Bel canto is singing characterized by full, rich, broad, and flexible tone. The term applies especially to an Italian singing style, developed in the 1600’s and 1700’s, which was much used by opera performers during the 1700’s and early 1800’s. The term bel canto is Italian for beautiful song. The main goals of the art were to develop a voice that produced a pleasing, even level of sound throughout the whole of its range and was capable of singing highly florid passages full of rapid scales and decorations with lightness and grace and without noticeable effort. A bel canto singer also needed a good sense of musical and dramatic style. According to some experts, bel canto also emphasized fine legato phrasing, in which each note of the tune was carried over to the next to produce a long, uninterrupted strand of melody.
Bel canto is an important feature of some of Mozart’s operas, but the technique plays an essential part throughout the performance of operas of later composers such as Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Geatano Donizetti. In the later 1800’s, as orchestras became larger and concert halls and theaters became more spacious, singers required bigger voices to make themselves heard. Opera plots also became more somber, and the graceful and lyrical aspects of bel canto became less relevant. After a long period of decline, opera singers in the 1900’s began to rediscover and re-create the bel canto technique, often to brilliantly dramatic effect. The sopranos Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland were among the greatest bel canto artists of the 1900’s.
