When we begin studying voice, most of us learn songs from the many Italian Songs and Arias books geared towards young singers. There are good reasons why this is a perfect place to start: the songs are accessible musically, vocally, and linguistically, and they introduce technical topics that will benefit singers throughout their vocal careers.
Our question, though, is why are a majority of these songs written by men when so many women were writing similar songs at the same time?
Many singers are not aware that talented and determined female composers wrote high quality songs that are worth studying, and, through this project, we are determined to make this music part of the mainstream repertoire.
The first phase of this website will celebrate women composers who composed solo music in Italian beginning in the Late-Renaissance period. We believe these songs, arias, and madrigals should be sung as often as the standard Italian songs and arias, and we hope you will learn and discover something new and moving while singing these unique and relatively unknown works.
Italian Song & Aria Composers
