: a soprano with a light agile voice specializing in coloratura
Example Sentences
a performance without much coloratura
Recent Examples on the WebAnd Kyaunnee Richardson is especially memorable with a beautifully playful coloratura and a winning way with a snarky aside. Matthew J. Palm, orlandosentinel.com, 18 Dec. 2020 Known for long phrases with boundless colors, emotions and dynamics, Rae’s coloratura soared effortlessly with a glittery vibrato, especially in the Richard Strauss and Fanny Mendelssohn pieces. Grace Jean, Washington Post, 16 Sep. 2019 His agility might be compared to that of a coloratura soprano. Emily Langer, Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2020 With immaculate coloratura chops and nuanced acting, soprano Helen Zhibing Huang illustrated Singa’s transformation from American Dream almost-believer to awakened ally.BostonGlobe.com, 22 Sep. 2019 Meade showed her credentials as the perfect coloratura. Peter Dobrin, Philly.com, 8 Jan. 2018 In arias, the coloratura writing is often intense, so that — as in some Handel operas, only more so — each character plunges at once into a vortex of emotion conveyed by the knots and chains of the rapid-moving vocal line. Alastair Macaulay, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2018 Meade showed her credentials as the perfect coloratura. Peter Dobrin, Philly.com, 8 Jan. 2018 My mother, Lucille Potter Lavin, was a singer, an opera singer, with a very beautiful lyric coloratura and a brief but dazzling career in New York. Linda Lavin, New York Times, 26 Sep. 2017 See More
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from 17th-century Italian, "coloring," from Latin colōrātus, past participle of colōrāre "to color entry 2" + Italian -ura-ure
Note: Though conventionally attributed to Italian in German dictionaries since the 17th century, the word apparently first appears in a musical sense in German (as Coloraturen, given as a synonym of Latin Diminutiones "diminutions," in Michael Praetorius, Syntagmatis musici tomus tertius, Wolfenbüttel, 1619, p. 232).