cabaletta

[kab-uh-let-uh, kah-buh-, kah-bah-let-tah]

noun

plural

cabalettas, cabalette 

1. a short, operatic aria of simple form and style.

Word History and Origins

Origin of cabaletta¹

1835–45; < Italian, alteration of coboletta stanza, diminutive of cob ( b ) ola, cobla stanza, couplet < Old Provençal cobla < Latin cōpula bond; copula

Example Sentences

As she scrabbled for a laser pointer in her large handbag, her coloratura was comically on point, though she was inaudible in her middle range during the cabaletta.

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Logically, things can’t just go back to the way they were, and Mr. Villazón’s astute staging of the happy ending has a convincingly modern twist; the abandon of the last triumphant high note in Ms. Sierra’s final cabaletta signals her hard-won freedom.

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“By the time Verdi wrote ‘Falstaff,’ when he was almost 80,” he said, “he had learned to do in 16 measures what in ‘Nabucco’” — 50 years earlier — “would have taken him a big aria and a cabaletta and all that. There’s nothing wasted, no decoration, just the thing itself. I’m not lucky enough to have had that experience a lot, but I recognize it when I see it and it almost makes me laugh.”

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After initial studies in mice, Payne is now involved in a clinical trial sponsored by a company she co-founded, Cabaletta Bio, that has shared results on 15 patients so far.

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An associate director an ocean away didn’t realize he also planned to perform the cabaletta, the faster-moving second part.

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