Talk:2017-2018/@comment-107.77.90.108-20150210215902/@comment-25069336-20160218175244

When people use terms like Assoluta or Coloratura, I get very annoyed. Norma was not written for either, because neither is a real category.

Coloratura is a bastardized term, and confusing--at best--as a category. People use it to qualify singers as diverse as Lily Pons and Joan Sutherland. Better to speak of light, lyric or dramatic singers with agility (d'agilità, in Italian), as may be fit. Again, as far as the current perception of the meaning of the term seems to be (a light, or light lyric soprano with plenty of agility technique, or a nightingale singer), Norma was not written for such a voice.

Assoluta, as a term imported from ballet (where it's an honorary label, more than a specific category) and it means absolutely nothing clear in opera, other than an affectionate tag, or that the person using it  very much  likes the singer to whom they are referring with it, or that they think they have a very "complete" technique. A so-called Assoluta, in my mind, would have be able to give emotionally arresting and technically quasi-perfect performances of Lulu, Elektra, the Queen of the Night, Carmen, Amina, Sieglinde, Octavian, Jenufa, Traviata, Pamina, the Kostelnicka, Turandot, Manon, and Traviata with equal ease and success, to say the least.