Voice
Giuditta Pasta's voice was what could be called a soprano sfogato:
Madame Pasta's voice has a considerable range. She can achieve perfect resonance on a note as low as bottom A, and can rise as high as C#, or even to a slightly sharpened D; and she possesses the rare ability to be able to sing contralto as easily as she can sing soprano. I would suggest ... that the true designation of her voice is mezzo-soprano, and any composer who writes for her should use the mezzo-soprano range for the thematic material of his music, while still exploiting, as it were incidentally and from time to time, notes which lie within the more peripheral areas of this remarkably rich voice. Many notes of this last category are not only extremely fine in themselves, but have the ability to produce a kind of resonant and magnetic vibration, which, through some still unexplained combination of physical phenomena, exercises an instantaneous and hypnotic effect upon the soul of the spectator. This leads to the consideration of one of the most uncommon features of Madame Pasta's voice: it is not all moulded from the same metallo, as it is said in Italy (which is to say that it possesses more than one timbre); and this fundamental variety of tone produced by a single voice affords one of the richest veins of musical expression which the artistry of a great cantatrice is able to exploit."
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Famous quotes containing the word voice:
“One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.”
—Robert Bresson (b. 1907)
“Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
Now I laugh content for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
““Maman”, said Annaïse, her voice strangely weak. “Here is the water.”
A thin blade of silver came forward in the plain and the peasants ran alongside it, crying and singing.
...
“Oh, Manuel, Manuel, why are you dead?” moaned Délira.
“No”, said Annaïse, and she smiled through her tears, “no, he is not dead”.
She took the old woman’s hand and pressed gently against her belly where new life stirred.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)