Passaggi vs Operabook

Passaggi is an improvisation and ornamentation practice app for historical performers. The app delivers high-quality audio backing tracks for personal practice, which, when used in conjunction with facsimiles or modern editions of historical sources, enable the user to develop skills in the areas of improvisation and ornamentation. Suitable for students, amateurs and professionals alike, the app features adjustable pitch and tempo settings and user-defined looping capabilities. Tracks are recorded using a sampled historical organ in a temperament appropriate to the repertoire and are designed to complement the pedagogy of historical treatises. The idea behind Passaggi springs from a desire, common to many performers of historical repertoires, to recreate aspects of the musical experience as it may have existed at the time a piece of music was written. Improvisation and ornamentation may form only one aspect of this wide-reaching desire, yet it is clear that in this area students and professionals would achieve more successful immersive study and practice if the harmonic and musical context for improvisation, ornamentation and diminution were more easily accessible. How many of us can open Dalla Casa’s Il vero modo… and sing the baseline to his exercise embellishing Striggio’s I dolci colli, for example? And how much more profitable would our practice of this exercise be if we could? How many more of us would practise improvising on a ground, if we had a ground? The Passaggi project will enable more effective exploration of historical sources and approaches by providing digitally some aspects of the innate and inherited musical awareness common to all musicians of the past that we strive to connect with in the twenty-first century.

Operabook is the industry’s reference tool for opera professionals worldwide, representing 75,000+ artists performing in 60,000 productions in 600+ companies, festivals and competitions, brought to you by Opera Europa and Opera America. 15 YEARS OF COMPREHENSIVE ARCHIVES Productions: seasons, casts, dates, venues Artists: careers, collaborations Roles: complete repertoire by voice type and specialty International coverage: Europe, Americas, Asia APP FOR CASTING PROFESSIONALS Interface optimised for on-the-go consultation of artists performance data ADVANCED SEARCH ON THE WEBSITE Sophisticated multi-criteria filters Search by artist, roles Artistic collaboration history Career analysis and cast evolution tracking Collaborative tools for production rentals and co-productions Developed by and for opera professionals, this application centralizes the scattered information of the global opera industry. Save valuable time in your casting research, programming, and creating new collaborations. Professional authentication required.