Spinto

Spinto (from Italian, "pushed") is a vocal term used to characterize a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large musical climaxes in opera at moderate intervals. (Sometimes the terms lirico-spinto or jugendlich-dramatisch are used to denote this category of voice.)

The spinto voice type is recognisable by its tonal "slice" or squillo. This enables the singer to cut through the wall of sound produced by a full Romantic orchestra in a wide variety of roles, excluding only the most taxing ones written by the likes of Richard Wagner (such as Brünhilde, Isolde, Tristan and Siegfried), Giacomo Meyerbeer (John of Leyden), Verdi (Otello), Puccini (Turandot, Calaf) and Richard Strauss (Elektra).

The British soprano Rosalind Plowright defines a spinto voice as one that has a tonal colour one down from its range. For example, a voice with a mezzo's tone colour and the high notes of a soprano, or a voice with a tenor range and a baritone's tone colour, is a spinto. She names Plácido Domingo as an instance of the latter.[1] Plowright's generalisation fails to hold true for all spinto tenors, however. Giovanni Martinelli, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, Georges Thill, Jussi Björling and Agim Hushi for instance, successfully sang spinto roles such as Radames or Canio with bright-toned voices that lacked any trace of baritonal coloration.

See also

References

  1. "Rosalind Plowright, mezzo dramatico-instinctif". Altamusica. 15 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-15.

External links

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