Introduction

Abstract The Introduction sets forth a brief history of coloratura singing and identifies historical questions, issues, and contexts in scholarly literature. From opera’s origins, composers employed melismatic text treatment to highlight a singer’s agility, range, and the character’s emotional intensity, as well as for frequent moments of word painting. This tradition of solo singing was still prominent during the “bel canto” period of the early nineteenth century when composers employed coloratura vocal writing as part of normal melodic text treatment. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, coloratura was a rare feature in operatic vocal writing. Coloratura also shifted to the domain of female singers, and often particular sopranos. In providing a historical context for the study of singing, gender, and nineteenth-century opera, the author proposes that the increasing specificity of coloratura led to its eventual identity as a voice-type, becoming an indicator of the modern.