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Coloratura is an old word meaning colouring. The term means florid figuration or ornamentation, especially in classical vocal music. Coloratura was first defined in several early non-italian music dictionaries, like the works by Michael Praetorius in Syntagma Musicum (1618), Sebastien de Brossard in his Dictionaire de Musique (1703) and Johann Gottfried Walther in his Musicalisches Lexicon (1732), in which the term is dealt with briefly and refers to the word's Italian usage.^[1]

Christoph Bernhard defined it in two ways:

• cadenza: ‘runs which are not so exactly bound to the bar, but which often extend two, three or more bars further [and] should be made only at chief closes’ (Von der Singe-Kunst, oder Maniera, c1649);^[1]

• diminution: ‘when an interval is altered through several shorter notes, so that, instead of one long note, a number of shorter ones rush to the next note through all kinds of progressions by step or leap’ (Tractatus compositionis, c1657).^[1]

In the most famous Italian texts on singing, (Caccini, 1601/2; Tosi, 1723; Mancini, 1774; García, 1841), Coloratura is never used; it is also absent from the vocabulary of English authors as such as Burney and Chorley, who wrote extensively about Italian singing at the time when ornamentation was of utmost importance. ^[1]

The term coloratura does not say anything about range of the voice. It has nothing to do with changing the tone colour of the voice for expressive purposes either (that is Voix sombrée).^[1] There are coloratura parts for all voice types in different musical genres:

• Mozart's Allelujah (from Exsultate, jubilate) may be arranged for and sung by a properly trained contralto, mezzo soprano or soprano.

• The aria Every Valley Shall be Exalted from Handel's Messiah is an example of a coloratura piece for tenor.

• Each character in Rossini's operas has to have a secure coloratura technique.

• Osmin, a character in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, is a coloratura role for a bass.

In the bel canto era, all singers had to be coloratura specialists, that is, they had to be able to add ornamentations to the written music^{[citation needed]}.

The term coloratura soprano is used in a contemporary context to mean a "very high, light, floating voice such as that of Mariah Carey and Celine Dion".^[2]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} OWEN JANDER, ELLEN T. HARRIS: 'Coloratura', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Retrieved: 27th November 2006), from [1]
2. ^ Martin, Bill (2002). Pro Secrets Of Heavy Rock Singing. Sanctuary Publishing, Page 9. ISBN 1-86074-437-0.