"Bel canto (Italian for \"beautiful singing\" or \"beautiful song\"), along with a number of similar constructions (\"bellezze del canto\"/\"bell'arte del canto\"), is a term relating to Italian singing. It has several different meanings and is subject to a wide variety of interpretations.The words were not associated with a \"school\" of singing until the middle of the 19th century, when writers in the early 1860s used it nostalgically to describe a manner of singing that had begun to wane around 1830."@en . . .