What rhymes with squillo?
squil·lo

Squillo is a technical term attached to the resonant, trumpet-like sound in the voice of opera singers. The purpose of the squillo is to enable an essentially lyric tone to be heard over thick orchestrations, e.g. in late Verdi, Puccini and Strauss operas. Achieving a proper amount of squillo is imperative: too much and the tone veers towards the sharp; too little and the purpose of the squillo cannot be achieved. Training the squillo involves increasing the intensity of the higher formants of the voice without altering the fundamental i.e. without altering the pitch of the note. This is done mainly by using the head resonance, which provides very little volume but ample opportunity for projection. Among methods employable to achieve this include messa di voce. Voices with naturally acquired squillo, i.e. having naturally strong higher formants, are especially prized in opera because they maintain certain lyric qualities e.g. limpid high notes, homogeneous registers etc. even in dramatic singing. Voices which have properly trained squillo are also easier to record. Squillo is easily recognizable by a certain piercing quality in the basic timbre of the voice, especially in the high tessitura. The difference between a true dramatic singer and a spinto singer - apart from capability to sustain a large volume over the course of an entire opera - is the spinto voice itself may not be produced very loudly, but due to this squillo it is able to be heard over a full orchestra. It is a known fact that squillo can only be achieved after a voice is fully warmed up, which is why most demanding passages in an opera tend to appear later in each acts, e.g. a forte note over a chorus. However some famous arias in which squillo may be used to an advantage may appear comparatively early, e.g. Laggiù nel Soledad from La fanciulla del West.

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