ABSTRACT
Vocal performance in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century always means a performance for one unique moment. In the historical bel canto period that started in the seventeenth century and went on until the first half of the nineteenth century, the most significant moment for free improvisation is certainly the cadenza, which was the high point of the audience's expectations. Castrati were still performing on the opera stage until 1830 although the great tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had passed. The treatises often contain one or more examples of 'plain' confronted with embellished music. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one can de facto talk about an already established tradition of treatises and singing-methods. The paradigm of embellishments ranges from tender, impassioned, brilliant, elegant, graceful and mournful to majestic. After the 1850s, embellishment in vocal performance is increasingly limited to slight ornaments.
