Desdemona and Salome, Shamakhanskaya Tsaritsa and Yaroslavna, Aida and Chio-chio-san, as well as many other opera parts are written for soprano vocalists. This is the highest singing female voice, the range of which is two to three octaves. However, it can be so different! We will try to figure out what this high female voice happens in and its features.
What are female singing voices?
The main types of female voices are:
- contralto;
- mezzo soprano;
- soprano.
Their main difference is the range of sound, as well as the timbre color, which includes such properties as saturation, lightness and strength of voice, individual for each artist.
So, soprano is a high voice with a sound range of at least two octaves, from To the first to the Fa of the third.
Kinds
In the traditions of the Russian music school, it is customary to distinguish the following three main varieties of soprano voices:
- coloratura;
- dramatic
- lyrical.
In addition, two intermediate types of soprano are distinguished - this is lyrical-coloratural and lyric-dramatic. Let's understand what the difference is between all of these species.
Voice with "jewelry"
That is what the highest female voice can be called - the colororan soprano. It got its name due to the ability to easily perform coloratura - special vocal jewelry. An example of coloratura performance is Alyabyev’s novel “The Nightingale”, where they beat the main theme of the work.
Thanks to the coloratura soprano, such wayward and playful images appear on the scene as Zerlina in the Mozartian Don Juan or Lyudmila from the Glinka Ruslan and Lyudmila. The extraordinary possibilities of this voice are often used to create fairy-tale and fantastic characters, such as the Swan Princess, the Snow Maiden and the Shamakhan Queen in the operas of N. Rimsky-Korsakov or the Doll from Jacques Offenbach's “Tales of Hoffmann”. The disadvantage of such a soprano voice is that the vocalists cannot perform choral parts. The most prominent owners of such vocals are Diana Damrau, Christina Deitek, Cecilia Bartoli,
Svetlana Feodulova, Olga Pudova.
Dramatic soprano
A very rare voice, highly valued in the music world, since singers can perform almost any repertoire - from coloratura to mezzo-soprano. The voice is strong, “huge” in volume and richness of overtones, which allows it to easily break through the choir and orchestra. An ignorant person can easily confuse him with mezzo-soprano. The minus of this beautiful and rich voice is that the lyrical images and works are obtained not by all performers (due to the tragic coloring of the voice). You can hear the dramatic soprano in such opera parts:
- Abigaille from Nabucco by J. Verdi;
- Aids and La Traviata from the operas of the same name;
- Yaroslavna from "Prince Igor" Borodin and others.
This voice was possessed by the amazing Maria Callas, as well as such famous opera prima as Anita Cherkvetti, Astrid Varnay, Jesse Norman, Gene Dimitrova.
Today, a dramatic soprano can be heard performed by Galina Gorchakova,
Maria Guleghina, Anna Shafazhinsky, Irina Gordey, Eva Marton, Leontin Price, Eva Genser.
Lyrical soprano
This soft-sounding voice is more compact and fluid than a dramatic soprano. They use lyric soprano in opera parts where it is necessary to show warmth, affection and tenderness, for example, in the part of Natasha Rostova from the Prokofievsky “War and Peace” or Tatyana Larina from “Eugene Onegin” P. Tchaikovsky. This gentle timbre is possessed by Kiri Te Kanava, Tarja Turunen, Rene Fleming, Daniel DeNiz, Amanda Rucroft, Cullen Esperyan.
Lyric-coloratura soprano is a voice with a working range from Before the first to the Fa of the third octave, characterized by the transparency of the timbre. Unlike coloratura, this soprano has a more dense sound, which can be heard in the part of Tsarevna Volkhova from “Sadko” Rimsky-Korsakov or Antonina from “Ivan Susanin” by Glinka. Performers with such a voice are given the roles of cheerful and playful young heroines, since the dramatic “colors” are practically inaccessible to them and they express grief, pain, suffering or cruelty by lyrical means. Lyric-coloratura soprano was famous for Antonina Nezhdanova, Diana Petrinenko, Elizaveta Shumskaya, Galina Oleinichenko, Lyudmila Zlatova. Today, Monserat Caballe, Dilber Yunus, Elena Terentyeva, A. Solenkova perform the parts for this voice.
The lyric-dramatic soprano, depending on the personal data of the performer, can be either dramatic or lyrical. The images embodied on stage by singers with such voices are usually filled with passions and deep feelings. As a rule, these are young women or girls whose breadth of character can be shown by the powerful voice of a vocalist, such as, for example, Kuma from Tchaikovsky’s Enchantress or Tamara from Rubinstein’s Demon. Quite rarely, the lyric-dramatic soprano is used to create images of older women or characteristically comic roles. This type of voice is possessed by Raina Kabaivansk, Galina Gorchakova, Teresa Stratas, Lidia Abramova and others.