In my forthcoming Opera as Opera, wherein all this is discussed at greater length and in the context  of all the voice types, I mix in the word “family” (as in “Upper Family” and “Lower Family”) as a “register” substitute. But on the little quiz I usually spring on new students, I ask for their beliefs in three areas of vocal function: Respiration, Registration, and Resonance. “Registration” gives them a familiar term to deal with (“family” wouldn’t), and it strongly suggests that “Registration” and “Resonance” are not synonymous. I also ask them how many registers they think there are, where they detect changes from one to another, and where they locate the sources of vocal resonance.

Before considering how all this applies to Lehmann’s singing, I’ll give you my own short-form answers: There are two sound families, one governing the upper half of the human voice range, the other the lower. The shift from one to the other centers around the E and F above Middle C in all voices, male and female. This shift is not a click-point. Its precise pitch is influenced by loudness (louder, chestier; softer, headier), vowel (more open and bright, chestier; more closed and dark, headier); direction (high to low or vice-versa), and, presumably, the expressive effect the singer wishes to make. It occurs primarily inside the larynx, with the co-ordinations that adjust the tension and mass of the vocal cords for rising or falling pitch, and not in “areas of resonance” above or below. Those areas—the cavities that amplify the phonated sound—are in the acoustical complex that lies between the point of vocal origination (the vocal cords) and the point of emission (the mouth). In other words, the throat. And I’ll throw in one further thought: all control of movement in the body is achieved through the antagonistic interplay of muscles or muscle groups. In simplest form, one muscle contracts to create movement, and an opposing one holds against the movement to control it. If this co-ordination remains in balanced tension under the energies being directed into it, it will result in efficient action; if it doesn’t, it won’t. All the co-ordinations directly involved in singing—the adjustments of the vocal cords for pitch, the acoustical adjustments for vowels and overtones, and the adjustments of the respiratory tract and its connections for “support”—necessarily follow this rule.

In the booklet accompanying Marston’s release, there is an extended article on Lehmann’s records by Michael Aspinall. And if you are familiar with his persona as opera camp parodist, don’t be fooled. He’s an expert. There are few who listen so keenly and with so wide a knowledge of early vocal recordings, and fewer yet with anything like his sympathetic understanding of historic voice theories and how they work out in practice.  Reading his essays for Marston and other labels over the years, I’ve repeatedly paused to exclaim (sotto voce, of course) “Exactly! You’ve nailed it!” Ninety percent of the time and in quite minute detail, he’s hearing the same things I’m hearing. Yet he and I analyze these things very differently. It’s one thing to understand how a Lamperti, a Garcia, a Marchesi, or a De Reszke thought and why they thought it; it’s another to embrace those thoughts as unquestioned descriptions of vocal reality. So in considering Lotte Lehmann’s technique, I’m happy to engage with Aspinall’s views. They’re so well informed, so well articulated—and  I disagree with them so strongly on several key points.