Catalogue aria

A catalogue aria is a genre of opera aria in which the singer recounts a list of information (people, places, food, dance steps, etc.). This style was popular in Italian comic opera in the latter half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The traditional devices of the catalogue aria include a solidly neutral opening, a section of rising comic excitement full of rapid patter and an emphatic final cadence, normally closing with an epigram. Common features include asyndeton, anaphora, rhyme schemes, and complete phrases stacked two to a line, typically expressed with joy, anger, excitement or fear, routinely fast declamation of patter in a generally mechanical and often impersonal way.