spinto

Spinto (from Italian, "pushed") is a vocal term used to characterize a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large dramatic climaxes at moderate intervals. Sometimes the terms lirico-spinto or jugendlich-dramatisch are used. This voice type is recognized by its "slice", allowing the singer to be heard over a full Romantic orchestra in roles excluding, in particular, the most taxing of the Verdi, Puccini and verismo parts, such as Otello.

• Spinto soprano: a lyric soprano with a fair amount of "pulp". As they have both a lyric and a dramatic quality, spinto sopranos are suitable for wide range of roles, from lyric roles such as Micaela in Carmen and Mimì in La Bohème to Verdi heroines like Leonora (in Il Trovatore or La forza del destino), Aïda or Puccini's Madame Butterfly.
• Tenore spinto: the tenor equivalent of the above. They can sing roles like Rodolfo in La Bohème, Duke in "Rigoletto" and Alfredo in La Traviata all the way up to Cavaradossi in "Tosca", Don Jose in "Carmen", and Radames in Aïda. The tenor lead in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci is another well-known example of a spinto part.

Rosalind Plowright defines a spinto voice as one that has a tonal colour one down from its range. For example, a voice with a mezzo's tone colour and the high notes of a soprano, or a voice with a tenor range and a baritone's tone colour, is a spinto. She names Plácido Domingo as an instance of the latter.^[1] Plowright's generalisation does not hold true for all spinto tenors, however. Giovanni Martinelli, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Jussi Björling, for instance, sang spinto roles such as Radames with bright-toned voices that lacked any baritonal colouration.

See also

• Fach

References

External links

• A recording of six different sopranos singing Vissi d'arte, illustrating the sound of a spinto voice and how it differs from a lyric voice. Hosted at Parterre.com. In order:

1. Lyric (Claudia Muzio)
2. Spinto (Leontyne Price)
3. Spinto (Renata Tebaldi)
4. Spinto (Zinka Milanov)
5. Lyric (Montserrat Caballé)
6. Spinto (Antonietta Stella)

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