![]() A quick search on shows 135 arias in which a soprano sings but only 1 with a contralto! Likewise for the male voices: the same search reveals 214 arias featuring tenor and/or baritone …… but only 28 with a bass voice. When we are agitated or excited our voice register tends to rise, and in Puccini’s music it is often as though the singer was nearing breaking point. This extreme intensity is perhaps why Puccini favoured the high voices. ![]() This is the opposite of “laid-back” music! Rather than fireworks, we find here rivers of molten steel or lava – flowing deeply, thickly, usually quite slowly ……. ![]() There are not many notes in the vocal line of a Puccini aria. ![]() What extraordinarily expressive, dramatic and beautiful music this is, but it is deeply and intimately emotional rather than virtuosic and pyrotechnical. He composed almost exclusively operas, and his deeply lyrical operatic style and gorgeous, soaring vocal melodies are well suited to being played on string instruments – especially perhaps on the cello because of its similarities in range and timbre to the singing voice. Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924) was perhaps the last of the great “Romantic” composers. ![]()
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