Bel canto

Bel canto (Italian for “beautiful singing”, pronounced [ˌbɛl ˈkanto]) is a term with several meanings that relate to Italian singing and is often used to evoke a lost singing tradition. It is used to describe a manner of singing that had begun to wane around 1830

History of the term and its various definitions

Bel canto refers to the Italian-originated vocal style that prevailed throughout most of Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

• Late 19th- and 20th-century sources “would lead us to believe that bel canto was restricted to beauty and evenness of tone, legato phrasing, and skill in executing highly florid passages,” but contemporary documents[19] describe a multifaceted manner of performance far beyond these confines
• The main features of the style include prosodic singing, a highly articulated manner of phrasing based on the insertion of grammatical and rhetorical pauses, a delivery varied by several types of legato and staccato, a liberal application of more than one type of portamento messa di voce, frequent alteration of tempo through rhythmic rubato and the quickening and slowing of the overall time, and the introduction of a wide variety of graces and divisions into both arias and recitatives

Quotations

There are no registers in the human singing voice, when it is accurately produced. According to natural laws, the voice is made up of one register, which constitutes its entire range.

• Bel-canto is not a school of sensuously pretty voice-production. The true purpose of singing is to give utterance to certain hidden depths in our nature which can be adequately expressed in no other way. The voice is the only vehicle perfectly adapted to this purpose; it alone can reveal to us our deepest feelings.

Further reading

Brown, M. Augusta (1894), University of Pennsylvania “Extracts From Vocal Art” in The Congress of Women, Mary Kavanaugh Oldham (ed.), Chicago: Monarch Book Company, p. 477

• Coffin, Berton (2002), Sounds of Singing, Second Edition, Littlefield
• Juvarra, Antonio (2006) I segreti del belcanto. Storia delle tecniche e dei metodi vocali dal ‘700 ai nostri giorni, Curci, 2006
• Marchesi, Mathilde (1970), Bel Canto: A Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method, Dover
• Pleasants, Henry (1983), The Great Singers from the Dawn of Opera to Our Own Time, London: Macmillan
• Rosselli, John (1995), Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Rushmore, Robert (1971), The Singing Voice
• Somerset-Ward, Richard (2004), Angels and Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera, New Haven & London: Yale University Press

External links

Bel Canto: Historically Informed, Re-Creative Singing in the Age of Rhetorical Persuasion

• Nigro, Antonella, Observations on the Technique of Italian Singing from the 16th Century to the Present Day from the book “Celebri Arie Antiche: le piu’ note arie del primo Barocco italiano trascritte e realizzate secondo lo stile dell’epoca” by Claudio Dall’Albero and Marcello Candela.

Revival

In the 1950s, the phrase “bel canto revival” was coined to refer to a renewed interest in the operas of Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini

• These composers had begun to go out of fashion during the latter years of the 19th century and their works, while never completely disappearing from the performance repertoire, were staged infrequently during the first half of the 20th century
• That situation changed significantly after World War II with the advent of a group of enterprising orchestral conductors and the emergence of a fresh generation of singers such as Montserrat Caballé, Maria Callas, Leyla Gencer, Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills and Marilyn Horne, who had acquired bel canto techniques

18th and early 19th centuries

Two famous 18th-century teachers of the style were Antonio Bernacchi (1685-1756) and Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), but many others existed.

• Singers regularly embellished both arias and recitatives, but did so by tailoring their embellishments to the prevailing sentiments of the piece.

Teaching legacy

Mathilde Marchesi (1821-1913), a leading Paris-based teacher of bel canto sopranos

• Bel canto-era teachers were great believers in the benefits of vocalize and solfeggio
• They strove to strengthen the respiratory muscles of their pupils and equip them with such time-honoured vocal attributes as “purity of tone, perfection of legato, phrasing informed by eloquent portamento, and exquisitely turned ornaments”

Notes

Sources

• Apel, Willi (2000). Harvard Dictionary of Music (2nd, revised and enlarged ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap.
• Bukofzer, Manfred (1947). Music in the Baroque Era. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company
• Duey, Philip A. (1951). Bel canto in its Golden Age. New Haven & London: Yale University Press
• Haas, Robert (1928). Die Musik des Barocks (in German).
• Jander, Owen (1998). “Bel canto”. In Stanley Sadie (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan
• Marafioti, P. Mario (1922). Caruso’s Method of Voice Production: The Scientific Culture of the Voice. Newham, Paul (1999). ‘Using Voice and Song in Therapy: The Practical Application of Voice Movement Therapy. Jessica Kingsley.』
• Osborne, Charles (1994). The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 9781853025907
• Scott, Michael (1977), The Record of Singing, Vols. 1 and 2. Oxford University Press.

19th-century Italy and France

The term bel canto is sometimes attached to Italian operas written by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848).

• These composers wrote bravura works for the stage during what musicologists sometimes call the “bel canto era”.
• But the style of singing had started to change around 1830, Michael Balfe writing of the new method of teaching required for the music of Bellini.
• “Bel canto” was not commonly used until the latter part of the 19th century, when it was set in opposition to the development of a weightier, more powerful style of speech-inflected singing associated with German opera and, above all, Richard Wagner’s revolutionary music dramas.

Detractors

Critics considered bel canto outmoded and condemned it as vocalization devoid of content.

• Italian singing teachers revived it against a vibrato-laden style of vocalism that singers increasingly used to meet the demands of verismo writing by composers such as Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919), Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945), Francesco Cilea (1866-1950) and Umberto Giordano (1867-1948).
• Most musicologists agree that the term is best limited to its mid-19th-century use, designating a style of singing that emphasized beauty of tone and technical expertise in the delivery of music that was either florid or featured long, flowing and difficult-to-sustain melodies.

Source