Rumpelstiltskin

A classroom guide for teachers

Voice Types

What are voice types and how do they help tell an operatic story?

What are voice types and how do they help tell the story of Rumpelstiltskin?

OBJECTIVES:

Students will identify standard opera voice types. They will make inferences about which voice types match the characters in Rumpelstiltskin and describe the particular sound that each voice can make as well as the emotional impact that is associated with that vocal type. Students will also understand that composers choose which voice types are best for their compositions.

PROCEDURE:

Launch:

Guide students through a review of the Rumpelstiltskin synopsis. List the main characters on the board for reference. Ask students to brainstorm adjectives that describe characters.

We will use 5 voices types in Rumpelstiltskin; Coloratura Soprano, Lyric Soprano, Tenor, Baritone and Bass.

Before they listen to the recording, ask students to make inferences about which voice types will be best for the characters in Rumpelstiltskin based on their adjectives.

Development:

Listen to the musical links in the synopsis. Model the first selection with the students and fill out the Voice Type Worksheet for sample #1 together.

Practice:

After each selection ask the students to share their observations in small groups and add new thoughts to their observations. Allow small groups to share their ideas with the larger group.

What voice type do you think the composer chose for each of the roles? Why?

Essential Questions/Assessment:

What clues do voice types give us about the characters?

If you were going to compose an opera, what voice types would you use? Why? Read Nicolas Reveles’ notes about how he chose the voice types for his opera Rumpelstiltskin.

The Characters in Rumpelstiltskin

By composer, Nicolas Reveles

I am often asked, “why did you choose to do this or that when you were writing your opera?” Most often the question is about the voice types that I decided to use during the process of creating the opera. Let’s take a look at the characters in Rumpelstiltskin and see why I made the choices I did.

Nell, the Miller’s Daughter

In opera, nearly always the heroine is portrayed by a lyric soprano with a lovely, clear voice. Nell is certainly the heroine of the opera Rumpelstiltskin; she is the one that everything happens to, she is the one that the King falls in love with, and she’s the one with the problem that needs solving. Opera composers have always tended to use the lyric soprano voice in order to portray female characters who have a problem that must be solved.

The Miller

The Miller is, of course, Nell’s father and most often in opera fathers are portrayed by the deep male voice which we call a bass. But the Miller is, in my mind, a young father, quicker on his feet (as well as with his tongue!) than most operatic fathers. So I decided to give the role over to a baritone, a voice - type that has a slightly higher range than the bass and whose voice is also usually more flexible, dynamic, therefore sounding somewhat younger. I think this is a good choice because our Miller is sly and very ambitious.

The King

As I said above, basses are usually reserved for father figures in opera, sometimes even for villains. They never ‘get the girl’, they never ‘fall in love’. So I thought that since the King eventually falls in love with Nell and marries her, making her Queen, I would choose against opera tradition and make him a bass. This has worked out well, I think, and the choice provides a good foil to the Miller with whom he has some important conversations.

The Guides

The Guides in Rumpelstiltskin are the addition of the librettist, J. Sherwood Montgomery. They help to propel the story along, like storytellers or in place of a ‘Greek Chorus’ commenting on the story as it goes along. They are sometimes in the story, other times out of it. I ultimately wanted all of the basic voice types involved in this opera, so I decided to give these two rather comic characters over to the mezzo-soprano and coloratura soprano. The mezzo is a female voice type with a lower range, the coloratura soprano is a female voice type with the highest possible range. The coloratura in this case (Guide #1) also portrays the bird who announces the birth of the Queen’s firstborn child. Coloraturas are often used in opera in order to portray birds (hear the Forest Bird in Siegfried by Wagner). I like to think of the mezzo as a more comic character and I’ve made her (Guide #2) the more active of the two Guides.

Rumpelstiltskin (and Alastair the Storyteller)

Another convention that we’ve added to the original story of Rumpelstiltskin is that the same singer who portrays the title character also appears at various points in the opera as a storyteller who narrates and propels (much like the Guides) the story as it’s told. Alastair the Storyteller introduces the tale of Rumpelstiltskin and then, through the magic of theatre, becomes the character of Rumpelstiltskin himself. Now Rumpelstiltskin is something of a villain or antagonist in the opera (although an argument could be made that the Miller has a hand in the villainy: after all, he’s the one who tells a lie to the King putting Nell and her child in peril!) Both Alastair and Rumpelstiltskin are rather dark characters and I really wanted to play against type by avoiding the use of the bass or baritone for this character. And so I designed the character to be sung by the tenor voice type, a type of singer that usually sings heroic roles. Throughout the history of opera, tenors have been used as heroes. I thought it would be fun to turn the tables on the tenor and give him a villainous role for a change. It is not only ‘villainous’, it is taxing and difficult because of the amount of music that I’ve given the character to sing. He has an entrance aria (the tango), a patter song and a Broadway number, plus a duet with Nell, including his work with the Guides as Alastair. None of the other characters is used quite so much, and it really has become ‘his’ opera.

Additional Material