Bel Canto Comeback?

Bel Canto, or 'beautiful singing' is a technique most often associated with the Italian singing school of Manuel Garcia and Mathilde Marchesi. It is associated with an elegant, embellished style of singing that developed in Italy between 1600-1900 featuring the lean perfection of the singing voice for opera which united many countries in a sort of European union of music (Horrocks, 2025). In addition to this historically situated definition, James Stark (1999) describes Bel Canto as, "a highly refined method of using the singing voice in which the glottal source, the vocal tract, and the respiratory system interact in such a way as to create the qualities of chiaroscuro, appoggio, register equalization, malleability of pitch, intensity, and a pleasing vibrato... it includes various forms of vocal onset, legato, portamento, glottal articulation, crescendo, decrescendo, messa di voce, mezza voce, floridity and trills, and tempo rubato" (p.189). Listening to great singers talk about Bel Canto technique is insightful and inspiring. Here tenor Luciano Pavarotti, soprano Joan Sutherland, and mezzo-soprano Marilyne Horne talk about Bel Canto technique (Lucpebo2, 2010).

Bel Canto has fallen out of fashion since the lat 19th century, but it is essential for singing the classical Western canon. Time will tell if it is making a comeback in the 21st century. With artists like American-Canadian soprano Sondra Radvanovsky performing Donizetti's three queens and historically-informed performance (HIP) and pedagogy such as that given by Nina Horrocks and her YouTube channel Phantoms of the Opera, interest is growing despite the current taste for belting styles. Furthermore, Nina's Bel Canto vocals are featured in her sister's, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian's Welcome Party, a contemporary album blending elements of jazz, blues, and classical music. Horrocks (2025) believes the old Bel Canto school from the 18th and early 19th centuries is sufficient to apply to a variety of styles, with updates made since the late 19th century unnecessary and not worth learning! This is a daring claim since late 19th century Verdi and verismo opera have been the mainstay of the New York Metropolitan Opera since 1883 (Clark, 2016). The evolution of opera from the early 19th-century Romantic period to the late 19th- and early 20th-century verismo era brought increasing demands for vocal weight and dramatic intensity. While new techniques emerged in response, especially during the verismo period, the older technique continued to be relevant and applicable to the changes in composition that were simultaneously developing, creating a prolonged overlap in vocal styles that did not align neatly with shifts in compositional trends.

La Divina - Maria Callas

In the mid-twentieth century Greek soprano Maria Callas (La Divina) revived Bel Canto by bringing older works by Spontini, Gluck, Cherubini, Rossini, and Bellini to life, presenting Donizetti's Anna Bolena at La Scala in 1957 (Clark, 2016). However, the New York Met only cast her in tried and true operas like La Traviata, Norma, Tosca, and Lucia Di Lammermoor. As the vanguard in this revival Callas was her own critic and task master, "If you don't have Bel Canto you cannot sing any opera, as a matter of fact" (BBC, 1968). Her successors Joan Sutherland (La Stupenda) and Montserrat Caballé (La Superba) continued the mid-20th Century Bel Canto revival, but it didn't reach the Met until 2011, when Anna Netrebko portrayed Anna Bolena. American soprano Beverly Sills (Prima Donna Assoluta), a student of Estelle Leibling disciplined under Marchesi's methods, had previously sang Donizetti's three queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, but at the New York City Opera in 1973. This feat was repeated by Sondra Radvanovsky (The Queen) at the Met in the 2015-16 season, with final scenes from each opera featured in "three queens" performances at the Chicago Lyric in 2019, and in Rome during the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

In the Met's 2016 three queens cycle, Radvanovsky's singular artistry carried the success of Donizetti's operas, even though her Bel Canto was not historically-informed, characterized by Romanticized dramatic vocal weight (Pujol, 2023). While the staging did not necessarily signal a turning point back to Bel Canto repertoire, it reminded audiences and institutions of the power and drama in Donizetti’s mature operas. If younger singers emerge with comparable skills and artistry—and if directors can make these operas feel urgent and dramatically relevant—Bel Canto may continue to thrive. Some leading Bel Canto artists today are Nadine Sierra, Lisette Oropesa, Pretty Yende, Javier Camarena, Angela Meade, and Maria Grazia Schiavo, and major opera houses in Italy, along with some in the UK and the New York Met support Bel Canto. But without institutional and audience support, Bel Canto revival risks being cyclical and star-dependent, rather than a deep aesthetic and repertoire recalibration.

References:

BBC (1968, April 24). Maria Callas: The Callas Conversations [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/live/BZfYbwbk-Cg

Clark, P. (2016). Donizetti's Tudor Queens at the Met. The Metropolitan Opera. Available at: https://www.metopera.org/discover/archives/notes-from-the-archives/donizettis-tudor-queens-at-the-met/

Horrocks, N. (2025). Phantoms of the Opera. Available at: https://www.phantomsoftheopera.net/about-5

Lucpebo2 (2010, May 20). How to sing Bel Canto [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nH54BdqWpg

Pujol, X. (2023, Feb). Sondra Radvanovsky. Opera Online. Available at: https://www.intermusica.com/artist/Sondra-Radvanovsky/reviews

Stark, J. (1999). Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy. University of Toronto Press.