Voce e canto nel tempo. Tra “antichità” e Puccini

The Authors address hypotheses on the evolution of voice and speech and singing evolution. Following the researches of Steven Mithen and others, the ancestors of Homo Sapiens expressed themselves using a holistic communication system and, only later, they were able to produce properly articulated linguistic sounds. Cicero (1st century BCE) and Quintilian (1st century CE) are among the first authors to address the the education of voice in oratorical practice and, consequently, for actors and singers too. The physicians Galen (2nd century CE) first and, later, Antillus and Areteus of Cappadocia (3rd century CE) included vocal exercises and guidance on ‘vociferation’, breathing and sounds production as indications for preserving health. These practices were still used in the Renaissance and beyond. Bernardino Ramazzini (1718), physician and professor at Padua University and first to deal with occupational diseases, in accordance with the above-mentioned indications, reported that the singer Scevina presented ‘slight vertigo’ when she held her breath for too long’. Giulio Caccini’s treatise on singing, ‘Nuove Musiche’ (1601), marked an important moment for singing technique and vocality. The work defined the beginning of the ‘bel canto’ era. Claudio Monteverdi (1567- 1643), with his compositions, achieved the full integration of polyphony and solo singing. Castrati, ‘virtuosi’, were present in musical theatre mainly in the 18th century. Women were forbidden to sing both in church and in theatre. Surgery in children was performed at prepubertal age with total or partial ablation of the gonads, entailing many risks for the survival of the young boys. Alessandro Moreschi sang, as the last castrato singer in the Sistine Chapel, until 1922. His recordings can be found online and on a CD. The “Bel Canto” style spread throughout the 18th century up to the early Romanticism. Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti are the most important composers of this era. G.B. Rubini, Nozzari and David, in the same period, were the first tenors to sing high notes in full voice instead of falsetto. The ‘Do di petto’ was a real revolution, made possible by using the so-called ‘passage technique’, a mechanism necessary to produce full high tones, in place of falsetto. In the 19th century, vocal types suitable for roles and characters related to different expressive, timbral and poetic forms emerged and gradually consolidated. Singers are thus classified as Rossinian, Verdian, Wagnerian, Verismo or Puccinian voices. Further vocal characterizations also began to be defined as comic bass, brilliant baritone, dramatic tenor, light soprano, etc. Wagner, with his opera, marks a break with the previous vocal tradition. Singers are required to have a remarkable richness in timbre and in sound production. These features were made necessary by the wide theatrical space, a surprisingly large orchestra and a harmonically and compositionally complex musical structure. Singers were also forced to adopt a vocal gesture that emphasized the presence of ‘formants’ in the voice structure, that can make them stand out over the sound of the orchestra and fill the large theatrical spaces. That is the so called ‘singer’s formant’, placed, in the acoustic spectrum, around 2,500- 3,000 Hz. Puccini’s musical works reveal a desire to give the voice of each personage specific characteristics that interpenetrate with the specific psychological aspect and condition of the character: Princess Turandot, the cold and bloodthirsty woman, Liu, sensitive and sweet, where the melodic structure facilitates the ‘beautiful sound’, Calaf, with his relatively heroic vocality, as in Giacomo Lauri Volpi’s interpretation. In veristic melodrama, and in Puccini in particular, text and music tend to complement each other and express everyday life in a realistic sense. Finally, the most recent diagnostic and evaluation methods on singing voice are presented. These allow the objectification of various related parameters. Today, it would be useful to compenetrate, instead of replacing one in name of the other, scientific knowledge and phoniatric competences with those of the voice teachers, toward a true interdisciplinary perspective.