The tradition & historical record
2 min read · 1 sourceCabaletta is a two-part musical form particularly favored for arias in 19th century Italian opera in the bel canto era until about the 1860s during which it was one of the era's most important elements. More properly, a cabaletta is a more animated section following the songlike cantabile. It often introduces a complication or intensification of emotion in the plot. Some sources suggest that the word derives from the Italian cobola (couplet). Another theory suggests that it derives from the Italian cavallo (horse), a reference to the pulsating rhythm of a galloping horse which forms the accompaniment of many famous cabalettas. The cabaletta was formed as part of an evolution from early 19th century arias containing two contrasting sections at different tempi within a single structure into more elaborate arias with musically distinct movements. The term itself was first defined in 1826 in Pietro Lichtenthal's Dizionario. It has a repetitive structure consisting of two stanzas followed by embellished variations. The cabaletta typically ends with a coda, often a very virtuosic one. Classic examples include "Non più mesta" from La Cenerentola by Rossini (1817), "Vien diletto, è in ciel la luna" from I puritani by Bellini (1835), and "Di quella pira" from Verdi's Il trovatore (1853). In later parlance, cabaletta came to refer to the fast final part of any operatic vocal ensemble, usually a duet, rather than just a solo aria.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Cabaletta”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
cabaletta is music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
The source record links this tradition to 8 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 1