Spinto

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spinto (from Italian, "pushed") is a vocal term used to characterize a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large dramatic climaxes at moderate intervals. Sometimes the terms lirico-spinto or jugendlich-dramatisch are used. This voice type is recognized by its "slice," allowing the singer to be heard over a full Romantic orchestra in roles excluding, in particular, the most taxing of the Verdi, Puccini and verismo roles.

Spinto soprano: a lyric soprano with a fair amount of "pulp". As they have both a lyric and a dramatic quality, spinto sopranos are suitable for wide range of roles, from lyric roles such as Micaela in Carmen and Mimì in La Bohème to Verdi heroines like Leonora (in Il Trovatore or La Forza del Destino), Aïda or Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
Tenore spinto: the tenor equivalent of the above. They can sing roles like Rodolfo in La Bohème and Alfredo in La Traviata all the way up to Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca and Radames in Aïda.

To illustrate what a spinto voice is, and how it differs from a lyric voice, here is a link to a soundfile of Vissi d'arte sung by six different sopranos (on opera blog Parterre.com).

Lyric (Claudia Muzio)
Spinto (Leontyne Price)
Spinto (Renata Tebaldi)
Spinto (Zinka Milanov)
Lyric (Montserrat Caballé)
Spinto (Antonietta Stella)

Rosalind Plowright defines a spinto voice as one colour down its range, for example a voice with a mezzo colour and the high notes of a soprano or a tenor range and a baritone colour. She names Placido Domingo as an instance of the latter.^[1]