Bel canto

But generally it's, it's, it's one, you, you start with one type of rep.

And so for me, The fact that I've been able to formally add Tosca to my repertoire list has now opened the door to things like Rance, Yago, Nabucco, things like that, you know, that otherwise I've had to you know, that, that I started with, with Mozart, that I started with Bel Canto, you know, and then, and then for me, Lucia, Lucia was, was the doorway into Verdi.

And then, you know, then there was, there was Amonasso, there was Germont, there was, there was Di Luna Trabatore, you know, then eventually there was Attila and, Um, then I could, you know, I, my, um, my, my one unique addition to the equation was that I was able to start Rigoletto so much earlier in my career than, than, than a lot of my other, not a lot of my counterparts.

Um, and then now the next the next version of the equation is Tosca has then advanced me into this next stage where we add things like Nabucco, well, Iago, Jack Rance, Nabucco not too far down the road, You know, Michele and Tabarro, things like this.

Italian conductor Antonino Fogliani has died at age 50 following a long illness.

A Belcanto specialist, Fogliani was especially known for his works conducting lesser-known opera works of Rossini.

He conducted major symphony orchestras around the world over the course of his career and was appointed head of the Belcanto Opera Festival Rossini in Wilbad, Germany in 2011.

German singer Anni Schlem has died at age 97.

Schlem sang both mezzo-soprano and soprano roles over the course of her 40-year career.

So all my restaurant job...

Uh, Belcanto besties out there.

Belcanto is the style of voice teaching that I mentored in my lineage.

Um, if y'all are working in a restaurant, use your earplugs and please do not raise your voice over people.

Please get a different job.

So that's why technique is so important to me in my life and why I love, love, love teaching singers today.

And I'm your Bel Canto bestie.

I love that phrase.

I've been trained or mentored is a good word for it in the Bel Canto lineage.

So every single voice teacher I've had has been in this lineage.

Bel Canto is a style of voice teaching.

that came about when singing got super-de-duper virtuosic in the classical realm hundreds of years ago.

And it's still taught today.

But I would also suggest that the opera singers in that early era of opera were not singing in Even close to the same way that our opera singers do today.

And that's another part of this that I think is people are uneducated on or miseducated, I should say, is when we believe that an opera singer in 2026 at the Met is singing in the same technical way that the early Belcanto singers were being taught to sing, because it is not the same.

It is absolutely not the same.

And there is more vibrato in the sound now.

I think it's clear that Jill Gomez was possessed of not only a voice of extraordinary beauty that was both smoky and beguilingly floaty, but also a technique which included a killer trill and flexibility to burn.

In spite of this, the Bel Canto repertoire figured only peripherally in her career.

Yes, her debut was as Adina, but otherwise she only rarely dipped her toe into the bel canto repertoire.

I know of two such examples.

One was in 1972 when she sang the secondary role of Lisa in La Sonambula at Covent Garden in a production which starred Renata Scotto and Stuart Burroughs.