A Short Aria

Nel cor piu non mi sento

Giovanni Paisiello's short aria Nel Cor is brisk and very pretty. Popular with both male and female singers, this little opera aria is perfect for students just venturing into classical vocal music.

Below are three traditional versions of the melody which differ very slightly from each other. I have offered them in three different keys:

Short aria Nel cor in Eb

Nel cor in F

Nel cor free vocal sheet music in G


Here is how melody number two looks:




Nel cor version 2 in Eb

Nel cor free opera aria version 2 in F

Version 2 of Nel cor in G


Here is version three, below:




Nel cor free vocal sheet music version 3 in Eb

Opera aria Nel cor version 3 in F

Version 3 of Nel cor in the key of G


This song provides a good example of how a tricky spot in a song can be turned into an exercise. At the word "la" which follows "brillar" in version 3, the descending thirty-second notes are difficult to execute crisply, so I asked my "sometime" teacher (John d"Armand of Juneau, Alaska) for some advice. Should I place emphasis on the first note in the group? No, he suggested placing a bit of stress on the second note -- and indeed, this helped.

So I also turned it into an exercise: "lah-AH-ah-ah, lah-AH-ah-ah, lah-AH-ah-ah, lah-AH-ah-ah." Sung several times over and over, this greatly helped my and students' facility in that passage!

For the piano accompaniments for you or an accompanist, look for these three books: 26 Italian Songs and Arias, Classical Contest Solos, 24 Italian Songs and Arias. All these books now come with a CD. The version in the book edited by John Paton (26 Songs) can be used as a solo or as a duet. (His lyrics differ slightly from the other versions, and also his accompaniments are sparser, in an attempt to more nearly approximate the original accompaniments. The other books' accompaniments have a lusher, more Romantic feeling.)

One of my senior high school students sang this piece last year for two singing auditions. Despite my misgivings about using Nel Cor, as it is so well-known (it seems to be in all the major Italian collections), my voice student gained access into a musical group in the first instance, and received a college music scholarship in the second case.

Perhaps it makes it that much easier for judges to compare students during singing auditions if they are all singing the same songs!

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