Guest Speaker
Cindy Kim
PhD Candidate in Musicology
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Location: Humanities 1641
PhD Candidate in Musicology
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Location: Humanities 1641
Performance practice scholars have long argued that vocal ornamentation continued as a vital part of Italian opera performance throughout the nineteenth century; yet, modern histories of opera have often dismissed this vibrant tradition, focusing on compositional style as the sole parameter for charting the development of the genre during this period. This approach has resulted in inconsistencies between the histories of performance practice and of compositions, and a misunderstanding of vocal embellishment as an outdated convention, serving only the singer’s propensity for virtuosic display.
In this paper, I argue for a reconsideration of ornamentation and its place in nineteenth-century opera composition, reception, and concert life. Taking Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula (1831) and the embellishments for the heroine Amina as a case study, I claim that singers’ ornamentation could steer the dramatic trajectory of a character, the meaning of an opera, and even the direction of future compositions. As the case study will show, charting the influence of this unwritten tradition on written musical works sheds new light not only on ornamentation but also on opera, a genre characterized by its fluidity from one performance to another.
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