“I have learned from long experience … that few if any who desire to sing for their own pleasure love the idea of undertaking long exercises … I therefore thought of devising … a completely new kind, short, pleasurable, and useful, through which the goal may be reached with equal certainty, and in less time.” -Nicola Vaccai
Nicola Vaccai (March 15, 1790 – August 5, 1848) was an Italian composer and singing teacher. Vaccai was born in Tolentino, Italy and grew up in the town of Pesaro. His parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer and sent him to Rome to study law. In Rome, Vaccai took voice lessons and composition lessons. At 21 he became a pupil of the famous composer Paisiello, who mentored him in the art of writing opera. As he worked on establishing himself as an opera composer, he earned a living by teaching voice lessons and writing ballets. In 1815, he achieved his first success in opera when he wrote I solitari di Scozia, which premiered in Naples. He went on to write more operas, including his most successful opera, Giuletta e Romeo in 1825. In his lifetime, he wrote 18 operas and was a contemporary of the great Bel Canto opera composer, Vincenzo Bellini, whom Vaccai initially considered his rival. However, it did not take long for Bellini to completely surpass Vaccai as a composer of opera.
Although he was a composer, Vaccai is most famous for being a voice teacher and writing Metodo pratico de canto (Practical Vocal Method), which was published in 1832 and is considered his masterpiece. The method aims to cultivate the Italian style of singing with smooth and connected lines (also called legato) and contains progressive vocal hurdles that take the singer’s technique from beginner to highly advanced. Vaccai’s Practical Vocal Method is still in print and used by voice teachers and singers, even today, almost two hundred years after it was first published. This text has been transposed to many different keys, to accommodate different voice types. Many famous singers were trained with Vaccai’s method and Maria Callas claims she used the book to exercise her voice for her entire life. Vaccai’s exercises were successful, and continue to be popular, because they feel like miniature songs and use real Italian texts. Before Vaccai, singing methods mainly utilized vowels or solfege syllables, which can be less artistically stimulating. Vaccai believed that even rudimentary vocal training could empower the singer to be an artist and allow the singer to derive pleasure from their technical work. In the introduction to the text, Vaccai detailed his reason for developing his method:
[…] I have learned from long experience in Germany, France, England, and even Italy itself, that few if any who desire to sing for their own pleasure love the idea of undertaking long exercises and solfeggi. Affirming that their goal is limited to chamber singing, they are unwilling to go through the drudgery of the usual systems. I therefore thought of devising one – that which I here present – of a completely new kind, short, pleasurable, and useful, through which the goal may be reached with equal certainty, and in less time.
Sources
Budden, Julian (1998), “Vaccai, Nicola” in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. Four, pp. 881–882. London: Macmillan Publishers, Inc. 1998
Legger, Gianni (n.d.), Drammaturgia musicale italiana, Fondazzione Teatro Reggio (Torino).
Vaccai, Nicola (1996), Practical Method of Italian Singing: Mezzo Soprano (Alto) or Baritone, G. Schirmer, Inc.
https://www.teatronuovo.org/vaccai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPyK1vjFaaE&t=5s (a complete performance of Vaccai’s Practical Method of Italian Singing)