What are the common formulas for improvising ornaments in bel canto singing?
15.06.2025 16:24
My first thought is that if you’re using “common formulas” you’re not really improvising. Rather, it sounds as though you’re wanting to plug in a pre-existing set of techniques for a particular setting, which defeats the entire point of improvisation. Moreover, I would also point out the bel canto composers (Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, etc.) tended to disapprove of spontaneous embellishment such as that heard in Handel or even Mozart’s day. In fact, we would notice many instances of them writing out ornaments in the score to discourage this very practice. Rossini began to do so in his 1813 opera Aureliano in Palmira, and you can note him indicating quite specifically in the score which ornaments he thought appropriate:
Singers had several choices of what they might insert at points such as these (written or not), and I think that might be what this question is trying to address. Ornamentation might only consist of a few simple grace notes. Composers at the time did not always write out every grace, so singers had to interpret the musical “clues” for themselves, aiming to find the notes that lent the line a feeling commensurate with the words and the music while retaining the original mood. You can see some written-out examples in Corrado’s line from a duet in Mercadante’s I Briganti and you can also imagine some spots where others could be added:
That said, composers still provided moments in music where the placement of some sort of vocal ornament seemed appropriate and allowed singers a certain amount of license. We will sometimes encounter markings of a piacere to indicate that singers might add something to the written line at that point and to note explicitly that they could do so as they please. We can see an example of this in Carlo’s aria in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix:
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Singers could also use these occasions to show off their ability to trill, singing a rapid oscillation between two pitches. This represented a quite versatile ornament because it could underscore a variety of effects. A trill could be slowed down to express sadness or wistfulness or sped up to indicate excitement or passion. Singers might insert short trills to punctuate certain words in a line, or they might sustain longer ones to extend the meaning of a word or idea or even a name. This part of the Adriano/Armando duet in Meyerbeer’s Il Croacito in Egitto contains trills on the word “fremo” [tremble], but you can imagine where singers might decide to alter the trills to strengthen the idea of fear or trepidation:
For me this is one of the reasons why I find this particular period in operatic history so interesting. Composers attempted to set up some guardrails to curb singers’ unfettered liberties with their music, but also maintained some areas where singers could individualize music to achieve stunning effects.
We might also encounter the messa di voce in music from this time. A messa di voce typically indicates a shift in dynamics (soft to loud and then soft again) or sometimes a shift between two different vocal registers. The pitch would begin quietly and then slowly increase in volume for an unspecified duration (the orchestra likely has a fermata and will wait for the singer) until the intensity and volume revert back to the original quality. I can see a singer inserting a messa di voce into this phrase from Paer’s Sargino where there is a pause on an important phrase “Io t’amo” [I love you]:
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A cadenza either within an aria or at the end of one provides the most common place for singers to embellish. Composers would typically sketch out a cadenza that the singer could follow com’è scritto or alter in order to showcase another feature. As with the messa di voce, the orchestra will typically pause and allow the singer as much time as needed to sing the cadenza he chose, so it might be simple or quite elaborate. Over the course of Verdi’s career he would virtually eliminate cadenzas in his music, but we can see them if we look at his earlier works, such as Ernani.
In another example, we can see that in Bellini’s Norma he notates turns differently in the same phrase of the soprano’s entrance aria “Casta Diva” by both fully writing them out and also using a turn symbol. In bel canto performance practice of this period, singers would still add ornamentation to various phrases (in spite of composers’ objections, no doubt), so I think it’s entirely possible that Bellini wrote out some of the turns in order to inhibit singers from embellishing indiscriminately and at the same time to encourage them to sing exactly what appeared on the page. In this way Bellini could also make the point that these were not simply ornaments tossed in at will, but a bedrock musical element in the score.
Singers could also avail themselves of another option: the turn (or gruppetto). Turns could be used to add color or variety to a fairly simple melody by embellishing a word or even a particular note within the line (as seen in the Norma example above). As with everything else, singers had to judge their effects carefully, as too many turns could drag the line down and make it sound heavy, especially if an overly intricate line forced them to breathe in the middle of phrases. You can see some written in this phrase from Pacini’s La regina di Cipro but also can imagine how they could be altered upon repetition: