A Perspective Of The Diversity Of Mezzo-Soprano Roles’ Expressive Styles In The Opera World

The female leading roles in operas with whom we are familiar are mostlypositive and kind women. Such examples as Madame Butterfly, Margaret and Toscaare mostly played by the sopranos, while such unusual female leading roles asCarmen and Delilah are mostly played by the mezzo-sopranos. The phenomenaresults from the Mezzo-sopranos’ natural, full, dark and unique tone color, whichshows a stark contrast between the Mezzo-sopranos and the sopranos anddemonstrates the former’s uniqueness. The contrast between the two produces astrong dramatic conflict, which impresses the audience. For example, Delilah iswell-known as the first beauty spy in history, who drives Samson to pay dearly for hislove for her. This group of characters creates great dramatic conflicts and shows morecharacter diversity. Examining the course of the development of Mezzo-soprano rolesin the opera history, the author of this thesis finds that the Mezzo-sopranos usuallyplayed such supporting roles as housemaids, old ladies, witches and knights whenoperas came into being. Operas with the Mezzo-sopranos as female leading rolesappeared in the romantic period when people were keen on exoticness, the artists paidspecial attention to the beauty of different parts and the audience preferred passionate,expressive and bold new women to fair ladies. The Mezzo-sopranos becameextremely important roles as a result of being appreciated by the composers, theirgreatly-improved singing skills and the appearance of many famous femaleMezzo-sopranos.Saint Saens’ opera“Samson et Dalila,” his masterpiece, is one which has aMezzo-soprano as its female leading role with the Romantic period as its background.The three classic Arias,“Printemps qui commence”,“Mon c ur s’ouvre à ta voix”and “Amour, viens aider ma faiblesse” are repertoire pieces for almost allMezzo-soprano concerts. The thesis, which is divided into three chapters, focuses onanalyzing how the Mezzo-sopranos demonstrate the diversity and complexity of therole of Delilah by examining the course of the development of Mezzo-sopranos’ rolesin the history of opera and the ways how they interpret the new, complex Delilah.