About me

The method, rooted in my basic philosophy, is a summary of my personal experience, of my constant study with teachers and personalities of the musical world, physiology, personal interests such as sports and dance and the study of texts from various sources, such as practical methods, theoretical books and biographies.

My personal experience as a singing student and performer in a career mostly classical and operatic sees me through many phases, which I will try to explain to emphasize the link between my research and the development of my singing method.

During my workshops (group of lessons) or private lessons, students are guided to highlight strong and weak aspects of their technique and choice of repertoire, and to express their potential in a program tailored on each of them at the best level.

Thanks to my personal research, I developed the ability to recognize where the problems of the student lie, if there are any, and how to overtake a vocal defect through breathing exercises and specific exercises of the vocal apparatus, inclusive to draw inspiration from speech therapy and other disciplines (i.e. Alexander and Feldenkreis method).

Many believe that some are born with a "Voice", but experience leads me to assert that it is possible to develop the voice working into all its parameters of emission, extension, placement, projection and richness of colours, volume and intonation.
It's also possible to phase out the flaws in pitch, throatiness, a nasal and hoarse voice, always considered defects of the singing voice.

The more beneficial process for the singing technique is the one that takes into account all the qualities we need to get, first of all the homogeneity of registers and proper projection of sound. We need the voice to mature naturally at its own pace, never go beyond the ability of the moment, just like a plant that we can't push to mature earlier, penalty the destruction of its qualities and the rise of defects that cost so much trouble to extirpate later on.

There are indeed singers who reveal a voice already mature at a very young age, but this innate characteristic has always been very rare to find. To let the talent flourish, most of the singing students need a clear technical path and to rely, especially at the beginning, on the care of a teacher who will carry on with perseverance and determination.

All the people I met during my studies and career have taught me, shown or confirmed the technical aspects of singing that has enriched my understanding and led to a constant deepening study.

In particular, I would refer to some eminent personalities who constitute my basic coordinates for the development and synthesis of a singing technique method: professor Mauro Uberti, Manuel Garcia and Alfred Tomatis.

I am going to summarize the salient points of their knowledge that inspired me, in order to make understand how I transfused them into my personal experience.

1.                                                         Professor Mauro Uberti was my first singing teacher.
Saying that, one can imagine the classical singing technique commonly taught in a Conservatoire in order to get a diploma, but at the time it was not so. (www.maurouberti.it)
Mauro Uberti, biologist, researcher and professor, was a teacher at the Conservatoire of Music of Parma when we met. He founded the first School of Early Music in Italy called "Stanislao Cordero Institute" of Pamparato (Cuneo, Italy), and he was brought to my attention as an eminent professor during my first course of Renaissance Music in Belluno, held by Rebecca Steward.

For several years I attended his singing lessons and his summer courses in Pamparato, during which I studied in depth an appropriate technique for performing the compositions of the pre-Romantic era, since operatic repertoire was of no interest to me at the time and I wanted to become a singing teacher at the Conservatoire.

I adhered to the conception of my teacher, who considered the possibility to maintain a natural voice like a blank canvas -not "set"-, where even the most subtle change of position of the larynx -together with a very accurate use of the text like the elocution of an actor - creates a palette of colours with which to realize the "theory of affects."

All voice's parameters – e.g. vibrato, the range and the quality of vocal sounds- are different compared with the operatic technique, in an attempt to express the appropriated aesthetic criteria of that historical period, which has been deduced from the study of treaties (the so called .

One observation: there is no treaty or preface (by Caccini, Monteverdi, De Cavalieri, Maffei, etc...) were to find the concept of "no vibrato voice", or "white voice", as pursued as an essential aesthetic element by many musicians and singers of the Early Music revival during the last 50 years. In order to keep our voice with no vibrato, some muscles of the vocal apparatus inevitably will get tight. This type of sound became fashionable and it has been adopted by many musicians but it is not a rule; we can implement it if it is required, but I would not recommend it.

Prof. Uberti introduced me to a conference in Pamparato as a living example of the possibility of using at least 4 different singing techniques that I could describe as a progressive modification of the position of the larynx (and adjustment of the layout of the mouth's cavity) and a sound that progressively becomes more "supported".

Even my own experience of laryngitis, after singing during a summer course with a cold, was enlightening, as the specialist who visited me increased my desire to study in depth the physiology of singing.

The diagnosis by the laryngologists was significant: I realized that the concept of "support of the voice" and the breathing activities are not the same thing, as it is possible to breathe correctly but not support the voice, as the "support" implies the coordination of many functions.

At that stage I knew that sometimes, in order to achieve high-pitched sounds, I was leaving my larynx go up and after a while I was getting tired. Since I did not have a developed high register in my voice, it was very difficult to emit the notes of the high vocal range.

They sounded poor in harmonics, like a white voice, and to feel and sing comfortably I needed to connect them with the lower portion of ​​the voice, the one where I had always sung.

I also understood the importance of other factors, like vocal classification and tuning.

If for singing Early Music the vocal classification is relative -because in general the compass of the voice is limited (at least in the solo singing) and we sing mainly in a middle range- for the operatic music it is of vital importance, if we don't want to ruin our voice.

We have also to take into account that in Early Music it is used a lower tuning pitch, which means that the vibration of the middle A4 is on 415 Hertz instead of 440.
When few years later I discovered how beautiful and powerful is the operatic singing and I started to dedicate myself to its study and then to teach, I realized I could perceive how the throat of the students is working and be able to help them when the technique they possess is not fully established.

2.                                                    From my experience as a student and researcher of my own sound, the discover of the Method of Manuel Garcia the 2nd has been very important for me and his profound teaching very alive.

I discovered that what I had always perceived as a break in the voice, a change mainly in the middle of the female voice, and then also in the higher octave trying to develop the higher range, it was a physiological factor called "passage", already coded by many musicians and analyzed deeply by Garcia.

You can imagine what a relief it has been to realize that there is a physiological explanation behind an occurrence of this type.

In fact, many singers and teachers who have never had this issue strongly emphasized in their voice do not know what to do about it and they cannot explain to a student what to do with it.

What it is even worse, some teachers argue that the passage does not exist and accuse the student to have a psychological or imagined problem.
In this way they exclude the possibility to address the problem and to overcome it, limiting the opportunities to develop the voice.

In the attempt to overcome the "passage" some singers leave the larynx rise until the sound changes abruptly. Generally this happens because the singers don't make any adjustment, the so-called "preparation of the passage" explained in all the major Treatises and Methods since the birth of Opera. Nowadays, this practice has become a new Method called "Estill" (from the name of the singer who forged it) called "Belting" and it is used in many styles of modern music, from pop to Music Theatre.

Following the concept of Garcia and his technical explanations, we can learn to "mix" the different registers of the voice -in this case the "chest" with the "head" voice-, practicing until the registers are blended.

Garcia recommends patience and specifies: "This study (blend the registers), as necessary, discourages the student almost always... It shall be exercised passing alternately from one register to another, on each of these sounds (specified) without interruption and without inhaling during the transition... Do not be afraid to highlight the sort of hiccup that occurs in the transition from one register to another. With the continuous exercise you can reduce it and then eliminate it". Ginevra, S. (2001 pg.23)

Mathilde Marchesi (1821-1913), having been a Garcia's disciple, maintained the concepts of registers and the importance of joining them, obtaining an accurate and successful result in the technical process.

Manuel Garcia senior (father of the Garcia mentioned above) went to Italy to study with "the highly respected tenor and teacher Giovanni Ansani around 1812. In spite of his Spanish origins, Manuel García became a paragon of the Italian-style tenor of the early 19th century. Ansani taught him how to project, and perhaps how to achieve the heavier sound that Mozart had recognized in all Italian singers as long ago as 1770". (Wikipedia, accessed the 12/12/2015)
In all Europe united by culture and music centuries ago, - where all the great musicians were travelling across the country up and down, West to East, and particularly to or from Italy- the experience of Manuel Garcia represents one testimonial of the importance of the Italian singing technique spreading all over the world.

Garcia, Marchesi and Luigi Lablache among them (1794-1858) describe in minute details the technique to blend the registers, which are 2 in a male voice but 3 in a female voices.

Joan Sutherland, among others, highlights the possible existence of another passage at the top of the high octave of the female voice to prepare the upper head tones.

We have to be very careful to work with the concept of the "passage" to assure the achievement of a well balanced and effective technique, the only one that permits to become virtuoso and master the art of singing, without a microphone.

3.                                                        The encounter with Alfred Tomatis through his book "The Ear and the Voice" has been a revelation and an exciting discovery to me.

Tomatis is acknowledged above all because he invented an electronic ear for therapeutic purposes. He, the son of an opera singer, felt repugnance for the easiness with which his contemporary laryngologists advised operating in the case of damaged voices.

He argued that what gets damaged by singing incorrectly are the ears, particularly the right one, as a result of the cybernetic circuit between ear and larynx that is activated by singing -Tomatis, A. (2005 pg. 157)

From recovering the ear and feel the correct sound again, there are high possibilities to avoid operating the throat.

To simplify, what he meant was that singing badly creates a bad sound that our brain, through our ears, returns to the vocal cords in a bad way.

Tomatis studied the voice of a singing genius like Beniamino Gigli, and through his analysis he developed some concepts that I think be so important and useful for the purposing of a singing teaching method.

He noted that the term "mouth" is a reductive concept for a singer because he/she could actually experience and perceive 2 mouths.

We singers do not have a rigid instrument such as a barrel organ but an instrument made of muscle and cartilage, elastic and supple.

Tomatis identified that such elasticity, manifesting itself e.g. in the movement of the tongue, is creating 2 sound spaces. The dorsal portion of the tongue, at the point where we say "G" (as in "Go"), delimits 2 mouths: one at the back from where the sound originates to the "G" point, and one in front from the "G" point to the teeth, where the sound is modelled and the words produced.

Tomatis calls this point "ignition point of the sound" and he gives it extreme importance, arguing that many defects in the emission of the vocal sound are generated by the interference between the two spaces.

The reason why an interference occurs is because the "G" point (elsewhere called NG point) is not well regulated and the sound is placed too far back (or throaty), or too in front, in which case the sound would result too flat, or bleached, as often happens in the search of the so-called "mask". Tomatis, A. (2005 pg.241)

On this regard, about how to perceive the points of resonance of the sound, Tomatis suggests very specific exercises in his chapter on the "bone conduction", to be taken with clarity of purpose.

I consider also very important the chapters on "breathing" and "falsetto", although in my opinion the most important of all is the study on the "Volume of vowels", which can be systematically included in the singing technique and developed with surprising results.