Cabaletta

Last updated

Cabaletta is a two-part musical form particularly favored for arias in 19th century Italian opera in the bel canto era until about the 1860s during which it was one of the era's most important elements. More properly, a cabaletta is a more animated section following the songlike cantabile. [1] It often introduces a complication or intensification of emotion in the plot.

Some sources suggest that the word derives from the Italian cobola (couplet). [2] Another theory suggests that it derives from the Italian cavallo (horse), a reference to the pulsating rhythm of a galloping horse which forms the accompaniment of many famous cabalettas. [3]

The cabaletta was formed as part of an evolution from early 19th century arias containing two contrasting sections at different tempi within a single structure into more elaborate arias with musically distinct movements. The term itself was first defined in 1826 in Pietro Lichtenthal's Dizionario. [4] It has a repetitive structure consisting of two stanzas followed by embellished variations. The cabaletta typically ends with a coda, often a very virtuosic one.

Classic examples include "Non più mesta" from La Cenerentola by Rossini (1817), "Vien diletto, è in ciel la luna" from I puritani by Bellini (1835), and "Di quella pira" from Verdi's Il trovatore (1853).

In later parlance, cabaletta came to refer to the fast final part of any operatic vocal ensemble, usually a duet, rather than just a solo aria. For example, the duet between Gilda and Rigoletto in Act 1, Scene 2 of Rigoletto ends with a relatively slow cabaletta, whereas the cabaletta for their duet in the finale of Act 2 is quite rousing.

The cabaletta is often used to convey strong emotions: overwhelming happiness (Linda's famous cabaletta "O luce di quest'anima" from Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix), great sorrow (Lucia's "Spargi d'amaro pianto" from Lucia di Lammermoor), or timeless love (Lindoro's short cabaletta from Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri ). Rossini wrote at least one or even more cabalettas for all major characters in his operas. For example, L'italiana in Algeri contains two cabalettas for Lindoro, three cabalettas for Isabella, one cabaletta for Mustafa, and one for Taddeo. If the final parts of the ensembles are included, the total is almost sixteen cabalettas.

Giuseppe Verdi continued to adapt the cantabile–cabaletta formula to great emotional and dramatic effect, before largely abandoning it by 1862 as a solo piece with Don Carlo's "Egli è salvo" in "La forza del destino". [4] A famous Verdian cabaletta appears in his 1853 La traviata in act 1. It follows Violetta's pensive "È strano! è strano...Ah fors'è lui" in which she considers that the man whom she has just met may be the one for her. But this leads by degrees to her resolve to remain "always free" in "Sempre libera", with its rapid and defiant pyrotechnics.

Verdi's 1846 Attila is regarded by contemporaneous critics as the "height of cabalettismo". [5]

Related Research Articles

<i>Litaliana in Algeri</i> Opera by Gioachino Rossini

L'italiana in Algeri is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, based on his earlier text set by Luigi Mosca. It premiered at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice on 22 May 1813. The music is characteristic of Rossini's style, remarkable for its fusion of sustained, manic energy with elegant, pristine melodies.

The German Fach system is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices. It is used worldwide, but primarily in Europe, especially in German-speaking countries and by repertory opera houses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrizia Ciofi</span> Italian opera singer

Patrizia Ciofi is an Italian operatic coloratura soprano.

A coloratura soprano is a type of operatic soprano voice that specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs, leaps and trills.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Diego Flórez</span> Peruvian liric tenor (tenore di grazia)

Juan Diego Flórez is a Peruvian operatic tenor, particularly known for his roles in bel canto operas. On June 4, 2007, he received his country's highest decoration, the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Sun of Peru.

<i>Lesule di Roma</i> Opera by Gaetano Donizetti

L'esule di Roma, ossia Il proscritto is a melodramma eroico, or heroic opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Domenico Gilardoni wrote the Italian libretto after Luigi Marchionni's Il proscritto romano, in its turn based on Louis-Charles Caigniez and Debotière's Androclès ou Le lion reconnaissant. It premiered on 1 January 1828 at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramón Vargas</span> Mexican operatic tenor (born 1960)

Ramón Vargas is a Mexican operatic tenor. Since his debut in the early '90s, he has developed to become one of the most acclaimed tenors of the 21st century. Known for his most expressive and agile lyric tenor voice, he is especially successful in the bel canto repertoire.

Boyko Tzvetanov is a Bulgarian operatic tenor. He was taken on as a soloist with the Sofia National Opera from 1982 to 1990. In 1991, he became a member of the ensemble of the Zurich Opera House until his retirement in 2016.

Alessandro Corbelli is an Italian baritone opera singer. One of the world's pre-eminent singers specializing in Mozart and Rossini, Corbelli has sung in many major opera houses around the world and won admiration for his elegant singing style and sharp characterizations, especially in comic roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernando De Lucia</span> Italian opera singer 1861-1925

Fernando De Lucia was an Italian opera tenor and singing teacher who enjoyed an international career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Larmore</span> American opera singer

Jennifer Larmore is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer, particularly noted for her performances in coloratura and bel canto roles which she has performed in the world's major opera houses. She has been a professor at the Music College of Seoul National University since March 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Poggi</span> Italian operatic tenor

Antonio Poggi was an Italian operatic tenor who had an active international career from 1827–1848. He is best remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of operas by Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi. He was married to soprano Erminia Frezzolini from 1841–1846.

Frank Lopardo is an American operatic tenor who was born in Brentwood, New York. Early in his career he specialized in the repertoire of Mozart and Rossini and later transitioned to the works of Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxim Mironov</span> Russian opera singer

Maxim Vyacheslavovich Mironov, is a Russian tenor, best known for his interpretation of the bel canto repertoire. In 2001, he joined the Helikon Opera Theatre in Moscow, where he made his operatic debut in André Grétry's opera Pierre le Grand. Mironov won the 2nd Prize at the Neue Stimmen international singing competition in Germany in 2003. In Europe Mironov has performed in many opera houses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ildar Abdrazakov</span> Russian bass opera singer

Ildar Amirovich Abdrazakov is a Russian bass opera singer. Honoured Artist of Russia (2021).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonino Fogliani</span> Italian conductor (born 1976)

Antonino Fogliani is an Italian conductor.

In 19th-century Italian opera, la solita forma is the formal design of scenes found during the bel canto era of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti up to the late operas of Verdi. The English phrase—"multipartite form"—is most often used by American musicologist Philip Gossett, beginning with a 1974 essay, where referring to a general framework of melodramatic scene types, especially duets. Each scene gradually progresses from an opening static lyric moment to a finale through several standard musical tempos and set pieces, gradually adding characters and adding or unraveling complexity in the plot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serafino Gentili</span> Italian opera singer

Serafino Gentili was an Italian opera singer particularly known for his performances in tenore di grazia roles. He sang in opera houses throughout Italy as well as in Paris and Dresden. During the course of his career, he created the role of Lindoro in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri as well as leading roles in several other operas by less well-known composers. In his later years, he went by the surname Gentili-Donati to distinguish himself from the tenor Pietro Gentili.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riccardo Frizza</span> Italian conductor (born 1971)

Riccardo Frizza is an Italian conductor, particularly known for his work in the Italian operatic repertoire. After making his professional conducting debut in 2001 with Rossini's Stabat Mater at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, he went on to conduct in the leading opera houses of Europe and the United States, including La Scala, La Fenice. the Paris Opera, and New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Michele Mariotti, born in 1979 in Urbino, near Pesaro, is an Italian conductor, the direttore musicale since 2014 of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. A graduate in composition of Pesaro's Conservatorio Rossini, where he also studied orchestral conducting, he made his professional opera debut with Il barbiere di Siviglia in Salerno on Oct. 12, 2005. As of April 2017, his repertory included nine Rossini and eight Verdi operas, an extraordinary achievement, as well as symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert, the Rossini Stabat mater, the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi Requiem.

References

Notes

  1. "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" is a rare example that reverses this order.
  2. e.g. Apel 1962, p. 107 and Encyclopædia Britannica
  3. e.g. Fisher 2005, p. 126
  4. 1 2 "Cabaletta, s.f. Pensieretto musicale melodico, o sia cantilena semplice atta a blandire l'orecchio, la quale mercè un ritmo ben distinto imprimesi agevolmente nell'animo dell'uditore, e che per la sua naturalezza viene facilmente ripetuta appena intesa, e dagli orecchianti e dagl'intendenti." Pietro Lichtenthal, Dizionario e bibliografia della musica (Milano, 1826), vol. 1, pg. 106–107.
  5. Greenwald, 2012, p. xxv

Sources