Working for the Voice: Cultivating the Classically Trained Singer

This ethnographic enterprise concerns the aesthetics of the singing voice in Western classical music. With fieldwork conducted across two college music departments, this study examines how these vocal aesthetics differ across institutions, what these differing qualities mean within their respective social and cultural paradigms, and what kinds of bodies the cultivation of these aesthetics ultimately produce. Explored throughout this work are the notions of the “natural” singing voice, the relationship between the “operatic voice” and the “choral voice,” and the role of the body in the practice, presentation, and performance of the singing voice in opera