Why New Opera Listeners Would like Bel Canto Music

With a few exceptions (Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Verdi's La Traviata) opera from the bel canto era tend to get passed over in favor of Puccini and Mozart when an opera fan is asked to come up with a list of beginners friendly works to introduce someone to opera. Being a lover of opera from the 1800's, I am, of course, a bit biased about it. So I should tell you what it is about bel canto opera that gives me the bias of believing that bel canto music is so universally appealing that even those who are unfamiliar with opera and even classical music in general would still find it addictive to the ears.

But first off, what is bel canto music? There seems to be many different definitions of it; some including most of the lightly orchestrated operatic music that showcase the voice from the time of Handel up to the mid 19th century. Some extend that to include the early opera of Giuseppe Verdi. In this case, I will define it as the Italian opera music from 1800-1840 written in the style/form exemplified by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. These are opera whose tales are more relatable in their musical content than in the sung text itself, with the content of the pathos delivered mostly in the singing voice spinning out long flowing melodic lines in fluid legato (smooth transition between notes) and highlighted by fluent and jaw-dropping virtuosic coloratura (florid decoration of the melodic line) to intensify the drama.

The bolded 'to intensify the drama' is the key, though. Too often is this operatic sub-genre subjected to the 'technical perfection at the expense of dramatic interpretation' modern mode of performance, which tend to turn what should be two entrancing hours at the opera house into protracted and boring string of vocal exercises. It is a good precautionary tale against progress just for progress' sake with dismissing disregard for the basic purpose of the art - that it should communicate to the audience.

I should tell you right off the main deficit of bel canto opera: its overly imaginative story line. Compared to the dramatic plot of most bel canto opera, the Swiss Emmenthaler is a granite block of atomic tightness. So, if you care more for smooth logical transition from point A to B in the operatic story than you do about being moved by the characters' expressive pathos, then this is a permanent left-hemispheric bug you will have to put up with when listening to bel canto opera.

There is also the issue of pant roles. You know, leading macho male roles composed for and performed by female singers (whose ample femininity is often impossible to disguise). This has nothing to do with any modern idea of gender-swapping fantasy, mind you. It is the natural byproduct of the castrato-dominated music scene that preceded the 1800's. Castrati, as the name implies, were virtuoso male opera singers whose soprano or mezzo-soprano vocal range was surgically preserved at or near puberty. They are a legendary vocal species whose extinction was both welcome and subconsciously mourned to various degrees since the Western culture finally came to the realization that such medical barbarism in the name of the art did more damage to humanity than enhanced it. The period of decline of the castrato singers coincided with the early period of bel canto opera, however, and the audiences were still very used to hearing the soprano voice in the heroic male parts. So the composers of the day compromised by assigning those leading male roles to the closest natural approximation of the soprano castrato: the coloratura female contralto voice.

If you are able to let irrationality and illogical turns in the story and the oddity of vocally cross-dressed voice slide, however (and I hope that you can, since real life really isn't all that rational or logical either), then bel canto opera has some of the most engrossingly beautiful music ever written to fit any dramatic situation imaginable to offer.

1. A whole lot of drama from minimal orchestration: With perhaps the exception of Rossini, the bel canto composers are often maligned by the modern symphony-loving audience for the 'lack of' orchestral texture in their operatic composition. It is true that the bel canto opera rarely require more than 50 instrumentalists in the orchestra pit... in contrast to Wagner's 124 instruments (for the Ring Cycle opera). But sound density alone does not drama make. Listen to this instrumental prelude to scene 2 from Act II of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Without knowing the story of the opera, what sort of mental image does this music bring to your mind?

How about... a deserted stone courtyard at or near dusk? With the lone clarinet's melancholic wail betraying a longing presence of a watchful soul waiting anxiously for a meeting that he has some misgiving about? Now listen to it as it runs into the proper scene. The orchestra/instruments in bel canto opera aren't just there for decorative or time-passing purpose as many would have you believe. Much of the time they either mirror or reflect or even argue with the pathos of the singing voice, often to pretty hypnotic effect (especially when the vocalist and the instrumentalist are in interpretative sync). The bel canto orchestra does stand down during the singing not so much as to slack off as to obey the composer's plea to play 'd'intelligenza col canto' - with the voice, intelligently. Synergy is the key rather than competition.

2. The spectacular and dramatically effective rondo arias: The solo singing numbers in bel canto opera usually take a certain musical form of a 'rondo' with two distinct parts. This is actually something that progressed out of the famous da capo aria form of the virtuosic Baroque period. (call it the B theme) is introduced. Then the A theme reappears in a few repetition - in increasingly virtuosic decorative variations - to close off the aria (hence 'da capo', from the top). The two themes would have different tempo depicting different intensity in the same pathos being expressed. So, in essence, during a da capo aria the opera character can spend up to 10 minutes saying the same thing over and over again without advancing the story. If he starts the tune depressed, he ends it depressed. And if he starts it happy, he ends it jubilant... It is practically the vocalism alone that keeps the audience interested in continuing to listen to the very last note. Click here for a youtube sample of a Baroque da capo aria.

Luckily for drama-junkies like me, Mozart came along in the Classical period to modify the emotionally one-dimensional da capo arias into something dramatically more dynamic. The arias still come in two part, though the contrasting tempo section is now placed at the end of the aria instead of in the middle, allowing for psychological and emotional development from the start of the tune to the finish of it. The character starts the aria stating his predicament and ends it with a either a resolve to do something or a resolute prediction of what is to come. Here is a good example of the Mozart rondo aria in his final opera seria work, La clemenza di Tito.

What Mozart introduced, the bel canto composers perfected. The rondo's two parts are more defined and cleanly separated (usually with a short orchestral or choral interruption). No longer do you have to choose between vocally gorgeous music and drama-driven one. Where else can you have your cake and eat it, too? Here are a few samples of great solo rondos from the bel canto opera repertoire to knock you socks (and other garment) off: Oh patria!/ Di tanti palpiti from Rossini's Tancredi; Nacqui all' affanno/ Non piu mesta from Rossini's Cinderella; O mio Fernando from Donizetti's The Favorite; Se Romeo t'uccise so figlio from Bellini's The Capulets and the Montagues.

3. The gorgeous wedding of voices in duets and ensemble numbers: Really, nobody does duet better than the bel canto composers did. Not only are the individual voices loved, but their melodic union in the Italianate line is nothing short of orgasmic in many senses. These operatic characters do things with their graceful voices that would make even a grown man blush... Here are a few samples: Tancredi-Amenaide duet from Act II of Rossini's Tancredi; Norma-Adalgisa's Act II duet from Bellini's Norma; Romeo-Giulietta's Act I duet from Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi.

And if the duets aren't spectacular enough, have a listen at what the bel canto opera has to offer with more than two voices:
Trio - In questi estremi istantifrom Rossini's Maometto II
Quintet - Soccorso, sostegno (Act I finale) from Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Sextet - Chi mi frena from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Nonet - Sperar, trema, poss'io from Rossini's Ermione

And so, more often than not my stereo system is dominated by bel canto opera recordings. I can't sing this music to save my life (though I can probably drive you insane with my utterly horrifying attempt at it), and so I am unabashedly grateful that many of those who can are given the opportunity to perform and preserve their performance of this most fabulously gracefully difficult of music on record for me to enjoy. The next time you drop in to browse the classical music section at the local music/book store, spend a few minutes in the opera section, will you? Classical music really is far from dead. It was never conceived as 'classical music', anyhow, but music that living people can relate to... And whether you are grossed out by the idea of it or not, even your parents were young and musically hip once... and so were their predecessors.

Sources:
Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera, London, 1956
Stendhal, The Life of Rossini. Criterion Books. New York. 1957.
Barbara Kendall-Davies, The Life and Works of Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Cambridge. 2003.