(It.).
A term that has come to signify a type of two-tempo aria that became popular in the late 18th century, and which refers both to a musical form and to its content (see Aria, §4). As a form, the ronḍ begins with an opening slow section, often laid out in an ABA pattern, which gives way to a faster section, and its text, in which a new theme is established (sometimes a variation of the opening section's A theme). The main themes of either the fast or slow sections (or both) are usually assigned ‘gavotte’ rhythms, and sometimes the main theme of a ronḍ's slow section, and its text, will recur in the aria's second half. In the opera, these arias are generally assigned only to the prima donna or primo uomo and strategically placed close to the concluding scene or to the final number of a three-act opera's second act.
Early instances of the ronḍ emerged during the 1760s and 70s in the operas of such composers as J.C. Bach, Baldassare Galuppi, Niccoḷ Piccinni and Traetta, with later examples from composers such as Cimarosa, Mozart, Paisiello and Sarti.
The term ‘ronḍ’ was often used loosely, along with ‘rond’ and ‘rondeau’, terms frequently applied to what is now identified as the vocal ronḍ with a recurring theme in the tonic key that creates the basic pattern ABACA. Arias identified by any of these terms tend to express moments of high emotional intensity, unless singled out for a specific comic effect, as with Mozart's rondo ‘Ha! wie will ich triumphieren’ (Die Entführung aus dem Serail). This special usage, coupled with the tendency of the theme of the slow section of the ronḍ to recur in a new guise in the fast section, suggests a link between the rondo and the ronḍ, a closeness that is strengthened by the practice of casting the episodes of the rondo in a new tempo or by bringing back the main theme of the first section of a two-tempo ronḍ as a partial quotation in the second half, both in the tonic key and at the original slow tempo. 18th-century usage also suggests that a two-tempo aria could attain ‘ronḍ’ (or ‘rondeau’) status through content alone. Mozart's ‘Non mi dir’ (Don Giovanni), for example, an unquestioned ronḍ of profound emotional content assigned to the tragic heroine immediately before the opera's last finale, does not comply in all respects to the formal specifications of the ronḍ given above.
Since ‘ronḍ’ identified an aria of special distinction, composers were not above appealing to the vanity of their singers by assigning the term to arias that were clearly not ronḍs in form, content or placement. In 19th-century opera, the form of the ronḍ became modified and its musical content expanded, the term often being applied loosely to any second-act aria for a principal singer in a two-act opera.
E. Arteaga: Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano (Bologna and Venice, 1783–8), iii, 194ff
N.E. Framery: Encyclopédie methodique, i (Paris, 1791)
D. Heartz: ‘Mozart and his Italian Contemporaries: “La clemenza di Tito”’, MJb 1978–9, 275–93; also in D. Heartz: Mozart's Operas (Berkeley, 1990), 299–317 [with T. Bauman]
H. Lühning: ‘Die Rondo-Arie im späten 18. Jahrhundert: dramatischer Gehalt und musikalischer Bau’, HJbMw, v (1981), 219–46
J. Rice: ‘Ronḍ vocali di Salieri e Mozart per Adriana Ferraresi’, I vicini di Mozart: Florence 1987, 185–209
S. Balthazar: ‘Ritorni's Ammaestramenti and the Conventions of Rossinian Melodramma’, JMR, viii (1988–9), 281–311
D. Neville: ‘Mozart's Scena ‘Ch'io mi scordi di te’ and the Mozartian Ronḍ’, Mozart Adelaide 1991
J. Platoff: ‘“Non tardar amato bene,” Completed – but not by Mozart’, MT, cxxxii (1991), 557–60
D. Neville: ‘The “Ronḍ” in Mozart's Late Operas’, Mozart-Jb 1994, 141–55
DON NEVILLE