Nicola Vaccai - Work As A Singing Teacher and Metodo Pratico de Canto

Work As A Singing Teacher and Metodo Pratico De Canto

Later eclipsed by his rival Bellini, Vaccai is now chiefly remembered as a voice teacher. One of his notable students was soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini. Nicola Vaccai wrote many books one of which is called Metodo pratico de canto (Practical Vocal Method). This book has been transposed for different types of voice (i.e. high or low), to teach singing in the Italian legato style. The Metodo pratico was written in 1832 and is still in print, from Edition Peters and Ricordi, and used as a teaching tool. Vaccai notes in his introduction that only the voice of a master demonstrating accurately his exercises can really teach the student the correct techniques of true legato. The book is also an important source of information about the performance of early 19th-century opera.

Elio Battaglia, voice teacher, edited a new teacher’s edition of the "Metodo practico" or “Practical Method of Italian Singing” by Nicholas Vaccai (Ricordi 1990, with CD of examples).

Read more about this topic:  Nicola Vaccai

Famous quotes containing the words work, singing and/or teacher:

    Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. They talk of the dignity of work. Bosh. True work is the necessity of poor humanity’s earthly condition. The dignity is in leisure. Besides, 99 hundredths of all the work done in the world is either foolish and unnecessary, or harmful and wicked.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.”
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)