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PDM308
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Nicola Vaccaj (Tolentino, 15 March 1790 Pesaro, 5 August 1848) was an Italian composer and singing teacher. He studied music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and later under Giovanni Paisiello, in Naples. He had his first operatic success in Naples with I solitari di Scozia, in 1815. He moved to Venice where he wrote other operatic works and taught voice. Eclipsed by his contemporaries, Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti, he left Italy for Paris and then for London where, in 1834, he published his Metodo pratico di canto italiano per camera (Practical Vocal Method) which is still an essential teaching tool for operatic singers. His operas were performed at the top theatres in Italy. The most successful were: La pastorella feudataria, Zadig ed Astartea, Bianca di Messina and his masterpiece Giulietta e Romeo with libretto by Felice Romani. He also developed an interest in sacred music and composed many arias for special occasions or for teaching voice A composer and singing teacher par excellence, created fifteen lessons as part of his Metodo pratico di canto italiano per camera which, in the words of his son and bibliographer, he intended to be 'the first part of a more extended method taking into account different types of voice' (cf. Vita di Nicola Vaccaj, written by his son Giulio, page 147). However, although Vaccaj made constant use of operatic arias for teaching voice throughout his career, he never found the time to complete his project with collections of operatic arias for different types of voice. He was very knowledgeable about human physiology and could reconcile perfectly the 'limitations of art' with the 'limitations of the voice'. His operatic areas are written in a comfortable style, rich in embellishment but more restrained in the main, without need for high pitch and forcing of the voice which were characteristic of theatrical singing of the time. The ease with which Vaccaj's operatic arias can be sung, without extremes or excess, make them an excellent teaching tool where singing is mainly technical at the service of expression. It is in this regard that this collection aims to serve as the ideal complement to the Metodo pratico di canto, with operatic areas drawn from Nicola Vaccaj's repertoire arranged according to difficulty and transposed for different voices.
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Publishernumber:
PDM308
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215653
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