What is "bel canto"

bel canto \bel canto\ (b[e^]l k[aum]n"t[-o]), n. [It., beautiful singing.] (Music) a cantabile style of operatic singing characterized by purity and evenness of tone, and a precise but brilliant vocal technique displaying ease and agility.

1894, Italian, literally "fine song."

n. (context music English) An elegant style of singing characterized by beautiful tone and an effortless technique.

n. a style of operatic singing

Bel canto is an opera term that literally means "beautiful singing".

Bel Canto may also refer to:

• Bel Canto (novel), a novel by Ann Patchett
• Bel Canto (band), a Norwegian pop/electronica band
• Bel canto (opera), 2015 opera by Jimmy López, based on Patchett's novel
• Bel Canto (restaurant), a restaurant chain

Bel canto (Italian for "beautiful singing" or "beautiful song", ), along with a number of similar constructions ("bellezze del canto"/"bell'arte del canto"), is a term relating to Italian singing. It has several different meanings and is subject to a wide variety of interpretations.

The words were not associated with a "school" of singing until the middle of the 19th century, when writers in the early 1860s used it nostalgically to describe a manner of singing that had begun to wane around 1830. Nonetheless, "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt [a] definition [of bel canto] until after 1900". The term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used to evoke a lost singing tradition.

Bel Canto is a Norwegian music duo, originally a trio, fronted by vocalist Anneli Drecker, and signed originally to Crammed Discs.

Bel Canto is the fourth novel by American author Ann Patchett, published in 2001 by Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It was awarded both the Orange Prize for Fiction and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It was placed on several top book lists, including Amazon's Best Books of the Year (2001). It was also adapted into an opera in 2015.

Based on the Japanese embassy hostage crisis (also called the Lima Crisis) of 1996–1997 in Lima, Peru, the novel follows the relationships among a group of young terrorists and their hostages, who are mostly high-profile executives and politicians, over several months. Many of the characters form unbreakable bonds of friendship, while some fall in love.

Opera is a centralizing theme on many levels throughout the story; the operatic term bel canto literally means "beautiful singing."

Bel Canto is a chain of restaurants, based in Paris, France, where singers perform live opera arias for the diners.

Bel Canto is an opera by Peruvian composer Jimmy López. Based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Ann Patchett, the work uses a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. The libretto is sung in Spanish, English, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Latin, Italian, and Quechua. It was commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Chicago as part of the Renée Fleming initiative. Sir Andrew Davis conducted, and director Kevin Newbury staged the work. The cast included Danielle de Niese as Roxane Coss, J’nai Bridges as Carmen, Jeongcheol Cha as Hosokawa, and Andrew Stenson as Gen.