Colorature

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A highly ornamental and elaborate style of singing featuring rapid scales, runs, and trills
2. A decorative vocal technique characterized by intricate embellishments and fast, florid passages
3. An expressive, florid singing style that uses swift, intricate melodic embellishments

Etymology: The word is an alternative spelling of "coloratura", and its story starts with paint. Late Latin "colōrātūra" came from "colōrāre", "to colour", which is itself rooted in the Latin "color". In Italian, "coloratura" took on a musical sense: the ornamental runs, trills and flourishes a singer adds to a melody, decorating the line with rapid, bright figures much as a painter adds colour to a drawing. The English borrowing carried that picture over intact, so a singer's ornate passage is still, at heart, a matter of painting a melody.

Synonyms: ornamentation, embellishment