How Do I recognize which singers have VOCAL FREEDOM?

When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM, a number of physiological aspects of his or her singing will be evident to the trained listener. The singer’s vocal mechanism is not overcome with years of phlegm buildup. The singer’s breath, vocal cords and resonators will be operating in effortless synchronicity with one another. The singer will move about the full register of his or her voice without stumbling at the "bridge" (in Italian "passagio"). These are all very technical aspects of singing, but I must tell you with all earnestness that you will not notice these physiological aspects when a singer with true VOCAL FREEDOM performs.

When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM he or she won’t give a thought to a single technical or physiological aspect of singing during performance– not even a fraction of a thought. And neither you nor I would notice the technicalities, either.

When a singer has true VOCAL FREEDOM, the first thing that you or I would notice is that the singer has immediately caught the attention of the audience and touched them deep within their hearts. That singer is focused on TELLING THE STORY, and we are hearing that story without anything getting in the way.

VOCAL FREEDOM allows the singer’s true art to come through to the listener. VOCAL FREEDOM is achieved by allowing the subconscious mind to coordinate the singer’s physiology without having any effort of the conscious mind (and especially the self-conscious mind) impede the flow of expression.

KNOWLEDGE Is Power

Singing is not about your VOICE. It is about how you USE your voice. Everyone can learn how to USE his or her voice. This knowledge is simple to acquire, and it is fun to learn. It is KNOWLEDGE that will set your voice free to sing what is in your heart!

KNOWLEDGE gives you relaxation and confidence. It allows you to express yourself fully. KNOWLEDGE allows you to be the human being that you really are, without feeling tempted to imitate another person.

The KNOWLEDGE that the gift of singing is within you that awakens your singing instinct– You will find yourself opening up with a little song as you go about your daily routine, driving down the road, washing the dishes, taking the family dog out for a walk, and so forth.

I find that when I am feeling out of sorts just singing a little song will set me right much better than any pills or medicine would do. So I ask you– Why have you let yourself be deprived of such a wonderful gift??


Come with us and sing the story that lives within your heart.

The Right Kind of Knowledge

Most people mistakenly believe that singing is a daunting technical and complicated task that only highly trained and educated persons can master. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the first thing that I do with new students in my singing school is to break them from that mythology.

For example, a middle-aged man from the town of Clare had always been interested in singing, and he set an appointment for me to give an assessment of his voice at the Bel Canto House School of Singing. When he sat down with me in my studio I asked him what he was expecting for me as a singing teacher to do at the first meeting. He answered matter-of-factly: "Well, I expect you’ve got a magnifying glass of some kind here in your office so that you can have a look down my throat there, and that will let us know whether or not I can sing!"

Of course, I didn’t look down the fellow’s throat at all! I asked him to sing a little bit of what was in his heart and we used that as the foundation of our work together. The human voice is a mystery and you will best be able to USE your voice when you embrace the mysteriousness of it, rather than trying to cut it up into little pieces that can be explained away.

Having a Vocal Breakdown In the Midst of a Successful Career

There are a lot of big name artists and singers in both the classical and popular singing genres who are not capable of sustaining two concerts in a row. This usually happens in the popular field when a well-known act is releasing a new album and a big part of promoting this new album is by going on tour with it. Usually halfway through the second performance the lead singer breaks down.

Vocal breakdowns like this are happening at this moment in time to some of the most famous singers in the popular field. It’s a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Instead of enjoying success in the very thing they’ve always wanted, these singers are living through a nightmare. Young singers need to pay attention to the fact that this is happening, and set the goal of developing VOCAL FREEDOM before developing any big recording deals.

Singing– Not Surgery!

The best way to learn singing is to follow the traditions of the great singing teachers of history. Arguably the greatest teacher to have an impact on the art of singing was Manuel Garcia II (1805-1906). The important thing about Garcia was not just his knowledge, but how he used his knowledge. His emphasis was always upon artistry and expression, not technicalities.

In my initial assessment meetings with new singing students, I like to show them the following quotation from page 956 of Percy Scholes’ The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition:

Most of the great singing teachers say that the less you know about the physiology of singing the better. Santley wrote (in The Art of Singing): ‘Manuel Garcia is held up as the pioneer of scientific teachers of singing. He was– but he taught singing, not surgery! I was a pupil of his in 1858, and a friend of his while he lived [to 1906], and in all the conversation I had with him I never heard him say a word about larynx or pharynx, glottis, or other organ used in the production and emission of the voice.”

Singing should never be a burden. It should always be a joy!

The Knowledge of Your Own Worth

One of the most important things I tell all of my students at the Bel Canto House is that I want them to change the price tag they are wearing on their shoulders, and that is what I want you to do as well. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t worth much! Change the price tag on your shoulder from “$1.99" and make sure that everyone can see it reads: “PRICELESS!”

Everyone is unique. I have been teaching the concept of DNA since long before scientists discovered it with microscopes in a laboratory. Always remember that there is only ONE of you on this planet– and that’s a good thing!

Nature (or God, if you prefer) is not cruel. It doesn’t single out people to receive all the good gifts while not giving those gifts to other people. You have great gifts inside of you and all you need to do is unlock them.

There’s a book that I want you to start reading. You won’t find it on any bookshelf or in any bookstore. The book is inside yourself. If you learn to read that book you will be a very rich human being. Therein lies the true key to great singing, and it belongs to YOU!!

Weak Bodies, Strong Voices

Think of the people that you have known throughout your life. Have you ever seen a person who was able to fill a space the size of a large auditorium with the clear and unmistakable sound of his or her voice? A person who could produce his or her voice in that fashion for hours at a time, day after day, without having the voice give out or become damaged in any way?

I'll tell you exactly where to find such a person: Remember the last time you heard a baby crying in the middle of a church ceremony... What a powerful voice!

Were you surprised to find out who it was?

If that doesn’t convince you that true VOCAL FREEDOM is completely natural and absolutely accessible to every human being, even the weakest among us, then I don’t know what will.

There are a great many false teachers in the world of singing who would have you believe that the proper use of the voice and great singing are a matter of physique and physical training, what with “breathing exercises” and “vocal warm-ups” and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. While I have discussed the errors of physical singing elsewhere on this website, here and now I would like to introduce you to the wonderful truth that the gift of singing is a gift of the mind and spirit, and not of the body.

Frail Bodies, Strong Singers at Any Age

These days you rarely hear singers who sing with true VOCAL FREEDOM in the commercial arena. Instead you hear singers who blast and push and force their voices for years until they have finally done so much damage to their voices they are forced into retirement, never to return to the stage.

This is not so with singers who studied carefully to achieve VOCAL FREEDOM in the Bel Canto way of singing. When asked to sing publicly years after their retirement from professional life in their frail and elder years they can sing yet with great majesty and expressiveness. Their health may be leaving them, but their ability to sing comes from their depth of spirit, which is as strong as ever!

My associate teacher in the Bel Canto House School of Singing Edwin Williamson had the great honor of visiting Anna-Lisa Bjorling, the widow of Jussi Bjorling, at her home in the year 1994. She showed him the room which Jussi kept aside for his singing, which contained the various regalia, medals, certificates and other mementos that been awarded to him by the presidents and royalty in the countries where he had performed, and she told him of her memories of singing together with Jussi.

Then Edwin asked Mrs. Anna-Lisa Bjorling to sing for him. At first she was reluctant, saying "Oh, it’s been such a long time since I have sung..." But Edwin began to sing Puccini’s "O mio babino, caro" and she instantly joined in with him. Edwin is a witness to the fact that she sang perfectly well even though she had long since retired. This is an experience that Edwin will fondly carry in his memory for the rest of his life.

Another great Bel Canto singer named Tito Schipa made his operatic debut in Vercelli, Italy in 1909 at age twenty. He had an impressive career singing all over the world including the Met in New York City and in several films. He sang professionally for fifty-five years. Even in his seventies he was able to fill the great opera arenas with his tenor voice which was always subtle, light and fully expressive. The last concert he gave was in 1962 in New York. The critics at that concert gave wonderful accounts of his performance. Recordings of that concert are still in publication, and I recommend to you to get a copy and hear it for yourself.

The Croatian-born soprano Zinka Milanov enjoyed a certain degree of fame and success in her younger years, though her voice tended to be somewhat shrill. However, she did not fully come to maturity in her singing voice until she was in her forties. Her later work is a clear example of true VOCAL FREEDOM, and her wonderful interpretations of Verdi and Puccini roles earned her a place in history as one of the best dramatic sopranos of her day.

When she retired from The Met in 1966, Milanov took up teaching on a full-time basis. In an interview with Etude magazine in the early 1940's she said: "I love to sing for my students. I love to demonstrate for them." (She used her own voice when she taught– not the piano.) She also said that she loved to sing for her plants and her flowers. When asked what makes a singer great, she answered: "Those who work hardest at their art."

John McCormack-- The TRUE Redeemer of Bel Canto

Of all the great singers of the Bel Canto genre, Irish Tenor John McCormack was the most versatile. He made his operatic debut at Savona in 1906 and continued to dazzle audiences throughout the world until emphysema rendered him unable to perform in 1943.

The great Polish tenor Jean de Reske had been McCormack’s predecessor as the dominant singer on the international scene. De Reske attended all of McCormack’s appearances at Monte Carlo during 1921 and 1923, and even invited the Irishman to his own villa to sing to his pupils. After McCormack obliged the gathering with a private performance Jean de Reske told his pupils: "That is how I want you to sing." He followed the meeting with a warm letter praising McCormack’s greatness as a singer, saying:


"YOU ARE THE TRUE REDEEMER OF BEL CANTO."


Though McCormack pronounced his words clearly as he told the story of each song, he didn’t imitate any other singer or try to sound like an Italian. Some university teachers might tell you that learning to sing Bel Canto means to "purify" your pronunciation of vowels so that you sound exactly like a certain Italian way of speaking. Those teachers are mistaken.

Jean de Reske had the experience and knowledge to recognize that the very Irish sounding Irishman John McCormack sang with VOCAL FREEDOM and that he made his performances about the storytelling, not tones and sounds. He personalized himself for the audience in a magical way. That’s what made McCormack the "Redeemer of Bel Canto."

Learning Bel Canto in Individual Sessions

One of the greatest joys that I have as a teacher is the time that I spend with my students in their individual singing classes. After over thirty-five years I have never grown weary of working with one person after another, because each person has a wonderful gift inside of himself or herself which will come out in singing.

All kinds of people ring the school for lessons, all ages from 12 to 90. Some of the people are established performers and some of them simply always wanted to learn about singing but were afraid to ask. When I start seeing them getting results in their singing ability and they see it too, then that’s the big payback for me. I am truly blessed to have a mission and work in life that makes me very happy.

Someone once asked me if I ever get tired of hearing the same songs over and over again. I replied without hesitation: "Absolutely not." There is something in a song for EVERY individual that is uniquely and only there for them alone.

The singer is the one who brings something to the song. I can always hear something new in a song that I have heard thousands and thousands of times just because a new person is now singing that song. This is true whether the student is a beginner or whether the student has been singing all of his or her life. It is an inherent part of being human. Your art is within you waiting to come out, even before you discover that it exists

"The Art That Conceals Art":

I love this quotation from an old Dublin Grand Opera Society program:

Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1862-1936) described [McCormack] on many occasions as the greatest singer of his time, and she had heard all the great singers over her career of more than 60 years.

Author and critic Ernest Newman in the London Sunday Times wrote a week after McCormack’s death: "He was a supreme example of the art that conceals art, and sheer hard work that becomes manifest only in its results, not in the revolving of the machinery that has produced them."

(Taken from "John McCormack– a Centenary Tribute" from a program of the Dublin Grand Opera Society, Spring Season 1984, at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin)

“What Bel Canto Means To Me...” (By John McCormack’s heir)

In an e-mail letter to me dated October 15, 2003, Count John McCormack, heir and grandson of Irish Tenor John McCormack writes:

Bel Canto speaks for itself – beautiful singing – and one of its greatest exponents was my grandfather, Count John McCormack.... The secret to Bel Canto, some say, lies in the continuity of tone and the art of sustaining passages to create a beautiful line. John was an expert at delivery, phrasing and had uncanny breathing ability, quite often leaving his audience gasping while he sailed effortlessly on.

The sheer simplicity behind the theory of allowing a voice to develop in its own individual and distinctive way could well be learned and understood by many modern singers who force their way through songs while desperately attempting to sound like their favourite singer. Why do we spend so much of our lives trying to be someone else when what we have is so divinely unique?

It gives me great pleasure to know that the tradition of Bel Canto is continued with success through the Bel Canto House in Dublin. My grandfather’s legacy will remain and the lessons that can still be learned from listening to his mastery will, hopefully, continue to be of benefit to hundreds of future students.

Frank Merriman (1941- a long, time in the future...)

I learned Bel Canto from my teacher Julian Miller in the traditional and conventional way, with an emphasis on clarity of pronunciation, especially the vowels, and endless hours working on classical arias.

I realized through our work together that the singers who made the most enduring impact on the singing world through their artistry were the ones who focused all of their efforts on telling the story of the song. The true essence of the expressive Bel Canto artistry in singers like Jean de Reske, John McCormack, Zinka Millanov and Jussi Bjorling came from storytelling.
Telling the story was what allowed them to use their voices effortlessly in the most beautiful, powerful and natural way. I made sure to tell the story every time I opened my mouth to sing.

I began teaching singing because my co-performers in the opera company in Duesseldorf, Germany started asking me to help them improve their performances. When I eventually realized that over half the entire opera company was coming to my flat for singing lessons I decided that the life of a full-time teacher was the life I was born for. I taught in Germany for a while and then for several years in London.

When I came back to Dublin to teach singing in the year 1983 I expanded my teaching base to include not only classical singers, but also singers from other styles of music such as Irish folk singers, pop singers, showband singers and rock and roll singers. I revolutionized the Bel Canto tradition by taking it out of the opera house and putting it into the hands (and voices) of all Irish singers. Thus a new singing tradition, unique to Ireland, was born: "Bel Canto Storytelling."

In 1987 I purchased a historic Georgian building on North Great Georges Street in Dublin as a permanent home for the Bel Canto House School of Singing. It truly is the home of "beautiful singing" where singers of all styles, whether beginners or experienced performers, have a positive environment to work towards VOCAL FREEDOM.


I have been the singing teacher of hundreds and hundreds of students, including Sinead O’Connor, Heidi Talbot, Leslie Dowdall, Christy Digman and most importantly my associate teacher Edwin Williamson.

Jussi Bjorling: Failing Heart, Triumphant Singing Voice

The Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling enjoyed a status as king of the singing world until his untimely death at the age of forty-nine in the year 1960. He graced the stages of the Met and Carnegie Hall in the United States as well as the great opera halls throughout Europe and the rest of the world with his beautiful Bel Canto singing voice. He left behind a great legacy of his art, readily available in all leading music stores throughout the world, both audio and video recordings.

What many people didn’t realize about Bjorling when they hear him sing, however, is that he suffered from a deadly heart condition. Whenever he had a heart attack he was placed on a medication that was designed to broaden the arteries of his heart to allow the blood to flow more freely. Over the years of taking this medication his heart became increasingly enlarged until his early death in September 1960.

At that moment in time just before his death Jussi Bjorling was the greatest singer alive. During the last year of his life Bjorling’s voice was becoming more and more dramatic. He was starting to take on more of the dramatic roles in opera. This was due to the maturity of his mind and the depth of his spirit. It had absolutely nothing to do with any degree of physical strength. His body was growing weaker and weaker while his singing voice was becoming stronger and stronger.

Bjorling’s last recital was on August 20, 1960 in Stockholm, Sweden, less than three weeks before he died. It was a truly spectacular performance. Recordings of it are still available today. I encourage you to go out and buy a copy and have a listen for yourself. You won’t be able to tell that you are hearing a man whose heart is failing. You will only hear a triumphant and majestic singer.

An Innovative Approach: Group Classes to Achieve Individual Progress

While I was receiving my own Bel Canto singing instruction in both London, England and Bologna, Italy my teacher Julian Miller frequently invited me to sit in on his lessons with other students. We would all open our imaginations to discuss what was happening in the student’s voice as well as ideas to make further progress towards VOCAL FREEDOM. Sometimes we would gather several students together in a discussion. It was a most rewarding and exhilarating exercise. I saw the potential for us all to learn from one another and build each other up.

When I began to teach singing in Germany and in London I followed in that tradition by getting my students together in groups of two or three and encouraged similar types of discussions. I soon found that I was gathering larger and larger groups together in addition to each student’s individual sessions with me. The students enjoyed collaborating with one another and encouraging one another about their singing.

Now it is my regular policy to hold group classes at the Bel Canto House School of Singing in Dublin. Led by myself or my associate teacher Edwin Williamson, the students learn from each other in a relaxed setting, each taking turns singing a variety of songs from Irish ballads to showband classics operatic arias. The cardinal rule of my school is that every person’s statement or comment must be positive and constructive. Negativity is simply not allowed at the Bel Canto House. My school is a place of learning and growth and joy where each person is made to feel welcome and encouraged.

Problems Inherent in “Method” Teaching

I have talked previously on this blog about the advent of "method" teaching, where teachers instruct their students in "breathing exercises" and "vocalizations" and other tasks set upon the overphysicalization of singing. The first and most obvious effect that such “method” had upon students of singing was to outright rob them of the natural synchronicity and balance that they would need to express their art. They were taught to separately “watch” their breathing, their tones and their pitches all at the same time.

Now, I ask you to consider what would happen to you if you tried to watch your feet each time you took a step to walk. You would fall right on your face as soon as you got up out of your chair, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t get anywhere, and in fact all that you would be accomplishing would be to teach yourself to be anxious about something that you never before considered to be a worry.

The second deleterious effect of the “method” teaching was to mislead aspiring young singers towards the false conclusion that singing was a primarily physical activity that could only be done properly after being trained with strengthening exercises like an athlete, or even like an animal. The fact of being a whole person was removed entirely from the concept of singing.

The “maestros” invented “vocal callisthenics” which really only taught their students to imitate sounds and tones and to imitate the voices of others, as well as to embellish the sound of their own voices in unnatural and awkward ways. But the exercises were intended to “build them up” as singers. Only a person with a well-developed physique (as relates to “singing muscles” and “breathing muscles”) was believed to be able to sing well– singing “correctly” meant being strong enough to follow a precise set of physical movements to produce a specific sound.

If the “maestro method” were an effective path to proper singing, then the best singer in the world would be a computer or a robot, not a human artist.

The “maestro method” cheapened the art of singing by (1) reducing singing to the level of a “product” that could be mechanically churned out of the body and (2) reducing the singer himself to a collection of “pieces and parts.”

When “Science” Defeats True Singing: “Parts... Nothing More”

Scientifically based medicine (the kind of medicine that your family M.D. practices) was a great benefit to mankind, bringing new technologies and the ability to overcome many terrible diseases and other health problems, but it also tended to have an unforseen effect on the way that people generally understand what it means to be human.

Much of the “new science” of medicine developed from microscopic observations of pathogens and from the study of dissected human corpses. Where earlier health practices were holistic, treating the whole person as a whole person, scientifically based medicine tended to isolate different pieces of a person and to treat just the parts of the person that seemed to be directly involved in the health problem. The resulting school of thought gradually introduced an idea that human beings could be understood as “parts, nothing more,” as one of the doctors in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein aptly remarked.

As time went on the world of singing also became infected with the concept of treating a person as “parts, nothing more.” Understandably, singing practitioners were interested to learn all they could about the function of the voice, the vocal cords, the vocal resonators and the breath and the new technologies in scientific medicine opened up a wealth of information that hadn’t been available before. But the sad fact is that some very inferior “teachers” began to build up a following for themselves by using the new physiological data to overshadow and replace the true work and art of singing which the great singers had always practiced.

Manuel Garcia II is regarded as one of the greatest singing teachers of all time, a place in history which he rightly deserves. He is also credited with having invented the first laryngoscope during the 1800's, which for the first time made it possible to actually observe the vocal cords in a living person. This technology introduced singers to new and very valuable treasures of knowledge. But unfortunately that knowledge was misused over time by certain “teachers” who failed to understand the singer as a whole person and fail to treat singing as art, not athleticism. Manuel Garcia II lived to the ripe old age of 101, and in all his years he never compromised the precept that artistry (not physical exercise) is what singing is all about:

Most of the great singing teachers say that the less you know about the physiology of signing the better. Santley wrote (in The Art of Singing): ‘Manuel Garcia is held up as the pioneer of scientific teachers of singing. He was– but he taught singing, not surgery! I was a pupil of his in 1858, and a friend of his while he lived [to 1906], and in all the conversation I had with him I never heard him say a word about larynx or pharynx, glottis, or other organ used in the production and emission of the voice.”
(from page 956 of Percy Scholes’ The Oxford Companion to Music, Tenth Edition, emphasis added)

Despite the great example of singing teachers like Garcia who faithfully upheld the authentic art of singing, the music industry continued to put pressure on singing performers to force and push their voices. Singers were called upon to produce sounds with blasting volumes which added nothing to the expressiveness of the song but only offered empty notes and tones and unnatural embellishments. They were challenged to unnaturally stretch their voices to sing at a pitch level far too high or too low for their true voices. The great Italian composer Rossini described such singing as “the squawk of a capon having its throat cut.” (In case you didn’t know, a capon is a castrated domesticated male bird fattened for eating.)

Bel Canto– Simplicity and Clarity in a Complicated World

During the 1800's the newly commercialized music industry was producing more and more complicated and "enlightened" gimmicks to dazzle audiences– bigger and louder orchestras, loftier and more complex verses, singers performing tricks with their voices by making various sounds with increasingly forced amplitude and unnaturally stretched vocal range, and so forth. Productions increasingly became much more a function of visual hype and verbal acrobatics– much less a presentation of true artistry and real substance.

But there was a minority group of Italian composers who resisted the trend towards needless and unartful complications in music and in singing. Composers such as Bellini and Donizetti took a stand for the purity of their art. They knew the timeless beauty of a lovely story performed by singers who had studied and developed VOCAL FREEDOM, and they insisted that the traditional ways were the true path to artistry and expression.

These composers were called "Bel Canto" composers. "Bel Canto" is an Italian phrase that means "beautiful singing." The Bel Canto composers made it a special point to contrast their works against the overcomplicated compositions of their contemporaries. They promoted simple, straightforward melody and clarity which could only effectively be performed by singers who had achieved VOCAL FREEDOM. By making such a determined point to demonstrate expressiveness and clarity, the Bel Canto composers and the singers who performed their works presented incredibly beautiful singing that was envied by all.

The "maestro-method" way of athletically training singers gained more and more prominence over time. This did not necessarily mean that the maestro teachers were more effective than the traditional professori.

Teaching positions were not always awarded on merit. For example, the Milan Conservatory promised its chief teaching position to Amicarle Ponchielli. He was the artist who had proven to be the most able and accomplished in artistry in a competition for the post, but the Conservatory then revoked the appointment in favor of a less qualified individual with more political savvy and connivance.

The traditional way that singers had always studied singing with a professori gradually declined in the face of changing Western society. Instead of being called "singing studies," the traditional way became known as "Bel Canto" singing, after the composers and singers who made it their mission to preserve the traditional ways.


Even with a bastion of singers and teachers who knew the value of the natural and holistic study of singing as an art (not an acrobatic endeavor), true exponents of "Bel Canto" singing were becoming fewer and fewer. Great singers like Jean de Reske began to grow concerned that their true art may soon become lost to the world.

Bel Canto needed a Redeemer– someone who would carry the standard of VOCAL FREEDOM forward for new generations to hear and enjoy. That is why Jean de Reske was so delighted and gratified to hear the clear, expressive singing of Irish tenor John McCormack– he could finally rest easy that the true art of Bel Canto was indeed going to live on for another generation.

BEL CANTO- A Human Touch, A Living, Evolving Art:

It’s not often that someone can say that they have made a real contribution to the art that he or she serves. I am both proud and humbled to add my own human touch to the enduring and ever-evolving art of Bel Canto singing, as my teacher did before me and his teachers did before him. My gift to the art of Bel Canto is the message of storytelling.

Bel Canto is a singing art that can only be imparted from teacher to student over time and intensive study. There has never been a book or an instruction manual that could adequately describe the necessary steps to sing with VOCAL FREEDOM the Bel Canto way, and there never will be.

In the historical manner of study, the Bel Canto instructor would have the student sing an aria or other song until he or she brought forth a particularly beautiful phrase sung with crystal clarity. At that point the student was instructed to repeat that word or short phrase over and over exactly as he or she had just done it, in order for the student to become accustomed to singing so clearly. Intensive work was also done with regards to pronunciation of words, particularly the vowels in the words. The teacher continued to guide the student with these disciplines until the student finally achieved the ability to sing clearly and consistently without vocal difficulties every time– until he or she had reached VOCAL FREEDOM.

Approaching the Wonderment of Bel Canto

Because it is passed from teacher to student in such intimate and personal disciplines, Bel Canto is and always will be a mysterious, almost secret art. Many attempts have been made to explain the greatness of Bel Canto, and none have been truly adequate.

I liken it to the old parable about the group of blind men who were introduced to an elephant for the first time, and then they were asked to explain to others what an elephant was. The first blind man approached the elephant from its side and touched the animal’s large body with tough skin. He reported that an elephant is like a house. The second blind man felt one of the elephant’s legs and said: "It is a tree." The third blind man found the elephant’s tail and claimed that an elephant was a rope. The fourth blind man ran his hands up and down the elephants tusks– a spear! And the last blind man caught hold of the animal’s trunk and proclaimed that an elephant is a hosepipe. All of the men had good reason for their explanations, but none of them could fully comprehend all there was to know about an elephant.

So it is with the wonderment of Bel Canto. Various teachers and even accomplished Bel Canto singers have written about their understanding of Bel Canto as an art. In each book or article it is fairly easy to see that every person has managed to find something of themselves inside the art of Bel Canto, and they share that part of themselves as part and parcel of their respective definitions of "Bel Canto."

It was the same for me when I was a young lad studying Bel Canto with my teacher Julian Miller. I meditated continually about the work we were doing to clear away my vocal difficulties. I strove for consistency to be able to sing with the ease and clarity and well-pronounced phrases I was learning. I wanted to find a way to keep hold of those skills throughout my career without ever straying from the true meaning of Bel Canto.

And finally I found my answer within myself. I discovered I could get hold of all of the phrasing, inflection and precision inherent in Bel Canto singing and integrate them with ease as soon as I realized that singing Bel Canto was all about telling the story.