So one great singer said to another…
The bass Jerome Hines once interviewed the tenor Luciano Pavarotti on training your voice, and this was his response:
“Now this passaggio… is the transition from the upper middle voice to the high voice, and I know that students are interested in your approach since you have such a flawless passaggio; it is so smooth a change one is not aware of it”
Pavarotti replied:
“It took me six years of study… and one must be convinced of it’s importance from the first day… never change ideas. You know, the first five or six months it is very depressing because it does not come out right, and you become cyanotic, red in the face. Then some students begin to think this approach is wrong, and they try the other way, but it will never bring them security of voice.”*
Context: Pavarotti didn’t start vocal training til he was 18/19. He also had a voice that could sail effortlessly up to an Eb5 even post puberty, and not a weak light sound, but a connected sound. Make no mistake, he was gifted with an instrument that makes singing easy and beautiful in a way that most of us couldn’t grasp… even before training.
AND EVEN THEN, he makes the above statement of how long it took to train his voice the correct way, of how FRUSTRATING it is was to train his voice properly, and how he saw (and perhaps related?) to those who doubt the process.
So what don’t you get told about singing?
Simply, you do not become a good to great singer in a handful of lessons, or even a year or two. Great and complete singers don’t just get “discovered” with zero to minimal training any more than polished and beautifully cut diamonds just get “found” in a coal mine – it takes work, even in the case of voices with great base materials like Pavarotti’s voice.
If it took the gifted but young Pavarotti a minimum of 6 years** to train his voice properly, you MUST understand that true and full development of the voice takes concerted, intentional, focused effort sustained over a period of years to achieve the kind of voice you can throw whatever you like at.
* – Extract from page 218 of Jerome Hines, “Great Singers on Great Singing” (click for the Amazon link)
** – I say a minimum of six years as Pavarotti continued to develop his voice daily well into his later life, and most crucially he was known to turn away roles he felt vocally not yet ready for, even though his range (even pre-training!) was ALREADY covering every possible piece of repertoire he would ever be asked to sing. It’s not about range or just the “mere” ability to hit the notes, it was about security of voice and quality of tone, and he knew that.
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