Elaborate ornamentation in vocal music: runs, trills, leaps, and rapid passagework that decorate a melodic line, or the agile voice able to sing them. Colorature is the older, French-shaped spelling of coloratura, and it names the same thing: the moment a melody stops walking and starts to glitter.

From French colorature, from Italian coloratura "coloring," from Late Latin coloratura, ultimately from Latin colorare "to color." The ornament was understood as color laid over a plainer line. The spelling colorature survives mainly in older English writing on song.