Beautiful singing

A few years ago, I was performing with two other people in a school. At the end of our show, we took questions from the kids. One bright 5th grader wanted to know how we could sing so loudly. (We'd been singing in the multi-purpose room, with a fair bit of background noise, and lousy acoustics.) Before either myself or the bass had a chance to say anything, the other woman had launched into this long explanation of Bel Canto, which she was kind enough to tell this child, is Italian: Bel (beautiful) canto (singing). She explained how we all had studied this way and it was the only way to produce such beautiful sounds. . .yada, yada, and yada. I whispered to the other singer, "She shouldn't speak for all of us. I prefer the 'can belto' style." Which made him laugh, and as soon as we could, we took over the explanation, before she could bore the children to death.


Recently, I've been looking at the bel canto style for a student of mine, trying to find words to explain what bel canto singing is and isn't. And I've found out that doing that is a bit more complicated than I'd originally thought.


There are a lot of different schools of vocal thought; ways of teaching voice, ways of creating the sounds that we want. And this can all become amazingly technical, lowering the larynx, whether to use the chest voice at all, whether certain vocal types even exist. It can become mind-boggling.


Silly me, I thought that with a little research, I could come in and write a coherent, possibly entertaining blog on what is and isn't bel canto. After hours of research into many different aspects of the question, I still don't have a better answer than to say that I can tell a bel canto aria simply by listening to it. 



For example: here is Sumi Jo singing Handel's Where'er you walk. Her voice is light, and soft. The focus is very tight (not her throat, but her focus). It's very carefully placed, probably in a very specific spot on the bridge of her nose, and never wavers. The vibrato is slight, and the dynamics are also slight, never too loud. The words are hard to understand. The beauty of the voice, not the text is important. (You don't need to listen to all of each of these. Just enough to hear the differences.)

Next follows Julie Andrews on the same aria. Much easier to understand, but not bel canto. The focus is just wrong; it's too open and diffuse. The words are too clear and crisp. A lovely voice, but wrong for the style.

And finally - Leontyne Price. She's doing a very admirable job of containing her voice, but, her instrument is just wrong for the style. You can hear her over-enunciating the words - she almost scoops into notes in an effort to be understood. The words in this case interfere with the beauty of the tone. And the vibrato is too wide, the focus too far back in her throat, giving her voice a hollow sound that is not bel canto.


If you made it through all three versions, you might have noticed something about this style of aria. It has a form that has come to be called a "da capo" aria. You sing through the first verse, we'll call this "A". Then you sing the middle section, which is always different, we'll call that "B". Then you go back to the beginning -  'da capo' (it's a musical term, meaning to the head, or beginning.) When you return to the top, there are variations that are allowed, even expected. Ornamentations that are supposed to show off the singer's voice. I'm not a big fan of ornamentations, I feel that very often they can distract from the beauty of the melody.


So, I'm still coming back to what is bel canto. Here's what I've got. Many people specifically think of operas written by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti as bel canto. But it can also refer to a way of singing that emphasizes control and tone over emotion. The dynamics tend to be subtle. The orchestras at the time tended to be smaller, and so the voices didn't need to be as big to carry over the instruments. There is far less use of the chest tones, as they weren't needed for volume. Handel and other Baroque composers lend themselves to the bel canto style.


Here is Cecilia Bartoli singing La voce poco fa from Rossini's Barber of Seville. Bartoli is a mezzo-soprano. Rosina, the female lead, is today usually sung by a coloratura soprano. Rossini, however wrote the role for Geltrude Righetti, a coloratura contralto. (I couldn't find a coloratura contralto, but I found this mezzo.)


What is thought of as the Bel Canto Era, 1800 - 1840, had a lot going on, politically, socially, and artistically: Napoleon; the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution; the term "scientist" was used for the first time in 1833. It must have been an amazing time to been alive. Old forms were dying out and new ones quickly rising to prominence. There had always been advancements, but in this period changes were affecting everyone. Because the war caused shortages, fashions changed drastically to adapt. Technology was becoming a force that could not be stopped. Advances in farming and manufacturing were changing the way the lower classes lived and worked. Countries were appearing and disappearing at an alarming rate.


We have become accustomed to a world in flux. People at the beginning of the 19th century were not. There had been warning signs that change was on the horizon: a couple of notable revolutions, some scientific discoveries. But nothing to prepare them for what was to happen at the turn of the century.


I think that bel canto was a holdout from an older style. Opera was growing and changing. Orchestras were becoming larger, the castrati were being replaced by tenors and women. In order to be heard over the instruments, more chest voice was required in the upper registers. The stories around which operas were being written were becoming grittier, more realistic. Bel canto reminded everyone of a world that was known, predictable and safe.


Bel canto was largely forgotten except for a few of the operas: the best known is the Barber of Seville (which was notably performed both by Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker - but their versions were also not in the bel canto style, so I won't include them here). 


In the 1960s, another era of vast change, bel canto was revived, with more and more of the operas being produced. Perhaps, this too, was a longing for safe and  secure. A world that no longer existed, and probably never really had. Stories are absurd, words are unrecognizable, but none of that matters. What matters is the beauty of the human voice. Controlled and glorious in its perfection. Bel canto.