It's sung by a single person, and it's usually separated from the music surrounding it - a song plopped in the midst of things. The aria has evolved over opera's 400-year history, but a couple of characteristics have stuck. But however you slice it, opera is clearly about voices. Opera has sometimes been called the most complete art in that it presents an elaborate (if sometimes precarious) assemblage of orchestral music, singing, acting, dancing, stagecraft, etc. This week, a few words on the basic song unit of opera - the aria.
For such occasions, a little operatic ammunition - in the form of jargon-busting - is necessary. At the end of the thirty variations, Bach writes Aria da Capo e fine, meaning that the performer is to return to the beginning ('da capo') and play the aria again before concluding. Aria da Capo, the play’s title, is a reference to a Baroque musical form, popular in the seventeeth to mid-eighteenth centuries. Aria buffa: A comedic aria frequently performed by a bass or a baritone in opera buffa (comic opera). Aria di bravura: An aria of bravery, often given to a heroic soprano in opera seria (dramatic opera). If you only knew what the oaf was pontificating about, you could call his bluff on buzzwords from da capo arias to ariosos. The da capo aria was the musical mainstay of late Italian Baroque opera, an A-B-A form for setting short, usually contrasting, strophes, with a return ( da capo to the head) to the initial words and music. Aria parlante: A 'speaking style' aria closely related to recitative vocal performance.
You gulp your champagne with equal measures of disgust and shame. You're at the opera and the know-it-all next to you starts analyzing arias, cataloging cabalettas and generally running on about recitatives.
Soprano Patricia Ciofi sings an aria from Verdi's Rigoletto. The da capo aria was a large-scale form in three sections (ABA), with the third repeating the first from the capo, or headthat is, from the beginning.
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