The piece I am reviewing for this blog is Un Bel De Vedremo”, from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. The song consists of a soprano soloist singing the melody, and in fact is the main “instrument” in the song. She sings a very wide range, from very high pitch to some relatively low notes. The singer is obviously a professional of the western Opera she has a light vibrato. The song being in Italian does create some difficulties in analyzing the song, such as is there a strophic? I personally could not hear any repetition of any verse. The song had a range of movements occasionally being very loud and then very soft, the motion of the song depended on what mood the singer was portraying, there were certainly elements of conjunct and disjunct motion at certain points in the song.
While the Soloist had the most prominent role in “Un Bel De Vedremo”, the orchestra provided the harmony, although there were divisions of the song where the orchestra played so softly, compared to the soloist, that the song took on the characteristic of being monophonic. The music did not stay that way, there was certainly times were the music was polyphonic and even heterophonic. The instrumentals had a much smaller range that the soloist. The orchestra was comprised of chordophones and areophones only, no membraneophones which I found surprising, as I have heard versions of this song with membraneohones. The song was filled with accents, quite then loud then quite and so on, for both the voice and the instrumentals.
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I agree with your descriptions! :)
ReplyDeleteThe beginning reminded me of the bel canto or cantabile, where she sang slowly to express the melancholy mood. Towards the end, however, I'm not sure if this qualifies as the cabeletta, but she essentially reaches the climax of the song and hits some fairly high notes. Some brass sounding instruments (aerophones) also jump in to add the the dramatic effect.
I also looked up what the song was about and learned that here she was trying to convince her maid that her husband would come back to her "on one beautiful day," although odds were slim. Thus, at the end where the performers are standing opposite each other, Madame Butterfly is intentionally not looking at her maid possibly as a sign of defiance.