here is a song for contralto. you might be wondering what the point is, since it's in head voice anyway. well it sits right on top of a mezzo's ouch zone, whereas it is higher than my ouch zone so to me this song is extremely easy and for them it is extremely aggravating
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@jannem I really must check out Kabuki sometime, it seems like something I'd be into
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@jannem ye a lot of "difficult" opera songs were actually written for a specific performer in mind so it wasn't the composer being diabolical so much as writing a showcase for a particular cast member's unique talents
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@jannem the piece's range is D3-B4 so if you transpose it up you have to find a tenor who can go up to soprano heights, which is possible I suppose....
@jannem oh and it has melismas that run around the full pitch range so you can't just "transpose the hard parts". Manuel Garcia was a freak of nature with a massive range and the aria was written to take advantage of it
@jannem but in general yea solos can be transposed, it's just that this one in general doesn't do well in transposition
By "ouch zone" i mean the "zona di passaggio" or "where u gotta flip from chest voice to head voice", this is the most tender spot on your voicemeats and easiest place to get injured. often what makes a song hard isn't how high or low it is but how much it makes you hop around on top of the weakest part of your voice.
sadly it's not super sexy to be like "check out how neither high nor low pitched this song is!!!"
the tenor aria "cessa di più resistere" is so difficult that after the premiere of The Barber of Seville it was not performed again for over 100 years.
this is because the guy who played the Count at premiere was a freak of nature baritone with a killer upper extension and it wasn't supposed to be insanely hard Rossini just stuck it right above his ouch zone which is exactly on top of the ouch zone of a normal tenor
