Music I love: Coloratura (La pastorella al prato, etc.)

I have always loved music. The earliest music I remember is Church hymns and my father's folk music -- The Brothers Four, The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, like that. I grew up listening to 70s pop music on AM radio. I took up violin in fourth grade and was introduced to the genre of classical music ("classical" in the broad sense). It was only much later, in my 20s, after coming home from my LDS missionary service in Italy, that I developed a taste for operatic singing. Luciano Pavarotti's voice was my introduction to this genre, and he remains perhaps my favorite operatic artist.

Eventually, I also came to appreciate women's operatic voices. When I began to get a bit familiar with Italian opera, I was drawn to a particular style of singing called bel canto, Italian for "beautiful singing". One feature of bel canto that I enjoyed was coloratura, an Italian term meaning "coloration". Coloratura refers to a collection of acrobatic virtuoso singing techniques that the singer (usually a soprano) uses to decorate her song. Doing it well requires tremendous diaphragm control and singing power; the result is unmistakable, breathtaking, amazing.

Perhaps the best-known coloratura piece is the second aria sung by the wicked Queen of the Night in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. This aria, Der Hölle Rache (Eng. Hell's vengeance), is often called simply "The Queen of the Night aria"; the link points to a particularly well-known coloratura part. (And if you don't think such singing is hard work, listen to Ms. Damrau panting at 4:15.)

A more extreme example of a soprano using coloratura is in Rossini's La Cenerentola (Eng. Cinderella). Rossini is rather notorious for writing highly ornate, difficult coloratura passages, particularly for his sopranos. Here is Cecilia Bartoli singing the final aria of the opera, Naqui al affano...Non piú mesta (actually two arias sung one after the other); the link points to the very end, where the singer traverses an almost unbelievable series of passages. Whether you love this kind of music or laugh at it, you have to stand in awe at the sheer fact that a human being can sing such a thing.

(If you haven't gathered yet, I'm a Cecilia Bartoli fan. Some have criticized her Rossini singing as neurotic, like she's about to bite the head off a bat. Whatever. In my little world, no one tops Cecilia.)

One of my favorite coloratura pieces is La pastorella al prato (Eng. The shepherdess through the meadow), written, strangely enough, by Franz Schubert. It's a sweet little Italian poem set to a pretty tune. The words are as follows:

La pastorella al prato

Contenta se ne va,

Coll' agnellino a lato

Cantando in libertà.

Se l'innocente amore

Gradisce il suo pastore

La bella pastorella

Contenta ognor sarà.

(Literal translation:

The little shepherdess contentedly passes through the meadow,

With a little lamb beside her, singing in liberty.

If her shepherd appreciates innocent love,

The pretty little shepherdess will forever be happy.)

Here is my attempt at a more poetic, singable translation:

Passing through the meadow walks

The lovely shepherdess,

And with her little lamb she talks

And sings in love and bliss.

If her sweet shepherd boy

Returns her love and joy

As he said, the pretty maid

Will ever feel love's kiss.

I've tried to retain the original poem's rhyming scheme of ABABCC(dd)B, where the (dd) means a line with an internal rhyme: La bella pastorella. My translation's internal rhyme, As he said, the pretty maid, is the best I could come up with. I considered making the fourth line And sings in love like this, rhyming with a changed last line, Will ever feel such bliss, which I thought might sing a bit better.

Yeah, like anyone would actually ever sing this. :)

P.S. My last "Music I love" entry also featured an Italian poem about shepherds. What's up with that? Dunno. Just coincidence, I suppose.