Da Capo! What is It & How to Sing It Better

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Dapo. What is it and how do I get better at singing it? Dapo usually refers to a musical style that was really common in Barack opera areas. Um, and they would have an A section followed by a B section with different musical material and then the instruction dc aline which means dappo literally translates as from the head or from the top. And then you would go back and repeat the A se section in its entirety stopping at the end of the A section. How do you get better at singing them? Well, it's really crucial to understand the dramatic purpose of a dappo area. And the idea is that you in the A section, in the original iteration of the A section, you are experiencing an outburst of emotion, be that rage or grief or whatever it is. The B section is often in a different key with an entirely different mood and that is you dramatically internalizing and processing those emotions. So your body language is very very different in the B section. And then when you have processed all those emotions, you return to the A section and repeat the material from the A section but with emotional resolution because you've resolved the issue in the B section and you are now ready to move forward with your plan. So when you hit the A section again, you are using probably very different um breathing patterns, very different phrasing probably, and you can add vocal ornamentation. So, it's really important to bring all of the emotional color that you've achieved in the B section into your repeat of the A section.