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The Changing Aesthetics of Vocal Registration in the Age of 'Verismo'

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Barbara Gentili

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Abstract

The idea that classical singers should join the notes of the vocal line by maintaining a consistent vocal colour is a relatively recent historical construct. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, singers of the Italian tradition were loyal to a very different vocal aesthetic, which valued the distinct differences in timbre between different vocal registers, as this article shows through a comparative analysis of pedagogical writing and pre-1925 recordings. These latter show that, in the early twentieth century, old and new techniques for uniting the vocal registers coexisted, and reflected an aesthetic transition towards a more gendered quality of the operatic voice. This process was intertwined with profound transformations in Italian operatic culture. The demands of a new realistic idiom known as verismo required a new type of vocalism, which prompted singers to re-conceive the ‘art of vocal registration’.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Gentili B

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Music & Letters

Year: 2021

Volume: 102

Issue: 1

Pages: 54-79

Print publication date: 01/02/2021

Online publication date: 13/12/2020

Acceptance date: 31/03/2020

ISSN (print): 0027-4224

ISSN (electronic): 1477-4631

Publisher: Oxford University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcaa029

DOI: 10.1093/ml/gcaa029

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