Falsettone has reportedly been used by
tenors,
baritenors,
hautes-contre, and
tenori contraltini of the
Baroque and
Classical eras. It was used from about A4 or B4 upwards. According to various authors, baroque and neoclassical tenors simply used falsetto to sing high notes, with the exception of hautes-contre, who could reach up to B in what was claimed to be the
modal voice register. However, it was actually a "mixed head and chest voice, and not the full chest voice that Italian tenors would develop later". (Here, "head voice" refers to falsetto and "chest voice" refers to modal voice.) Nowadays, the falsettone register is seldom used in Opera. Such notes as high C, C-sharp, D and E are usually sung in the modal or modal sounding "mixed voice" register (or, as it is sometimes misleadingly described, "from the chest"). Even the famous F5 of
Bellini’s
I Puritani, which used to be left out or sung falsetto (for example by
Luciano Pavarotti) has often been performed with a more "chesty" voice by the new
bel canto tenor generation of the late 20th century.. It's unclear whether this mode of execution of notes as high as F5 and around is actually modal or, or the same light registration of falsettone but with more compression twang and brighter vowels which make it sound like a prosecution of modal. Falsettone is however employed in many renditions of classical baroque music, of which Monteverdi, Handel are names worth of mention, pioneers of this genre, by male singers, tenors but often even baritones or lower, taking roles which used to be of castrati. These singers use a resonating falsetto to achieve the notes and approximate the timbre which possibly used to be of these men. We can name among them Andreas Scholl, Philippe Jaroussky. Female opera singers often use this register for the higher part of their tessitura, but they connect it to their lower register. In that same period Italian musicologist
Rodolfo Celletti, who was also an amateur singing teacher, tried to restore the falsettone technique, training the tenor
Giuseppe Morino, who made his debut singing the tenore contraltino role of Gualtiero in Bellini’s
Il pirata, at the
Festival della Valle d'Itria in
Martina Franca. ==Style of falsettone==