Bertoni
not only imitated it in one of his scores, but he had the hardihood to
write an _Orfeo_ on the text already followed by Gluck in which he
plagiarized the work of his illustrious predecessor in a scandalous
fashion.
This same aria, changed with real genius and performed with prodigious
eclat by Madame Viardot, and re-orchestrated by myself, was one of the
strongest reasons for the success of the famous performances at the
Theatre-Lyrique. But it is well understood that it could not properly
find a place in an edition where the sole end was artistic sincerity and
purity of the text.
From this point of view it would seem that the best manner of giving
_Orphee_ would be to conform to the author's definitive version. A tenor
would have to take the part of Orpheus, since we no longer have male
contraltos, and to keep to this kind of a voice in _Orphee_ we would
have to have recourse to what is called, in theatrical terms, a
_travesti_. There are obstacles to this, however. The pitch has changed
since the Eighteenth Century; it has gone up and it is now impossible,
or nearly so, to sing the role written for Legros. The contraltos of the
Italian chorus have become the counter-tenors, who, for the same reason,
find themselves struggling with too sharp notes.
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