Score and parts on special sale from the Hire Library

Bel Canto is a portrait of Maria Callas, based on her live recordings of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte. How can a piece be a portrait of Maria Callas? The instruments zoom in on minute details—as a magnifying glass getting closer and closer to the vibrato and swoops of her specific voice—almost as a way to understand her physical presence. 

At the beginning of the piece, it’s as if we hear her young voice (when her vibrato was vibrant), and towards the end, the voice of her later years (much more dramatic and slow). Time slows down to allow for an engagement with detail, for a submersion in the sound, and for meditative stillness. 

I wrote this piece shortly after an afternoon spent with friends amid the bright-orange glow of sun, where time stretched and melted in the most delicious way. Heat-waves in the air warbled, seeming languid and indeed operatic. 

I’ve been interested in the voice (and in making musical portraits of specific people through their vocality) for sixteen years. This piece from 2009 was the genesis of what has become a life-long fascination with writing about the voice. I enjoy how we can intuitively understand so much about a person by the sound of their voice—and Maria Callas’s powerful physicality is so audible in all of her recordings. This piece also marked the beginning of sixteen years of making compositions based on pre-existing music that I love. How is it that I (even as a young girl from Canada) am so moved by Italian opera? If we repeat one phrase over and over, will we discover more about why it is so moving? 

Cassandra Miller