Recitative (reh-sih-ta-téev), from the Italian word for “recitation,” is the technique of declaiming words musically in a heightened, theatrical manner. It is descended from the careful declamation practiced by late Renaissance composers (see page 68).

The singing voice closely follows the free rhythm of highly emotional speech; it mirrors and exaggerates the natural ups and downs that occur as an actor raises his or her voice at a question, lowers it in an aside, or cries out inw distress. The accompaniment is usually kept to a minimum — most often one or two continuo instruments — ensuring that all the words can be heard clearly.

Recitative is used for plot action, dialogue, and other situations in the drama where it is particularly important for the words to be brought out. On the other hand, where spoken drama would call for soliloquies or meditations, opera uses arias.

An aria is an extended piece for solo singer that has much more musical elaboration and coherence than a passage of recitative. The vocal part is more melodic, the rhythm is more consistent, the meter clearer, and typically the accompaniment includes the entire orchestra. Here the singer-actor mulls over his or her feelings at some leisure, instead of reacting moment by moment, as in recitative. Emotion is controlled and frozen into a tableau or picture. Paradoxically, when the music gets more elaborate, the emotion stands still.

Recitative required great singing actors, and arias required artists who could convert the notes of a score into these tableaus of furious, sensuous, or tragic emotion. Opera houses in the seventeenth century became showcases of vocal virtuosity — as they still are today. Ever since the Baroque era, dramatic expression and vocal display have vied with one another as the driving forces of opera.