Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Sonnambula
The Sleepwalker

What is bel canto?

Have you ever noticed that when you look something up in a reference book you get stymied in one (or both) of two ways? Either you are given a bare definition, which is not very useful, unless you really didn't have an idea what the word meant. Or, you are given a lengthy discussion which, if you are like me, you don't agree with most of.

However, if you indulge in even a minimum amount of reading of opera periodicals, you will have been treated to oft-repeated definitions of, frequent allusions to, and constant assumptions about the topic bel canto . It appears that almost everybody wants to invoke the god of bel canto to decry, perhaps, a certain job of bad singing, or on the other hand, to extol a certain artist's splendid instrument and his or her exemplary vocalism. You may read, for instance, “Miss X, who attempted the role of Norma last evening, would do well to remember that Norma is a bel canto opera, and that bel canto means “beautiful singing”. This was exactly what Miss X failed to give us any hint of. On the contrary, she treated us lavishly to large portions of (here the writer repeats the old canard) ‘can belto'.”

Did you catch the syllogism?

a. Norma is a bel canto opera.
b. Bel canto means “beautiful singing”.
Therefore, c. One must sing beautifully in the opera Norma.

But this is patent nonsense, as far as I'm concerned. It is not unreasonable to believe that almost everybody who loves opera does so because they love to hear beautiful singing. And this can be stated in a simple syllogism also.

a. All opera singing must be beautiful.
b. Norma is an opera.
Therefore, c. One must sing beautifully in the opera Norma.

Did you notice what words were left out of the second syllogism? Bel canto. Even though the entire syllogism concerned itself with the topic of beautiful singing, we may clearly conclude that whatever bel canto means, it does not mean “beautiful singing”. What sense does it make to assert that a bel canto opera is one in which the basic premise of the aesthetic is beautiful singing, when the basic aesthetic of all operas is beautiful singing? That would be like saying that oranges are a particular type of food whose singularity resides in the fact that they can be eaten. If we go back to the first syllogism, we see that this is true. That Norma is a bel canto opera is a given. That one must sing beautifully in the opera Norma as in every opera, is also a given. Then it is premise “b” that is wrong: Bel canto does not mean “beautiful singing”. Q.E.D. (We ought to add, for those who are waving their dictionaries at us in indignation, that one of the meanings of the Italian words bel canto is "beautiful singing". But we assert the claim that that is not the meaning intended by those who coined this phrase to denote a certain type of opera.)

Back to square one: what is bel canto? If we consider the opera Norma , and make some general observations about it that differentiate it from other operas, we may come up with an idea of what a bel canto opera is.

To start, it would seem safe to exclude as a meaning for the term bel canto any definition based on the nature of the text or plot, which are fundamental considerations for “verismo”. Surely no theorist would be so perverse as to note that some operas were based on a certain type of text and thereby conclude that such operas ought for that reason to be identified by a term that can mean “beautiful singing”. Are we not right to assume that such a coinage must be based somehow on an allusion to the music and its performance, rather than on characteristics of the text?

If it is the music that is the crucial factor in bel canto opera, it might be fruitful to consider what other music Bellini's resembles. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking that much of the music of Chopin bears a striking resemblance to Bellini vocal lines. “Ah, non credea mirarti,” for example, from Bellini's La Sonnambula , might have appeared in a book of Chopin Nocturnes without anyone knowing the difference. And almost any of Chopin's Nocturnes might have appeared in a Bellini opera without arousing any comment whatsoever, except to express approval of its appropriateness. An utterly uncanny resemblance: Think of the second part of the Sonnambula aria where the words are “Potria novel vigore.” Chopin's Nocturne in B major begins with almost exactly the same notes. And it is curious to note that this nocturne ends, inexplicably, with a recitative! Could Chopin have been indulging in a little hommage à Bellini?

What trait can we identify as common to the music of Bellini and those passages in Chopin that we think resemble each other? We do not, of course, refer to the purely pianistic Chopin pieces, such as the first parts of the B minor and B flat minor Scherzi, which were conceived to exploit the kind of thing that only a piano can do, and which no voice could ever possibly perform. When we say that Chopin resembles Bellini, we mean in exactly those passages, like most of the Nocturnes, where the piano is asked to sing a beautiful tune. These lyrical passages occur in almost every one of Chopin's pieces. Look, for example, at the Fantasie-Impromptu , where the primary section consists of completely pianistic passage-work that only implies a tune; nonetheless, the contrasting section is one of Chopin's most beautiful tunes, a creation so lyrical that it has even been used as a pop song.

It does not seem unreasonable, as we look over what we have just said, to note that we twice found ourselves calling the crucial resemblance between the music of Bellini and that of Chopin, his brother bel canto composer, a “beautiful tune.” It should, therefore, not come as a surprise to observe that the Italian words “bel canto” also mean “beautiful tune.” Have we perhaps just hit a nail on the head?

The immediate objection to this conclusion is the same one that was made to the definition of bel canto as "beautiful singing," i.e., that beautiful singing is not a distinctive feature of bel canto opera, but is a requirement of all opera performance. It may likewise be said that beautiful tunes are not to be encountered only in bel canto operas, but are the objective of all good opera composers. This is a just and telling point. If we define bel canto as “beautiful tune,” are we not obliged to conclude that Verdi's and Puccini's operas, e.g., are also bel canto operas? It is surely not simplemindedness to consider Leonora's two arias in Il Trovatore superb examples of “beautiful tunes,” i.e., of the kind of music that Bellini might have written? And, for that matter, Cavaradossi's arias in Tosca can be analyzed completely in bel canto terms, especially “E lucevan le stelle,” in which the accompaniment is reduced to hardly more than a doubling of the melody in the voice. And the short arioso “Qual occhio al mondo” certainly qualifies as one of the most exquisite "beautiful tune" (bel canto) moments in opera.

But much–very much–in these operas is obviously not intended to fit into this same category. In Azucena's great narrative “Condotta ell'era in ceppi” the principal points are made, not through the beauty of the vocal line, but through its declamatory aptness and other means, such as an accompaniment which is itself full of dramatic expressiveness, are used to produce the results that Verdi was after. In the “Miserere” from the same opera, once again we may contrast the soprano's passages, which are overtly declamatory, and the accompaniment figure, once again so full of dramatic expressiveness as to draw attention to itself, with the short passages in the same piece in which the tenor sings his farewell serenade: here the accompaniment is nothing but simple chords on a harp and the vocal line is decidedly designed to be a beautiful tune. We may make similar observations about Tosca. Whereas much of the music, such as the passages mentioned above and, for instance, the concluding section of the first act love duet, among many other pages, is designed with the bel canto aesthetic in mind, many are not. Who would consider the three-note theme associated with Scarpia a beautiful tune? Or the frightened-and-fleeing music of Angelotti which comes immediately after it?

Perhaps here we have found and singled out the crucial difference between the bel canto aesthetic and those which succeeded it. We rejected as not bel canto all those passages in which other means than the beautiful tune were used and given at least equal importance (and perhaps even predominance). The bel canto aesthetic may then be expressed as follows: bel canto is a school of composing in which the music is reduced to the barest essentials, a tune or line which carries the full burden of the meaning and only as much of whatever else is necessary to complete it. Thus, harmonies are deliberately simple, accompaniments are just plain chords. Naturally, some slight elaboration of these naked elements may be tolerated. The vocal line (or the melodic line in instrumental music) may be discreetly elaborated with grace notes and even coloratura passages and cadenzas. The accompaniment may be expressed in suitable figurations, such as arpeggios or an Alberti bass and may even contain little counter-lines limning the harmony. The harmony may occasionally veer off into an unexpected chord or even into another key to point up a given shade of meaning. But as soon as these subordinate elements begin to assert themselves to positions other than merely handmaidens of the melodic line (the “canto”), we may point an accusing finger at the composer as the perpetrator of a stylistic solecism.

There is something suspiciously too bare about these structures. They seem to leave no place in the composer's intentions for that very important element in all music, and especially dramatic vocal music: expressiveness. Here, I think, we touch the very bull's-eye of this analysis. The only possible reason for eschewing all subordinate “tricks of the trade” and providing the performer with none but the simplest means of conveying the message contained in the music is that the composer wants to provide the artist-performer the most ample opportunity for artistry. The performer must take this inexplicit line of music which contains all the possibilities of content that the composer has embedded in it and must discover and reveal all that content through expressive artistry alone. An artist who is not up to this severe challenge had better leave bel canto alone, lest making it sound jejune. What is required of the artist is a delivery that is almost an act of creation equal to that of the composer. Bel canto, is, in summary, that music which is deliberately stripped of all non-essentials in order that the performer may reveal in it that greatest of essentials, content.

One can see that such an austere aesthetic could not have a long life. It lasted a few decades and then fell victim to the expanding aspirations of composers, chief among them Verdi, whose increasing command of dramatic declamation and other musical possibilities left them with other fish to fry. One must also see that one premise of the bel canto aesthetic, namely, that the materials invented by the composer (i.e., the “canto”) must have an interest in themselves (be beautiful, in other words) and must be capable of carrying the burden of content, was foreseen long before Bellini and his fellows. It is not, I think, an exaggeration to say that it is one of the chief principles of Western music since the inception of the modern era, by which I mean the 17th century. It has constituted, in the popular mind, one of the features of what may be accepted as good music, a requirement which composers, for one reason or another, have ignored at their peril. It remains, to this day, an unconscious objective of much, if not most, of that music which we may rightly call beautiful and meaningful and thereby successful.

William Yannuzzi

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