United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His insensitivity has waxed inordinately, and led him to mix styles, to commingle dramatic and coloratura passages, to jumble the idioms of three centuries in a single work, to play all manner of pointless pranks with his art. His literary taste has grown increasingly uncertain.
On the contrary, if you wish rapid passage work, with clear, bright, articulate touch, the hand must stand up in well-arched, normal playing position, with fingers well rounded and good finger action. Here you have the 'Technical' or 'Coloratura Hand." The distinction made by Mr. Burnham clears up the uncertainty about arched hand and articulate touch, or low hand and flat fingers.
The coloratura voice will sing upper C, and it will sound very high indeed. I might sing the same tone, but it would sound like A flat, because the tone would be of such totally different timbre. "If I have any message to the young singer, it would be: Stick to your work and study systematically, whole-heartedly.
"No," she said, "I think I would rather keep the voice I have. I heartily admire the dramatic voice and the rôles it can sing. Raisa's voice is for me the most beautiful I know. But after all I think, for myself, I prefer the lyric and coloratura parts, they are so beautiful. The old Italian composers knew well how to write for the voice.
To the last objection it can be answered that audiences do still flock to hear a great coloratura artist, for they know they will hear pure, beautiful melodies when they listen to the old Italian operas. And melody proves to be a magnet every time; it always touches the heart.
If you think an automobile race is an easy thing to manage, try it. Every man who drives a racing-car has a coloratura soprano beaten to death for temperament. Then every racing-car has quirky spells; there's the local committee to propitiate; the track to look after; and if that isn't enough, there's the promotion itself, the advertising. That's my stunt the advertising."
Fountains that tossed up coloratura bubbles of sheerest aria and a sort of Greek frieze of youth attitudinized toward herself.
But this much is certain: Coloratura singing still has a strong hold on the affections of the music loving public. Even to-day audiences are moved by the vocal feats of some famous queen of song fully as profoundly as by the performance of a modern dramatic or realistic opera. To describe a sound is an extremely difficult task.
I make a great distinction between the coloratura touch and the melody touch. The first is for rapid, brilliant passage work, sparkling, glittering, iridescent what you will but cold. It is made, as I said, with arched hand and raised finger action. Melody touch expresses warmth and feeling; is from the heart.
Luisa Tetrazzini, the most famous Italian coloratura soprano of the day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's ambition to become a great artist.
Word Of The Day