COLORATURA SINGING
I suppose there is no question which I am more frequently asked by vocal
students and others interested than how to acquire agility, but I am
afraid my answer is usually disappointing. For I can only repeat that it
is simply a case of perseverance and hard work, plus, of course,
whatever natural abilities in that direction you may possess.
It is obvious that all singers are not equally endowed in this respect.
The mere fact that there is such a difference in this matter between the
various classes of voices is sufficient to prove that. No one ever
expects a contralto voice to have the same facility in this regard as a
light soprano, and still less a bass or a baritone.
The most unceasing practice would never have enabled an Alboni or a
Lablache, say, to achieve the dazzling runs and fioriture of a Patti or
a Catalani. And to a less marked degree there are similar differences
between individual voices of the same class. All are not equally capable
in this particular even when in other respects they may be equally
good.
Some experienced teachers indeed recognise this fact so clearly that
they do not advise even soprano singers to cultivate coloratura singing
unless they have the necessary natural facility to begin with. I think
myself, however, that all should endeavour to acquire the maximum
agility, even if they do not attempt to sing coloratura in public,
simply for the benefits which they will derive from it in other
respects. After all the voice cannot be possessed of too much
flexibility whatever style of music be attempted; and there is no way in
which flexibility can be more surely developed than by the practice of
coloratura.
For the rest I can only repeat that, given the right kind of voice in
the first place, there is only one way to acquire agility, and that is
by practice. No short cuts are possible here, and I have no trade
secrets to impart.
And the necessary exercises themselves are all of the simplest
character, at all events in the beginning; just simple scales--or rather
portions of scales--in the first instance, with others more elaborate in
due course. But the scales are the foundation, and if they are properly
mastered the rest will follow without difficulty.
An important feature of good coloratura singing is, of course, not only
that the notes shall be cleanly sung, but also that they shall be
absolutely in tune and of good tone quality. One not infrequently hears
singers who possess the necessary agility to sing the note, but are
lacking in these other qualities. Their runs will lack brilliancy
because the notes will not be perfectly in tune, and the quality of them
will be so hard and disagreeable sometimes as to give more pain than
pleasure.
The cause of this will usually have been a desire to make progress too
hastily in the earlier stages. They will not have devoted sufficient
attention at the outset to practising _slowly_, and so ensuring
absolutely just intonation and satisfactory tone quality. Therefore, it
is emphatically a case here of “more haste less speed.” You cannot
acquire velocity quickly. I will not repeat again the well-worn story of
Porpora and Caffarelli. But that illustrates the point.
I cannot refrain from adding a few words while on this subject in
defence of coloratura, which is so often contemptuously spoken of in
these days by those who do not possess the power of singing it. We all
know the kind of way in which it is referred to. Coloratura music is
false, showy, superficial, unworthy, dramatically unreal, and so on. But
what nonsense this is!
What is the difference in principle, I would ask, between the fioriture
passages of the vocalist and those introduced as a matter of course in
the most serious instrumental music? Why should a cadenza for the voice
be reckoned less worthy than a similar passage for the violin or the
’cello? All the greatest masters have introduced florid passages in
plenty in the noblest instrumental music. Yet the view is very generally
adopted that these are inadmissible, or, at all events, belong to an
inferior phase of the art when the instrument employed happens to be the
voice.
No doubt the quality of the works more particularly identified with
vocal music of this order has had something to do with the matter. Yet
it is hardly necessary to recall that vocal fioriture is by no means
confined to the music of Donizetti, Bellini, and the like.
Bach, for one, had no sort of prejudice on the point, as is demonstrated
often enough even in his most solemn work, while Handel, again, revelled
in coloratura, alike in the case of his operas, containing some of the
most wonderful florid music ever written, and of his oratorios, to which
no less applied.
That Mozart can be reckoned in the same category it is hardly necessary
to recall, while even Beethoven did not disdain to utilise the arts of
vocal decoration in many of the numbers of “Fidelio.” If, therefore,
coloratura singing is sometimes spoken of disrespectfully, it is not
from lack of distinguished names which can be cited in its defence.
Nor is it only among the ancients that such are to be found. In the
modern Russian School we have Rimsky-Kosakoff’s “Hymn to the Sun” from
“Coq d’Or.” And have we not also such an eminently serious master as
Richard Strauss challenging comparison in our own time with the most
extravagant productions of the past in this particular genre in the
music of Zerbinetta in his “Ariadne”? One of his latest songs, “Amor,”
is purely for coloratura singers.
As to the charge that coloratura in dramatic music is unnatural and
undramatic, those who argue thus surely overlook the fact that all opera
might with equal justice be disposed of in the same manner. People do
not express themselves in song in real life, any more than they speak in
blank verse, as they are made to do in Shakespearean drama.
Yet we are glad to have “Don Giovanni” and “King Lear” none the less! It
is, indeed, truly straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to condemn
coloratura while accepting opera as a whole.
I go further than this, for I venture to say that coloratura can be not
only delightful to the ear but also thoroughly appropriate and
dramatically expressive. What could be more suitable to give expression
to the madness of Lucia than the roulades which Donizetti gives to her?
Or how could the joy of Marguérite be more exquisitely expressed than in
the strains of Gounod’s “Jewel Song”?
I might point in this connection, did modesty permit it, to what people
have been good enough to say concerning my own treatment of coloratura
in “La Traviata” and elsewhere. I recall that when I first appeared in
London it was upon this point particularly that all my critics dwelt.
They were all more especially struck by the manner in which I managed,
while singing Verdi’s florid music brilliantly and effectively in the
purely vocal sense, at the same time to make it expressive; and this I
took as the greatest possible compliment which could be bestowed on me.
For that I think is what coloratura properly sung should be.
It should please the ear by its brilliance, but at the same time it
should not, and need not, obscure the dramatic significance of what is
sung. I might on this point quote that great artist once again, Lilli
Lehmann, who, notwithstanding her strong leaning to music of the more
serious class, including Wagner, in which she was so wonderful, was yet
a great coloratura singer herself in her younger days, and who has
strongly insisted upon the possibility of making even the most florid
music expressive also when it is sung in the right way.
She writes: “Thus in the coloratura passages of Mozart’s arias I have
always sought to gain expressiveness by _crescendi_, choice of
significant points for breathing, and breaking off of phrases. I have
been especially successful with this in the ‘Entführung,’ introducing a
tone of lament in the first aria, a heroic dignity into the second,
through the coloratura passages.”
But happily I do not think there is any likelihood of coloratura ever
going out of fashion, whatever its detractors may say, so long, at all
events, as singers shall be forthcoming who are capable of responding to
its demands.