The earliest use of the term "bel canto" occurred in late 17th-century Italy, when it was applied to a sophisticated model of singing that was evolving there among practitioners of operatic and sacred music. The term did not become fairly widely used, however, until the middle of the next century, which was the heyday of opera seria, the static but technically challenging da capo aria, and the now-extinct castrato voice.

In the mid-19th century, bel canto gained a more specific meaning when it was employed to distinguish what by now had developed into the traditional Italian vocal model from more forceful, less ingratiating styles of singing. These newer styles of singing had arisen as a result of 19th-century operas growing increasingly dramatic, pitting performers against louder and denser orchestral accompaniments in bigger theatres. Nonetheless, "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt [a] definition [of bel canto] until after 1900". The term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used nostalgically to evoke a lost singing tradition.

History of the term & its various definitions

Operas and oratorios highly conducive to this method of singing were composed by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) and his contemporaries during the Baroque period. They contained da capo arias which were designed to provide solo singers with plentiful opportunities to display their technical skill and demonstrate their ability to improvise on the spot by embellishing the written score in a (hopefully) tasteful and illuminating manner. Da capo arias featured extensive and elaborate ornamentation, demanding much from the vocalist in the way of fluent runs, trills, turns (gruppetti), mordents, morendi, roulades, staccato passages, appoggiaturas, acciaccaturas, marcato notes, messa di voce effects, rapid scales, wide leaps spanning two octaves or more and brilliant cadenzas. In short: what is commonly referred to by opera-goers as coloratura.

Two famous 18th-century teachers of coloratura vocalism were Antonio Bernacchi (1685–1756) and Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), but numerous others existed. A large proportion of these teachers were castrati. Singer/author John Potter declares in his book Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, 2009, p. 31) that: "For much of the 18th century castrati defined the art of singing; it was the loss of their irrecoverable skills that in time created the myth of bel canto, a way of singing and conceptualising singing that was entirely different from anything that the world had heard before or would hear again."

In a narrower application, the term "bel canto" is sometimes attached exclusively to Italian opera of the time of Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848). These three composers wrote bravura works for the stage during what musicologists call the bel canto era, which lasted approximately from 1805 to 1840. The bel canto era preserved many of the Baroque's musical values, although such characteristic forms as opera seria and the da capo aria did not survive the passing of the 18th century. Changing tastes and social standards also killed off the operatic castrato voice and ensured the concomitant rise to singing supremacy of the prima donna soprano and the virtuoso tenor. (The last important opera role for a castrato was written in 1824 by Giacomo Meyerbeer [1791-1864].)

Actually, the phrase "bel canto" did not enter common usage until the middle 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. Wagner (1813–1883) decried the Italian singing model, alleging that it was concerned merely with "whether that G or A will come out roundly". He advocated a new, Germanic school of singing which would draw "the spiritually energetic and profoundly passionate into the orbit of its matchless Expression".

Interestingly enough, French musicians and composers never embraced the more florid extremes of the 18th-century Italian bel canto style. They disliked the castrato voice and because they placed a premium on the clear enunciation of the texts of their vocal music, they objected to the sung word being obscured by excessive fioritura.

The popularity of the bel canto style as espoused by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini faded in Italy during the mid-19th century. It was overtaken by a heavier, more ardent, less embroidered approach to singing that was necessary in order to perform the innovative works of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) with maximum dramatic impact. Tenors, for instance, began to inflate their tone and deliver the high C (and even the high D) directly from the chest rather than resorting to a suave head voice/falsetto as they had done previously—sacrificing vocal agility in the process. Sopranos and baritones reacted in a similar fashion to their tenor colleagues when confronted with Verdi's drama-filled compositions. They subjected the mechanics of their voice production to greater pressures and cultivated the exciting upper part of their respective ranges at the expense of their mellow but less penetrant lower notes. Initially at least, the singing techniques of 19th-century contraltos and basses were less affected by the musical innovations of Verdi, which were built upon by his successors Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886) and Arrigo Boito (1842–1918).

One reason for the eclipse of the old Italian singing model was the growing influence within the music world of bel canto's detractors, who considered it to be outmoded and condemned it as vocalization devoid of content. To others, however, bel canto became the vanished art of elegant, refined, sweet-toned musical utterance. Rossini lamented in a conversation that took place in Paris in 1858 that: "Alas for us, we have lost our bel canto". Similarly, the so-called German style was as derided as much as it was heralded. In the introduction to a collection of songs by Italian masters published in 1887 in Berlin under the title Il bel canto, Franz Sieber wrote: "In our time, when the most offensive shrieking under the extenuating device of 'dramatic singing' has spread everywhere, when the ignorant masses appear much more interested in how loud rather than how beautiful the singing is, a collection of songs will perhaps be welcome which – as the title purports – may assist in restoring bel canto to its rightful place." Today, some of the world's most frequently performed operas, such as Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, are from the bel canto era.

Not coincidentally, the 18th-century operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), which require adroit bel canto skills if they are to be performed well, also experienced a post-war revival that shows no sign of abating, while the florid operas composed by Mozart's predecessor Handel have undergone a similar surge in popularity during recent decades. "I should think that performances of Handel operas now outnumber all others," avers classical music commentator Simon Callow in the April 2010 issue of Gramophone magazine (p. 26).

The bel canto teaching legacy

"All [their] pedagogical works follow the same structure, beginning with exercises on single notes and eventually progressing to scales and improvised embellishments," writes Potter on p. 47 of his Tenor: History of a Voice. "The really creative ornamentation required for cadenzas, involving models and formulae that could generate newly improvised material, came towards the end of the process." (Today's pervasive idea that singers should refrain from improvising and always adhere strictly to the letter of a composer's published score is a comparatively recent phenomenon, promulgated during the first decades of the 20th century by dictatorial conductors such as Arturo Toscanini [1867-1957], who championed the dramatic operas of Verdi and Wagner and believed in keeping performers on a tight interpretive leash. See, for instance, Volume 1 of Michael Scott's survey The Record of Singing [Duckworth, London, 1977], pp. 135–136; also Potter, p. 77.)

Potter notes, however, that as the 19th century unfurled, "The general tendency ... was for singers not to have been taught by castrati (there were few of them left) and for serious study to start later, often at one of the new conservatories rather than with a private teacher. The traditional techniques and pedagogy were still acknowledged, but the teaching was generally in the hands of tenors and baritones who were by then at least once removed from the tradition itself."

Early 19th-century teachers described the voice as being made up of three registers. The chest register was the lowest of the three and the head register the highest, with the passaggio in between. These registers needed to be smoothly blended and fully equalized before a trainee singer could acquire total command of his or her natural instrument, and the surest way to achieve this outcome was for the trainee to practise vocal exercises assiduously. Bel canto-era teachers were great believers in the benefits of vocalise 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", to quote from the introduction to Volume 2 of Scott's The Record of Singing (Duckworth, London, 1979).

Major refinements occurred to the existing system of voice classification during the 19th century as the international operatic repertoire diversified, split into distinctive nationalist schools and expanded in size. Whole new categories of singers such as mezzo-soprano and Wagnerian bass-baritone arose towards the end of the 19th century, as did such new sub-categories as lyric coloratura soprano, dramatic soprano and spinto soprano, and various grades of tenor, stretching from lyric through spinto to heroic. These classificatory changes have had a lasting effect on the way singing teachers designate voices and the way in which opera house managements cast their productions.

It would be wrong, however, to think that there was across-the-board uniformity among 19th-century bel canto adherents when it came to passing on their knowledge and instructing students. Each of them had their own training regimes and pet notions; but, fundamentally, they all subscribed to the same set of bel canto precepts, and the exercises that they devised in order to enhance their students' breath support, dexterity, range and technical control remain valuable and, indeed, are still employed by some teachers. [...] It has come to be a generally recognised thing that voice, pure and simple, by its very composition, or "placing", interferes with the organs of speech; making it impossible for a vocalist to preserve absolute purity of pronunciation in song as well as in speech. It is because of this view that the principle of "vocalising" words, instead of musically saying them, crept in, to the detriment of vocal art. This false position is due to the idea that the "Arte del bel-canto" encouraged mere sensuous beauty of voice, rather than truth of expression. – David Ffrangcon Davies: The singing of the future (1907, c1905)

"Bel-canto" (of which we read so much) meant, and means, versatility of tone; if a man wish to be called an artist, his voice must become the instrument of intelligent imagination. Perhaps there would be fewer cases of vocal-specialising if the modern craze for "voice-production" (apart from linguistic truth) could be reduced. This wondrous pursuit is, as things stand, a notable instance of putting the cart before the horse. Voices are "produced" and "placed" in such wise that pupils are trained to "vocalise" (to use technical jargon) the words; i.e., they are taught to make a sound which is indeed something like but is not the word in its purity. "Tone" or sound is what the average student seeks, ab initio and not verbal purity. Hence the monotony of modern singing. When one hears an average singer in one role, one hears him in all. – David Ffrangcon Davies: The singing of the future (1907, c1905)

Those who regard the art of singing as anything more than a means to an end, do not comprehend the true purpose of that art, much less can they hope ever to fulfil that purpose. 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 inmost feelings, because it is our only direct means of expression. If the voice, more than any language, more than any other instrument of expression, can reveal to us our own hidden depths, and convey those depths to other souls of men, it is because voice vibrates directly to the feeling itself, when it fulfils its natural mission. By fulfilling its natural mission, I mean, when voice is not hindered from vibrating to the feeling by artificial methods of tone -production, which methods include certain mental processes which are fatal to spontaneity. To sing should always mean to have some definite feeling to express. – Clara Kathleen Rogers: The Philosophy Of Singing (1893)

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Biography

She entered the Latvian Academy of Music in 1996 to study singing with Sergej Martinov. She continued her studies in Vienna with Irina Gavrilović and in the United States with Virginia Zeani. Garanča began her professional career at the Südthüringisches Staatstheater in Meiningen and later worked at the Frankfurt Opera. In 1999 she won the Mirjam Helin Singing Competition in Helsinki, Finland.

Garanča's international breakthrough came in 2003 at the Salzburger Festspiele when she sang Annio in a production of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Major engagements followed quickly, such as Charlotte in Werther, Dorabella in Così fan tutte at the Vienna State Opera (2004) and Dorabella in a Paris production directed by Patrice Chéreau (2005). In 2006 she returned to La clemenza di Tito, this time singing the part of Sesto. On January 12, 2008, Garanča made her company and house debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in the role of Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. Of her debut, Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times: "Ms. Garanca is the real thing (...) Modern singing techniques adapt with difficulty to Rossini’s early-19th-century emphasis on speed, lightness and athletic articulation, and Ms. Garanca was the only one onstage sounding completely comfortable. The lyric passages sang out; the episodes of racecourse delivery were fully in hand". Garanča sings the leading role of Georges Bizet's Carmen in the 2010 production of the Metropolitan Opera.

She is married to the conductor Karel Mark Chichon.

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To hear her sing "Parto, ma tu ben mio" from Mozart's "La clemenza di Tito", click here

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Category:1976 births Category:Living people Category:People from Riga Category:Latvian female singers Category:Latvian opera singers Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Recipients of the Order of the Three Stars

Ann Patchett (born December 2, 1963 ) is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, and The Magician's Assistant, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and received the Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award in 1994.

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Her second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994. What now?, published in April 2008, is an essay based on a commencement speech she delivered at her alma mater in 2006.

Patchett has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue.

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Category:American novelists Category:American memoirists Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Writers from Tennessee Category:University of Iowa alumni Category:Sarah Lawrence College alumni Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni