We are gearing up to present The Barber of Seville at Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and we couldn't be more excited! Barber is one of the world’s most popular operas, with Gioachino Rossini’s lively and familiar music appearing everywhere from movies to commercials. But surprisingly, operas like Barber from the bel canto (“beautiful singing”) period weren't always so beloved. How did this style, once a sensation in Rossini’s era, fall out of favor and then make an extraordinary comeback to earn its place in the modern operatic canon? In this post, we’ll dive into the origins of bel canto, its journey out of the limelight, and the revival that has solidified its timeless charm.
The Italian School and bel canto style
Gioachino Rossini’s compositions were peak of what is now widely referred to as the bel canto style in opera. As the Romantic period began to take shape in Italy, the operas of Rossini and his contemporaries bridged the virtuosic style of Baroque opera with the simplicity and balance of Classical opera, all while embracing the Romantic era's focus on emotional expression. Rossini wrote intricate, decorative passages for singers, expecting them to not only master these challenging lines but also to add their own embellishments, making each performance unique and expressive.
The pedagogical practice of what we now know as the bel canto style of singing was around long before Rossini. Musicians at the time would live and breathe their practice, often living with their teachers and only studying their technique. Practitioners in what is known as the Italian School focused on the idea that operatic singing should be taught as an extension of one's speech, and that the true free voice was more of a mindset rather than a physical placement. The voice should sound and feel natural and easy, but also capable of expressing the full palette of dramatic colors that one can use in speech without sacrificing the youthful and beautiful tone.
Rossini’s operas fit perfectly with the principles of the Italian School. Within the florid virtuosity of his vocal lines, he demanded beauty and precision in each note, encouraging expressive techniques like swelling dynamics (messa di voce), flexible tempo (rubato), and melodic choices that highlighted the meaning of the text. In his hands, bel canto became an ideal blend of vocal skill and emotional depth, helping to create the specific style of Italian opera that we now call the bel canto style.
Mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, performing the virtuosic “Una voce poco fa,” from Rossini's The Barber of Seville (1816), complete with many of her own, original vocal ornamentations.
Grand opera and the German school
The popularity of bel canto operas was short lived, however, with the introduction of larger opera works at the height of the Romantic period. As Romanticism grew in influence, composers started to favor bigger, bolder operas, focusing on drama and scale rather than delicate, virtuosic singing. Stories in opera became more fantastical, often inspired by myths, fairy tales, and religious themes, which called for grander, more intense musical settings.
In Italy, composers like Giuseppe Verdi expanded on bel canto by adding more drama and emotional weight to their works, while preserving the Italian emphasis on expressive melody. Meanwhile, in France, grand opera emerged, emphasizing massive productions and elaborate staging. This shift meant bigger orchestras, larger casts, and a focus on narrative over florid virtuosity. As a result, singers had to adapt to roles that demanded greater vocal power to fill the space created by these large-scale productions.
Soprano Shirley Verrett singing, “Vieni t'affretta,” from Verdi's Macbeth (1847), showing the evolution of Italian opera later in the Romantic period.
Mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, demonstrating the heightened drama and extended vocal needs of French grand opera in the aria, “Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix,” from Saint-Saëns's Samson and Dalilah (1877).
The biggest transformation came with the music of Richard Wagner in Germany. Wagner’s operas introduced large, rich orchestrations and new harmonic ideas, which required a different style of singing. Singers focused less on agility and ornamentation and more on power and volume. This new style of singing, known as the German School, valued strength and emotional intensity over the agile, simpler style of bel canto. Wagnerian singing emphasized volume and dramatic expression, contrasting sharply with the beauty and finesse of bel canto, and marking a major shift in opera’s evolution.
Dramatic soprano Birgit Nilsson, exemplifying the German style of singing in Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene from Wagner's Götterdämmerung (1848).
The twentieth-Century revival
After Rossini and his contemporaries, the bel canto style gradually fell out of fashion. As the more dramatic verismo style took hold in Italy with composers like Puccini, Leoncavallo, and Mascagni, bel canto operas were seen as outdated and were performed less often. Though they never completely disappeared, many in the opera world viewed bel canto works as old-fashioned and less artistically valuable.
This changed in the 1950s with the rise of the legendary soprano Maria Callas. In 1949, Callas famously performed both Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Bellini’s I Puritani in the same season, challenging the idea that bel canto roles were any less demanding than newer works. Her performances sparked new interest in bel canto operas, inspiring a revival that brought them back into the mainstream opera canon. Following Callas’s influence, a new generation of singers, including Luciano Pavarotti, Marilyn Horne, Joan Sutherland, and Montserrat Caballé, embraced bel canto, cementing its place in opera once more. Since then, beloved works like The Barber of Seville have remained at the forefront, enchanting audiences around the world.
Soprano Maria Callas singing the aria, “Casta diva,” from Bellini's bel canto opera, Norma (1831).
Bel Canto today
Today, The Barber of Seville is celebrated as one of the most masterful comedies in the operatic repertoire. With bel canto operas now regularly performed, the stylistic elements of this period remain integral to these works. The opera world is fortunate to once again embrace the timeless beauty of bel canto, and we’re thrilled to bring pieces like The Barber of Seville to life at Lyric Opera of Kansas City!
About the author:
Emily Stott has worked in arts marketing for nearly three years, and serves as the Manager of Marketing Operations and Social Media at Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Emily earned a Master of Music in Opera Performance in 2022 from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, with a special interest in musicology. She remains a voice student of soprano Maria Kanyova.
