In terms of the two-vs.-three-register debate, though, the question would be this: in even the most extreme instances, where the sound and behavior of the voice on either side of the upper E/F is markedly different—even if the weight and constriction are so severe that nothing higher can be accessed except a falsetto-like or Pfeifstimme-ish tone—does the timbre of the tone, the family to which it belongs, show a contrast anything like that of the passaggio an octave below? And even if, like Lehmann, the singer is able to balance and blend that lower-middle transition to perfection, will she ever conceal it as completely as she can the upper one? I think not, and I think it follows that if the E/F above middle C is a register break, the E/F above it is not. It is something lesser. In fact, nowhere in the entire range of the human voice (except in cases of major vocal distress or outright damage) do we encounter a timbral or behavioral change of the magnitude of that lower-middle transition.  Note as well that (to rudely introduce the masculine into the picture, as Marchesi did not) this same spot marks the passaggio in the male voice. That’s most easily heard in tenors, least easily in basses, just because of the amounts of territory covered. (For some complementary discussion, refer to my observations on Michael Fabiano’s handling of the passaggio in my Aug.17  posting, “Two Traviatas—2″).

Nevertheless: the “something lesser” is still a something. There are a number of somethings, places in the range that can evince passaggio-like characteristics, though in diminished degree. They tend to fall around F’s and B’s up and down the range (there being, as many theorists have noted, octave reflections in the human voice). To point out those in the upper half: the B above middle C is the “natural” top of the modern tenor range (also, in non-classical usages, the place where even powerful female belters will hit a wall); the next F is our famous “upper passaggio“; the next B the top of the “normal” soprano range and the entrance into the “coloratura extension”; and the F above that our Queen of the Night money note. The sounder the structure of any given voice, the more any irregularities will congregate around those points; the more polished the technique, the less they will obtrude. Apart from the true, one-and-only passaggio itself, the one that gets the most attention is that upper E/F. That’s simply because it bears the most traffic and is therefore the most vulnerable to the problems alluded to above, and because its proper balancing is the key to free and effective high notes.

The best sort of theory, I believe, is the simplest one that accounts with the fewest exceptions for all the observable (in this case, audible) phenomena of its field.  And while we can ask, “What’s in a name?”, when it comes to singing we can answer “The most accurate description of the functional realities of the human voice.” So for all who sing, who teach or coach or critique, this accuracy has important artistic implications, and for all who listen, the richest appreciation of what they’re responding to. As I said at the outset, Michael Aspinall hears, keenly, the same phenomena I hear. When he points to the superb colorings Lehmann attains, moving first down the scale and then up in the second Freischütz  aria (“Und ob die Wolke”), he’s noting the same ideally graded registrational rotation I’m identifying. Of course, when he attributes it to the movement of head and chest “resonances,” or when, elsewhere in his article, he talks of her perfect “in the mask”  placement, he is in my view misidentifying the sources of the effects we both love. But these questions of bio-acoustics and positioning will have to await another discussion.