I read somewhere a few months back the word for “singing while crying”, apparently a characteristic of passionate Russian or Italian opera.
Does anyone know what this word is?
I’ll give you a bump a take a stab.
Could you be thinking of vibrato or tremolo? They both mean wavering your voice while holding a note and that would be the technique which one would use to sound like one is crying.
But they don’t literally mean “singing while crying.”
lacrimato, from here
Dunno either, but two Italian terms are close: Piangevole “Plaintively” and Sospirando “Sighing”.
Obviously The Great Unwashed popped in with the answer while I was searching. Good pick up.
Many thanks. It had me stumped.
It’s just Italian for tearfully or cryingly, so it’s not that technical. If you’re composing an opera in English, do your singers a favor and use “tearfully” as an expression mark.
Peace.
Alternatively, you can use “Celinesque.”
Uh? Are the terms piano/forte/allegro/largamente etc. also “not that technical” because they are regular Italian words?
Google gives 26 hits for “Celinesque”, none with the meaning required. The word fails to appear in my Oxford Companion To Music, and my Oxford Reference Dictionary – give us a clue!
I have always seen it as lacrimato too.
Well, yes and no. I’ve seen sheet music for English songs use English as the expression marks (e.g., softly, loud, fast, march [in place of marzzo (sp?)], etc…). While the most common expression marks have become sort of standards that get taught in Music 101 courses as technical musical terms, there’s no law that says one must use them. New ones are being coined all the time in both Italian and in the native languages of the composers.
Now I’ll give you that certain terms like stenuto or piccato have no English cognates and will still be used as technical terms for how instruments are played. However, many expression marks are simply untechnical terms of emotion or feeling which are easily translated into other languages and have no real privilege as a ‘technical’ term. After all, there’s no definition of how softly piano is in terms of decibels. It’s quite relative. It’s not that lacrimato means something technical and different other than tearfully.
Whoosh. It’s a joke on the overwrought singing style of Celine Dion.
Peace.
Tongue in cheek comments go here.
A lacrimator is a tear producing substance. Lacrimation is excessive tear production. Perhaps “lacrimae rerum” ?
Yes, English is a perfectly good language to denote expression in; yes, all such indicators have a broad range of interpretations; yes, tearfully is as good as lacrimato.
I think it is well worth the occasional whoosh to be sufficiently ignorant of the overwrought (nice word, BTW) wailings of CD to not get the reference.
Whatever, dammit, the OP was looking for the word lacrimato.
Ridi, pagliaccio
Dal tuo amore infranto
Ridi del duol
Che t’avvelena il tuo cuor…
BOO HOO HOO…