Paul Watt | Singers’ Vocal Health and Hygiene in the Nineteenth Century: Pills, Potions and Performance

Event details

Speaker: Paul Watt (University of Adelaide)

Date: 5 March 2021

Time: 10.00-11.30 pm

Online

About this seminar

The invention of the laryngoscope by the renowned singing teacher Manuel García (1805–1906)—alongside the development of particular vocal exercises—transformed the way in which singers of the period could be more accurately treated for their various ailments. His most well-known patient was Jenny Lind (1820–1887). Without Garcia’s intervention her voice was most likely to have remained ruined and her career cut short. However, despite the far-reaching effect and use of the laryngoscope it is only one part of the historical record of the ways singers and public speakers benefited from the rapid rise of medicine, especially the disciplines of anatomy and physiology. These advances in technology and medicine, as well as the continuation of treatments handed down from previous generations of centuries past, made their way into hundreds of scientific texts, educational manuals, newspaper articles, biographies and autobiographies, letters and advertisements. So pervasive was the need for health education that by the end of the nineteenth century, Nellie Melba claimed that one of the most important things a young singer could do for himself or herself was to understand the detail of the physiology and anatomy of the voice. This paper charts the ways in which methods to prevent the destruction and deterioration of the voice, as well as detailed plans—including recipes, pills, exercise, and how much champagne a singer should drink before stepping onto the stage—were developed. I argue that García’s invention is only part of the historical narrative that sees the singer and public speaker one of the greatest beneficiaries in nineteenth-century advances in medicine. The talk will be illustrated with examples of health instruction from Sims Reeves, Nellie Melba, Maria Malibrand, Emma Eames amongst others.

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