Coloratura has several meanings. The word derives from the Italian colorare (to colour; to heighten; to enliven) or colorazione (colouring, coloration).

Its most well-known meaning is applied to voice type - i.e., the coloratura soprano, most famously typified by the role of Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.^[1] This type of soprano has a high range and can execute with great facility the style of singing that includes elaborate ornamentation and embellishment, including running passages, staccati, and trills.

Other female and male voice types may also be masters of coloratura technique, but the term coloratura when used without further qualification means soprano coloratura. Richard Miller names two types of soprano coloratura voices (the coloratura and the dramatic coloratura)^[2] as well as a mezzo-soprano coloratura voice^[3], and although he does not mention the coloratura contralto, he includes mention of specific works requiring coloratura technique for the contralto voice.^[4]

History

The musicological meaning of coloratura is most specifically applied to the elaborate and florid figuration or ornamentation in classical (18th century) and romantic (19th century, specifically bel canto) vocal music. Coloration, a closely associated term, includes this meaning of coloratura, but also includes the florid ornaments written out for keyboard instruments and lute music. Early music (music of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries) includes a substantial body of music for which coloratura technique is required by vocalists and instrumentalists alike. This type of coloratura was first defined in several early non-Italian music dictionaries, like the works by Michael Praetorius in Syntagma Musicum (1618), Sébastien de Brossard in his Dictionnaire de musique (1703) and Johann Gottfried Walther in his Musicalisches Lexicon (1732), in which the term is dealt with briefly and refers to the word's Italian usage.^[5]

Definition

Christoph Bernhard defined it in two ways:

• cadenza: "runs which are not so exactly bound to the bar, but which often extend two, three or more bars further [and] should be made only at chief closes" (Von der Singe-Kunst, oder Maniera, c1649);^[5]

• diminution: "when an interval is altered through several shorter notes, so that, instead of one long note, a number of shorter ones rush to the next note through all kinds of progressions by step or leap" (Tractatus compositionis, c1657).^[5]

In the most famous Italian texts on singing (Caccini, 1601/2; Tosi, 1723; Mancini, 1774; García, 1841), coloratura is never used; it is also absent from the vocabulary of English authors as such as Burney and Chorley, who wrote extensively about Italian singing at the time when ornamentation was of utmost importance.^[5]

Strictly speaking, the term coloratura is not restricted to describing any one range of voice. In spite of its derivation from the word colorare or colorazione, it does not specify changing the tonal colour of the voice for expressive purposes (that is Voix sombrée)^[5] or the English term colouring the voice. There are coloratura parts for all voice types in different musical genres:

• Mozart's Allelujah (from Exsultate, jubilate) may be arranged for and sung by a properly trained contralto, mezzo soprano or soprano. The piece was written for soprano castrato.

• The aria Every Valley Shall be Exalted from Handel's Messiah is an example of a coloratura piece for tenor.

• Each character in Rossini's operas has to have a secure coloratura technique.

• Osmin, a character in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, is a coloratura role for a bass.

See also

• Medieval coloration

References

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