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Aside; sung or spoken to oneself, not to the others on stage.
Printed in an opera or song score over a character’s line, often in parentheses, to show it is an aside — heard by the audience but not by the other characters on stage. It lasts for that line.
An aside is a stage device, and the music should signal it: a drop to sotto voce, a change of accompaniment, a sudden shift of harmony. Mark it in both the vocal line and the libretto so director and singer agree on its staging. Several characters may sing simultaneous asides, a favourite effect in comic ensembles.
A parte is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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