviro (bass) in
Serse.
Pier Francesco Caletti-Bruni, known as Francesco Cavalli, was an outstanding composer
of the early Venetian school. His opera Giasone (Jason) was "the single most popular
opera of the seventeenth century."3 Giasone (1649), as well as Serse (1655) and Pompeo
Magno (1666), featured alto castrati in the title roles, in keeping with the principle,
established by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and the Roman school that historical and
mythological heroes were to be portrayed by evirati, while their love interests were
generally portrayed by female sopranos. The range of pitch of Cavalli's operas was
modest; the sopranos (male and female) were mostly in the range of the mezzo-sopra-nos
of today, rarely exceeding the high A, but he moved toward a more expansive style in his
later works. The most famous example of the Baroque court opera was Il porno d'oro by
Pietro Antonio Cesti (1623-1669). It had five acts, divided into sixty-six scenes, with
twenty-four stage settings and lasted for ten hours. There were ten separate roles written
for alto castrati.
All the parts [in Il pomo d'oro] were sung by men, with the quaint consequence that some
of the male characters in the opera have higher voices than the female ones—a situation
not uncommon in Italian seventeenth-century opera even when there were women
singers, for the composers favored the woman's alto voice and commonly reserved the
soprano roles for castrati.4
Some of these roles, such as Didone (Dido) and Medea, expand the female roles to heroic
proportions. Cesti's writing for the voice was not so different from Cavalli's and other
com-posers of the time, but Celletti says that "it was with Antonio Cesti that Venetian
opera took a decisive step in the glorifica-tion of the art of singing."' Other Venetian
composers who were prominent in the latter half of the seventeenth century were Carlo
Francisco Pollarollo (1653-1722), Antonio Sartorio (c. 1620-1684), Giovanni Legrenzi
(1626-1690), Pietro Andrea Zeani (c. 1620-1684), and Giovanni Domenico Freschi
(1640-1690). In general, these composers tended to write more florid music for sopra-nos
than for altos, both male and female. However, there were
plenty of opportunities for the altos—for example, a proto-type of the "mad" scene, so
dear to Bellini and Donizetti, in Legrenzi's Totila (1677). The Roman consul Pubblicola
(male alto) loses his mind at the false news of his wife's death at the hands of the Goth
invaders. In the same opera, the part of Ves-tige (female mezzo-soprano), is written in the
C clef, a rarity in seventeenth-century opera. In Pollarollo's Onorio in Roma, the
eponymous hero (male alto) sings one of the earliest imitations of birdsong in "Usignoli
the cantata." In Cesti the coloratura begins to take on effects borrowed from instruments,
such as the organ, violin, or harpsichord. The trumpet accompani-ment in Sartorio and
Legrenzi is used to distinguish royalty or warrior heroes.
The Venetian influence on opera was not slow to spread to other parts of Europe,
principally the South German courts. Two composers in residence there were Carlo
Pallavicino (c. 1640-1686), the director of the first permanent opera house in Dresden,
and Agostino Steffani (1654-1728) in Munich and Hanover. Both composers moved in
the direction of more florid figuration, increased velocity, expanded vocal range, and
extended arias, which led to the glorification of the singer's art in the da capo aria in the
eighteenth century. Another technical improvement was the necessity of the attainment of
spectacu-lar breathing capacity by the singers of the century to come.
The expansion of the vocal range introduced by Steffani is a novelty. Agamennone
(tenor) in Breisede ("Dolce magna e la belt() reaches b'. The male alto rises to e"; the
(female) con-tralto voice, which following the precedent in Pollarolo's Onorio in Roma
we find used by Steffani in serious roles (Drusilla in Servio Tullio and Lavinia and
Semiamira in Turno), sings up to d", a note unusual at the time for that vocal register, and
incidentally initiated by Steffani in Turno, with a fairly decided virtuosity (e.g.
Semiamira's aria "Placidette belle aurette" in imitation of the sighing of the wind.)6